With the recent twist in the plot by allowing 280 characters, Twitter has given all the more reason to celebrate influence marketing.
Twitter, indisputably, has the potential to reach target audience when infused with the right campaign, right tools, and right influencer.
Influencer marketing has a great impact on almost all the age groups, especially on the millennial.
If you go with the stats, 74% of internet users rely on social media to inform about their purchase decisions.
On an average, 200 million users send out more than 200 tweets every day.
Now, that is humongous! So for businesses, especially the emerging ones, targeting potential audience with Twitter is a wise option.
Also, with the decline in TV viewership and demand of ad blockers, the necessity for the brands to accept the influence marketing has increased considerably over the years.
If you are wondering how influencer marketing on Twitter works, here is the step by step guide to connect with your audience and maximize your returns.
What is Influencer Marketing?
According to Wikipedia, Influencer marketing (also influence marketing) is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market.
Essentially, influencer marketing is the way of partnering with the influential people to drive your message as a brand to the target audience.
Individuals who create a brand out of their comedic, entertaining or informative content, thereby, getting the brand integrated within their content.
This way the brand scores not only in terms of high-quality content but also in creating awareness.
Moving forward, let’s understand the process step by step
Step 1: Know your target audience
Before you start with the execution, it is imperative to know your audience.
Do your homework and determine how large or small the target audience should be, what kind of content they are interested in and what social platforms they use regularly.
It is also essential to reach out your audience directly rather than just relying on the influencers.
This makes the brand more connecting and more credible.
To make it less complex, there are many brand monitoring tools in the market which let you check and understand your target audience better.
HootSuite is one such widely used tool to connect with your audience.
Step 2: Identify influencers in your niche
To find the right influencers who can reflect your goals is a big task.
While considering an influencer, you may have to consider certain points such as:
- Number of followers
- Have a record of posting relevant posts
- Shares the same goal as yours
If your firm is a footwear retailer, know your audience and pick your key influencers with hashtags, using Twitter advanced search and third-party tools like Little Bird and Traackr that let you discover potential influencers, content marketing, and competitive intelligence.
Remember, the moment a key individual is zeroed in; he is an extension of your brand and thereby is responsible for any changes that your brand experiences in the future.
Step 3: Research and understand your Influencer
Once you find your amplifiers or key leaders within the niche, next step is to make a thorough research of their profiles.
Spend quality time on understanding their interactions and overall activities across social platforms like Facebook, Instagram etc. Find out what drives and motivates them.
With experience, you will get to know that it is not always about the monetary returns, but also how they see your brand, its quality, and authenticity.
For instance, a sports person can connect immediately with footwear, energy boosters and so on.
Similarly, celebrities can relate to fashion and beauty.
Knowing what they are inclined towards will help you get an idea of how you can set a plan that can be profitable to both your brand and the influencer.
You can check for the following to be sure of your decision about an amplifier for your niche:
- Scan their social media profile
- Read their blogs if any
- Whether they are already engaged with your competition or other brands and how the past marketing records are
- Monitor their social activity
- Understand the type of content that earns them the most engagement
Step 4: Strengthen your relationship
So, you have figured out the ideal influencer to reach out to your target audience, what’s next?
Well, there are two major steps:
1) Reaching out:
The simple rule is to approach in a subtle way and rely on more of an interactive rather than a robotic reply.
- Influencers are generally busy and have no time to read your flowery and lengthy content.
Make sure the message you drop is crisp and up to the point.
Talking about the benefits and how your product is relevant to the influencer’s motive can help. - Compose your mail or message with an introductory note, your campaign strategy and what’s the role of the influencer.
- Give some time for your request to be acknowledged.
Give at least 10 days of time; if you haven’t heard back from them, you can always follow-up.
Again in a subtle way rather than pissing him off.
2) Pitching:
- Once you feel that the influencer is convinced and is interested to take this further, now is the time you need to be extra careful.
- Presenting your plan and highlighting how he can be benefited by this is the initial step to start with.
- To raise the bar and increase the influencer’s authority for a healthy long-run relationship.
- Incentivize and sharing codes for special offers thereby building loyalty among the followers.
- Availability of future discounts on their future purchases.
Above are some of the tactics to sustain the relationship that can reap benefits when implemented properly.
Let the influencer have the freedom to give a personalized touch while promoting instead of limiting them to some cliché tagline.
Step 5: Devise a marketing strategy
Now it’s time to devise a plan on which you and your influencer will be working on together
- Running hashtag campaign – It is the proven way of creating brand awareness among your followers as 95% of the time Twitter communication contains #hashtags
- Sharing video content – Video content has always made an impressive element as the followers grasp the idea faster as compared to textual advertising and promotions.
- Fun contests – There are contests happening all the time on twitter wherein the brand can send out gifts to active participants without forcing them to promote the brand.
If impressed, they naturally tend to share their experience and thereby spreading the word all by themselves. - Announcing special offers on participation – This applies to both influencers and followers
- Incorporating influencer’s twitter handle – This is an ideal way to let your followers know about the influencer better.
Especially for those who are not aware of the influencer and thereby can trust your product based on the authenticity.
Step 6: Run the campaign
Now that you have a strategy devised, it is show time fellas!
Before running a Twitter hashtag campaign, one should review all the elements which will become the backbone of your strategy
You can concentrate on the following to get a better idea of a sure shot success in running your campaign…
- Discover relevant tweet using various online tools available in the market
- Schedule your tweets based on the demography, language, and other preferences.
- Opt A/B testing and research what has worked in the previous campaigns.
- Curate your content in advance
Step 7: Track your activities
To check the progress, it is essential to track key metrics and analyze how it’s building up.
Gaining social insights is important which gives a clear perspective of how to go ahead with the campaign.
Measure your campaign, whether it is working for your audience, what are the changes to implement.
One can also use Twitter tracking tools to check the reach, the engagement of the campaign, mentions of your business and content engagement.
For example, retweets and sharing content over other social platforms.
Also, tools like Google Analytics let you know where your traffic is coming from so that if anything doesn’t work out as you have planned, you can make adjustments accordingly.
Final words:
Whatever your strategy is, Twitter makes it easier to communicate with your audience and lets you tell your followers engaging stories.
This when collaborated with industry influencers, increases the credibility and builds trust factor which is the base for generating leads.
Today with the software applications like AdBlock plus and YouTube Red, where you can effortlessly get rid of ads, traditional advertising is gradually going out the window and this is when influencer marketing steps in.
It makes the whole process effective, transparent and more involved.
In the recent study, it was found that people looking for a particular product apparently end up buying something totally different.
This is mainly due to the influence created by the social media platforms like Twitter.
Do you have your personal experience with Influencer marketing on Twitter or any other platform?
Do let us know in the comments below.
A social media marketing enthusiast, Pankaj is determined to shape his ideas into perfect products.
CoFounder of Twitter Tracking Tool Socialert, he believes in coming up with engaging tools to redefine the face of digital marketing.