This week I chose to learn more about the use of Social Media influencer partnerships to promote a brand. The reason that this subject appealed most to me is because I think that I could find a lot of success in working with "mommy influencers" to promote Nunu. In my research I learned that mommy bloggers typically fall in the category of micro influencers. Micro influencers have smaller followings and produce content that covers a particular niche. While generally parenting centric accounts have a relatively small following for the lexicon of social media influencers, this is not always the case. Carlie Anderson is a mom blogger in San Diego County with an audience of 93 thousand. She doesn't post sexy bikini pictures or how to videos the way the majority of instagrams mega-stars do, but sticks to content about her family and life as a parent. Some of her major sponsors are Gatorade, Aerie, and even Disney. What does it cost to get someone like Carlie, or @lipglossandcrayons, to make a post with your brand? According to Influence.co her starting rate for partnership is $1,500.
So how effective is marketing with influencers? Well, it depends. To track the success of a partnership, brands must categorize engagement by clicks, lives, shares, comments, impressions, and finally sales. Part of the reason influencer marketing has become the quickest growing form of online marketing is because of influencers relatability. They aren't movie stars or famous athletes, they're regular people that their fans can see themselves in. Customers are more likely to trust the girl doing makeup in her room than the high budget professionally lit commercial when it comes to deciding which new foundation to try. But an influencers audience does not always translate into sales. It's important when choosing an influencer to work with that brands have a clear understanding of what their goals are. Some bloggers will be great for bringing quick awareness to your brand, but will not immediately translate into new sales. A company must consider, do they want a partnership that will promote long term brand awareness or short term sales?
Another important factor in choosing an influencer is going though a rigorous vetting process. Not all followers are real, and often the influencer will pay for accounts to follow them. What does this mean? Their followers do not have an actual interest in the kind of content that's being posted. A food blogger that buys 50k followers and then is paid to promote a new cooking tool will likely not bring new sales to the brand, because these followers came to their page for money not because they love cooking. Theres no sure fire way to know if an influencers audience is 100% organic, but there are some techniques one can use to gain insight. Do they have long term established relationships with the brands they promote? If you see that a company pays for two posts and then never again, you can safely assume that this campaign did not translate into actual sales and thus the partnership was not continued. Another way to tell is to see if their fans are actually commenting and liking posts. The quality of the comments also tells you how engaged their followers are. Do they comment generic emojis and compliments about their eyes, or do they engage thoughtfully with the content thats being posted? Remember, the power of the influencer partnership is rooted in the idea that their fans trust and are interested in what the figure has to share.
Choosing the right influencer is another key aspect in building a successful partnership. There's something called "Native Searches." This is doing research by immersing yourself in the world of hashtags. Looking at popular hashtags that are relevant to your brand and seeing which popular accounts use them. This brings you directly to the pages that users go to when looking for a product or subject matter. My company is a healthy baby food brand. To conduct a Native Search for Nunu I would look at hashtags like #healthybabyfood or #infantnutrition. You can also outsource this research by working with a social media management company. A new business concept thats multiplied rapidly, social media managers represent influencers and connect them with brands looking to promote their products. FABA Marketing is a very popular digital marketing agency which is a full scale strategic marketing service. They help companies decide both what content will be successful for their brand and connect them with influencers that work in the same scope of reach.
There are other ways to use an influencers fan base without paying for them to post. In addition to her social media accounts, Carlie Anderson also has a facebook group called Lip Gloss & Crayons: A Community for Moms. To promote Nunu, I plan to join this group and make posts about our company and what we do. It's a space where I know that all who participate are moms looking for content relevant to parenting. I know many of them will be local, and in posting directly in the group I can grow brand awareness without spending money on a partnership right out of the gate.
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