Originally Published by Backstage July 18, 2016
In the world of social media, it’s not all fun and games. Being an influencer can gain you followers and respect from your favorite brands.
In my previous article, when I spoke about YouTubers making hundreds, thousands, or millions of dollars, many readers asked how it was done. So here are three surefire methods to take you from wading in the shallow waters of the social media pool to jumping straight away into the deep end.
Establish Your Streaming Platform
Do you have a You Tube channel, Vine, or Periscope account? Then you can use social media to become an influencer. How? Simply have an opinion, back it up, and convince others to embrace and share. Time consuming? You bet, but there are numerous apps that allow you to easily connect, share links, or embed posts based on your preference.
Give The People What They Want
If you’re totally committed to growing your influence in social media, you have to pay attention to comments about content. Comments help you stay focused and informed about the demands of your audience. Ignoring comments is a crucial mistake you can’t afford to make. If you start listening to and addressing the concerns of your audience, they’ll learn to like and trust you. Trust is an immeasurable social media attribute.
Make sure you reply to let them know their opinion has been heard. If possible, stay actively online for about an hour or so after you post. Why? This keeps your followers interested, encourages them to connect with you, and share even more content.
Most importantly be you! If your posts are contrived and insincere, you’ll be called out immediately. The more authentic and entertaining you are, the better for all involved
How You Doin?
Straight-up feedback with comments and conversation is easily the most inexpensive method to find out if you are connecting with your audience. But analytics are a necessary evil in monitoring your progress. Analytics are now mostly provided by the social media platforms themselves, or you have the option of buying the services of software that will do it for you. Google Analytics is free, popular, and easy to set up if you have a Google account.
What do you need analytics for? Analytics are a great tool to assist in understanding your audience from a different perspective. In other words, you not only find out the demographic of your followers, but what social media platform is the most popular one on which they connect with you.
Let the Brand War Begin
Whew! Once all of that is under control, let’s move on to the brands and how to directly influence them. The easiest way to grab their attention is to use and talk about their product to your followers.
Let’s be very clear: Most brands won’t even touch you unless you have well over 250,000 followers. Why? Followers equals money. The bottom line is they have to make a profit or it’s not worth their time.
That’s why a certain family whose last name starts with “K” is slaying the brand game. They make any product they touch look easy to use, cool, sexy, and something consumers just have to own. Can you say Lumee Phone Case and a book titled “Selfish” featuring hundreds of selfies? That doll took something she does numerous times a day and is making a profit. You see how this all comes together, right?
So think about what products your followers would be passionate about simply because you said so. Knowing, liking, and trusting social media geeks have made millionaires across numerous platforms. Why can’t you be the next social media expert to cash in on what you love and know?
