What is an Influencer? – Social Media Influencers Defined [Updated 2022]

If you ever feel like you have the zeal to assist the folks or even persuade them to relish life by making sound decisions, don’t hold yourself back!

Sometimes all we need to get started is a little push in the right direction. Influencers often play that vital role in intriguing your insight.

Social media influencers are the ones that help you make decisions and persuade you through their reach and recommendations. They can do so by accessing the media platforms like- Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. 

People often tend to trust these influencers more than the traditional celebrities endorsing anything. 

Influencing the audiences you gather from social media can be a very strenuous job. You can do so only by being authentic and genuine while sharing your advice and experiences. Let’s see how social media influencers are easing the lives of others in 2021. 

Social Media Influencers Based on the Content

Bloggers

Bloggers are the type of influencers who reach out to their audiences by posting written content based on their business. These contents can be very informative or wacky based on the type of material incorporated by the bloggers posting it. 

There can be several types of bloggers – travel, food, political, personal, business, etc. To decide what your blogs will circle around needs you to focus primarily on the niche of your blogs. Having a niche makes it easier to proceed with the research works and produce more specific content.

People while exploring a product or service often refer to their trusted blogger’s review before buying it. Blogs are the new age information providers of e-commerce. 

Vloggers

Vloggers choose to engage with their followers through the medium of video blogging. These videos can be based on product reviews, travelling, daily lifestyle, fashion, cooking, and various other things. 

Vloggers tend to provide details and descriptions about their business and whereabouts through producing short or long videos. These videos can be in the form of snippets from their projects or actual live recordings. 

YouTuber

YouTuber is a visually engaging individual who entertains people by posting videos and images frequently on the video-sharing website, YouTube. 

YouTubers can open an account on the social media platform called YouTube and share videos to grow a community. By posting videos and growing popularity, one can earn a pretty impressive living along with more followers and subscriptions. 

Youtubers or influencers on YouTube develop a sense of belongingness with their followers. They do so by staying in direct touch with them through comments, live sessions, answering the FAQs. 

Activists

Activist influencers are the ones that speak on a current scenario of the society or rise up for a cause. These influencers can cast a heavy and long-lasting effect on their followers. 

Often unknowingly while serving for the socio-economic or political change in the globe they start representing a community as a whole.

Raging campaigns against the sleep of society on certain issues that call for actions right away are the primary concern of these influencers. Fighting for a cause becomes more significant if brought in front of the population. Activist influencers speak volumes for the community that withholds its darkness and cries for luminosity. 

Photographers

If you are good with cameras and have mastered skills for clicking, being a photographic influencer can be a good try. 

While one sits to write a thousand words on the cause and effects of something, others might click to speak more with just one picture. 

Photographs can captivate more emotions than words. Photographers often grab more attention by hunting dazzling snaps that cast a spell on their followers. 

You can start your photographic influencer career either by selecting a theme for your snaps or by randomly clicking that you think should be upheld at the minute. 

Social Media Influencers Based on the Reach

Mega Influencers

Mega influencers are the highest-ranking social media influencers with over a million people following them. Mega influencers often have a huge and diversified audience.

It is not necessary that they have gained fame through social media itself, they can be celebrities from different professions like actors, comedians, sportsmen, singers etc. 

Brands and companies prefer to appeal to them for endorsing or promoting their products or services for the vast reach and impactful appearance they have on their followers. They are thought to be apt for the top of the funnel marketing campaigns. 

Macro Influencers

Macro influencers lie just on the brink of the mega influencers. They can be parted from the former on the basis of their follower count, which ranges somewhere from 100k to 1 million. They too have a wide reach. 

Macro influencers mostly gain popularity and viewers by being consistent with their post and content. They procure followers by producing inspirational, comical or informative contents. 

Micro-Influencers

Micro-influencers are the ones having a follower count ranging from 1k to 100k. They too have a certain demographic outreach but lesser than the macro and mega influencers. 

Micro-influencers ordinarily are more concerned with posting topic related or niche-specific contents. They have a way stronger grip and impact on their audience. They have a fair count of the audiences and charge comparatively lower than the already established mega influencers. 

Nano Influencers

Nano influencers are the newcomers in this field. They would require time to ground their foothold and gain support from the wider community.

They tend to have a lesser count of nearly 1k followers on social media. They are likely to be known influencers within their community or neighbourhood like- a government leader, a priest etc. 

Nano influencers are perceived as very genuine reviewers by their followers. Because of their ability to directly connect with the followers, they are deemed the best fit for branding regular products and services. Although if the brands looking to hit greater demographics nano influencers may not be the right choice. 

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a new age social media marketing tool incorporated by businesses of all size and structure. This form of marketing includes endorsement and placement for products and services by the influential heads of social media. Already having a wider outreach to the population fuels the process of marketing.

Traditionally advertising or marketing was limited to celebrities from different professions.

For example-branding products of nutritional value or health modifying capabilities called for well-known athletes and sportsmen, whereas beauty products and fashionable wardrobe collections required actors/ actresses or glittering stars of the fashion world. 

2021 has given a new outlook to the marketing sector. Most business Syndicates would cater to the fact that online marketing has yielded more fruitful results than traditional marketing strategies. 

