Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to grow your business on social media. You may think that it’s only for ‘big’ businesses; however, influence marketing for small businesses can prove to be an excellent way to kick start a social media campaign, build more awareness of your brand, and reach new audiences. We do realize that as a small business, reaching out to influencers may be daunting. You may want to know what kind of influencers would be right for your brand, and how you should talk to them to get them on your campaign. Below, we have compiled a few steps through which you can kick start your social media campaign with an influencer that’s exactly right for you!

Influence Marketing For Small Businesses—What To Do

Here are a few steps you can follow to start your social media campaign with an influencer.

Identify What You Want From The Campaign

The first thing you need to do before starting your social media campaign is to identify what results you want from the campaign. Do you want to create more brand awareness? Are you looking for a long-term influencer campaign that is more like a partnership? By identifying what your goals are, you will be able to look for the influencers who would fit the campaign. Moreover, you will be able to find influencers based on their skill set and experience.

Find Influencers On Social Media

The next step in influence marketing for small businesses is to find various influencers on social media. One of the ways you can find influencers is by looking at your own following. Is someone commenting on your social media? Are they tagging you in their photos? If so, that means that they are already interested in your brand and would probably want to work with you. Another way to seek influencers is to look up relevant keywords of your brand. You will likely come across people using those keywords with similar content that your brand posts. We suggest you create a list of influencers for your campaign and not rely on one or two.

Research The Influencer’s Social Media Handle

This is a very important step in influence marketing for small businesses. When you find influencers who are somewhat relevant to your brand and have a good following, research their social media handle. Read their posts and identify their voice, their views, their goals, and their style. When you evaluate these things and compare them with your brand, you will get an idea of whether or not the influencer would be right for your brand.

Make Use Of Influencer Research Tools

Influencer marketing is a huge business. In fact, it was destined to become an eight-billion-dollar industry this year! This means that it is a well-researched and evolved industry where there are various third-party tools that help you in influencer campaigns. We suggest getting in touch with an agency that would help you in selecting the right influencer for your brand. These agencies have a host of influencers with a great following and would couple you up with an influencer that would be exactly right for your brand.

Comment On The Influencer’s Social Media

Before you pen the influencer an email or DM, take the time out to comment on the influencer’s post. Let them know that you like their content and that you appreciate the time and effort they put in their posts. This shows the influencer that you have taken the time out to view their content and are genuinely interested in their content.

Email the Influencer

The last step in reaching out to influencers in the influence marketing for small businesses is to send them an Email describing your brand, your campaign, and why you have chosen them as the influencer. We highly recommend personalizing the email because an email template suggests that you’ve been sending out these emails to a lot of influencers and don’t really care about that influencer in particular. A personalized email shows that you’re genuinely interested in working with the influencer and have taken the time to evaluate their content and then selected them for the campaign. You may discuss the compensation methods you would have for the campaign and the influencer’s availability.

Wrapping Up

Influence marketing for small businesses may seem quite daunting. However, it doesn’t have to be! In this article, we outlined a few steps you can take to reach out to influencers. You would have to identify your own goals for the campaign, find influencers that are interested in your brand through your comments or looking up relevant hashtags, get in touch with an influencer agency, evaluating the influencer’s style, voice, views, and goals, get in touch with them through their comments, and finally emailing them regarding the campaign offer.