One of the biggest reasons behind hinging on social media for branding is because most of the the world’s population engages in it. 

With the introduction of these rapidly growing social media platforms, there is a significant shift in the strategies opted by the business syndicates for marketing. 

In 2021 when most of the world is shut behind the doors, influencers can have a great hand in the marketing sphere. When the world is turning towards e-commerce as a substantial hold for surviving business, opting for the right marketing strategy plays an eminent role.

Importance of Influencer Marketing

Although availed for years, influencer marketing is gaining significant importance in 2021 with the introduction of the “New Normal” custom. People are growing more accepting of changes around the globe. So why not in market segments? 

Influencer Marketing has evolved in a new form and is eyeballed in a different way since the activation of the global lockdown. Physically approaching places and examining products and services are curbed down to a greater extent. 

In such situations, consumers have shifted their zeal for exploration and taste of variations to digital recourse. Influencers act as succour to the consumers and marketing opportunities to the brands. 

Let’s gauge its importance:

1. Provides great reach to wider populations
2. Helps in building brand value and brand recognition
3. Increases the trust of consumers about your brand 
4. Provides opportunities for wider explorations in the business fields
5. Establishes direct contact with the consumers
6. Helps in generating leads and conversions by turning potential customers into actual buyers 
7. Brings in more sales to the brand and ensures broader revenue earnings
8. Influencer Marketing often drives purchasing decisions of the consumers

Strategies to be Implemented in Influencer Marketing

Clear your goals

By having a defined set of goals for your business you make it easier to hunt for the right influencer for marketing your content. Depending on your business goals you can seek influencers that can best describe your product and services and connect to the traffic. You can choose from among these types of Influencers – 

• Bloggers 
• Celebrities
• Industry experts
• Social media leaders 

It is best if you could approach an influencer who mostly creates customer-centered content and has been perceived as authentic by their followers. 

Look for the right influencers

To be accessible and accepted by people you have to search for influencers in your industry, who already have an established number of followers. You can convince an influencer to endorse your product by defining your business goals and authenticity. You can either hire, inspire or use a combination of both methods of approaching an influencer. 

Ways to Establish Influencer Marketing

Here are some ways of establishing influencer marketing- 

Presenting

You can provide free products and services to an influencer for reviewing your wares. 

Discount tokens

You can provide access to the influencer for discounts on products or services that have been showcased by them, to their audience.

Sponsored Content

This includes paying the influencer for featuring and promoting your brand in his or her blog or channel. 

Brand Ambassador

You can do so by allowing an influencer to build relationships with brand fans and promoting your products and services and in turn relish free access to your productions and get featured by your brand. 

Have a niche

By owning a niche, you reduce the load for searching for an apt influencer. There are influencers who might create contents with the same niche or are closely related to it. 

This way you can connect to your target audience easily and with more assurance that your business might get greater exposure and value amongst them. Having specifications can make you stand out from your competitors and assist in grabbing more attention.

Go for quality

Influencers who have the right audience for your business are the best fit for marketing your products and services. Often diversified audiences tend to overlook the endorsement of it doesn’t cater to their needs. 

This will probably not be the scenario if you would opt for the right audience with the right Influencer. Don’t get persuaded by a large number of followers. It is not always about quantity but mostly about quality. Surf through the metrics of the Influencers to calculate their engagement with the audience. 

Search for relevance

For effectively branding your products and services through influencer marketing, go for some in-depth research on the posts of the Influencers. 

In case you create contents that are promoted by the influencers but have never been earlier talked about or reflected on their feed it might raise a huge commotion among the consumers.

Consumers might question the authenticity of the products being endorsed. This can really harm the goodwill of your company. 

To avoid this try to collaborate with influencers who if not always but have at certain point reviewed products or services related to that yours. This increases the relevance and quality of your brand. 

Standardize your content

Create contents that are irrefutable by the influencers. This can be really beneficial if you opt for guest posting as one of your marketing tactics. Guest Posting includes writing on-point content on someone else’s blog. 

One uses guest posting to gather more traffic to their website as you are intriguing people to read about your brand through someone else’s post.

Remember, if you find out what the influencers are lacking in their page and tactfully inculcate that dearth in your content, it will more likely make the Influencers accept your offer. 

Keep records of your outreach

Update your records regularly to know where your campaign is leading your business. Use metrics to individually analyse your business goals and marketing objectives. Follow up for ensuring corroborate reaching out to your traffic. 

Use these records and statistics to guide your next marketing strategy. Be consistent with what has yielded great results and withhold measures that are proving to be harmful to your marketing. 

Digital marketing has enlisted variations in marketing sectors. Moreover, after a year like 2020, failures are more likely to be taken as experiments and consequently reducing the chances of your brand getting backlashes.  

Conclusion

Social media has given us the opportunity to experiment and see what works the best for us. With the growing relevance of social media as a unique competency to the traditional marketing forms, influencers are riding the waves of success. Consequently, they are bringing in more value to the brands and wider acknowledgements. 

If you are pondering over planning to ingrain Influencer marketing as your marketing tactics, go ahead and give it a try!