Tag: Influencer

Can Your Customers Make You an Influencer on Social Media?

Not only can your customers build your influence online, your social proof and online presence means very little until your audience begins to show up for you and shares your content on their own feeds and with their own followers. 

What are some things you can do to convert your followers from people who simply like your posts into brand advocates who champion your brand often?

Content That Inspires

Brands that find success on social media incorporate and promote audience participation. It doesn’t have to be every day, but coming up with something weekly that encourages social engagement, interaction, and participation are super impactful for businesses online. 

Posting content just to remain consistent has its place but really growing an audience requires engaging content that motivates people to interact. Pay attention to previous content you’ve shared that has done well and evaluate what aspect of that post made it so appealing? What encouraged people to engage? If you don’t have any content, check out other profiles online and pay attention to what does well. 

Encouraging Engagement

If you want more people to see the content that you’ve created, you have to get creative about sparking conversations and interacting with people on your social media channels. For example, on Facebook, the first 30 minutes of a post are crucial. The more people that like, comment, and share your post in that time will ignite the algorithm to show that content in more feeds. As your engagement on that post grows, so does that content’s reach in your audience. So, if you know that a great post goes live at 9:30 a.m., it makes sense to be available and present – responding to comments and talking to your audience. This is the path to building an engaged audience and becoming an influencer online (and it doesn’t require that you have to be present 100% of the time). 

Building Brand Loyalty

The whole purpose of marketing is to get in front of people so they will consider purchasing your products or services, right? The path to purchase starts and ends with trust. Your audience needs to trust you before they are willing to do business with you. Here are some marketing activities that build trust with your audience:

  • Consistency – Showing up online often and setting expectations for when you will be available.
  • Community – What are you doing to build a community around your audience – allowing them to connect with you directly but also benefit from interacting with each other?
  • Generosity – What are you doing to be generous with your time and your expertise? How are you serving your audience?
  • Authority / Credibility – What are you doing to improve your online credibility so that when someone does a search on you they can easily and quickly see that you are a trusted expert in your field?

If it seems like a lot of work to become an online influencer and expand your reach online, that’s because it is. If becoming an influencer was easy, everyone would be doing it and would find success right now. The first step to online success of any kind is finding and growing your audience. These recommendations will help you create more content that gains attention, grows awareness of your brand, and builds trust with your audience.

If you are using social media, you are probably only engaging with pages that share relatable content. Are you wanting to define your story and build a long term relationship with a loyal audience that finds YOUR content enjoyable and relatable? Let’s do a Discovery Session to see which Social Media Advisor programs best fit your needs.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

Are You an Influencer With Your Brand?

When you think of an influencer you may be imagining an individual that spends their time and online presence promoting the products of other companies – in exchange for free merchandise or paid sponsorships/endorsements. This is the way influencers are depicted because it’s proven to be a successful strategy for social media folks who’ve been able to build an audience around their chosen interests or niche.

However, as influencers have grown in popularity, many marketers have discovered that any brand can present themselves as an influencer in their industry. Many of these businesses are considered micro-influencers and while they are promoting their own products or services, they are also growing their audience and influencing their followers. 

The question we are asking you today is… are you simply posting about your business or are you positioning yourself as an influencer with your social media marketing?

Creating the Content

When you sit down to create content for your business to post on social media, what’s your mindset? Are you focused on creating content that converts to sales OR are you creating content to intentionally connect with and nurture your audience? 

This is really the first step when it comes to positioning yourself as a credible source, expert, authority, or influencer. Businesses who approach content creation from the mindset of generously showing up and helping their audience are more likely to become influencers than brands who spend the bulk of their time attempting to convert cold leads into warm ones. 

The real trick to this is: when influencers show up for their audience in a generous way they discover more success when selling their products and services than those who do not.

You Define the Culture

As an influencer in your industry, you are setting the culture – the expectation – for what people can expect when they follow your brand. Newer companies often forget about the culture they are creating when they show up but there’s power and impact in being intentional about the type of environment you are creating for your audience. Also, truly successful brand influencers are creating a culture that is authentic to them and doesn’t mirror or copy any of their competitors. People are drawn to something original, unique, and real. Create a culture that is appealing to your ideal client so when they do find you, they are excited about sticking around.

Setting the Stage for Social Engagement

If you are going to build your brand on social media, please don’t make the mistake of posting content and then disappearing. This is more common, even today, than ever before. Either a brand doesn’t understand the commitment necessary when building out a social media platform or they’ve given up and abandoned their online channels leading to an influx of businesses with zero presence online. If you want your audience to show up and engage with your content, your presence is essential! People are savvy and they can tell if you are absent when it comes to your online marketing.

A consistent, welcoming, engaging presence that commits to responding to the audience and being available speaks volumes. If you want an audience to commit to being there for you, you must first show up for them. Your followers need to be able to quickly uncover when you will show up, how often you show up, and where they can find you so they can make it a priority to be there for the brand.

Much of transitioning from a business who uses social media marketing to becoming an influencer has to do with the mindset, approach, and strategy for the content you create and share on your social media channels. Be there for your people and they’ll show up for you.


If you are using social media, you are probably only engaging with pages that share relatable content. Are you wanting to define your story and build a long term relationship with a loyal audience that finds YOUR content enjoyable and relatable? Let’s do a Discovery Session to see which Social Media Advisor programs best fit your needs.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

#RelationshipsMatter – What is a Micro-Influencer?

If you follow social media, then you are no doubt familiar with the role that social media influencers play. The short description is that social media influencers are people who affect the decisions of others to purchase certain products. Social media influencers have become so powerful that many are now celebrities and have millions of followers. There is another class of influencers that you should know about, and those are micro-influencers.

It’s a common misconception that to be a social media influencer; you have to have millions of followers. Of course, that doesn’t hurt, but there is a group of influencers who, like their more famous counterparts, are important: Micro-Influencers. These people have far fewer followers and aren’t celebrities. Instead, they are usually everyday people who hold influence in a niche. They may not have many followers, but the followers they do have are very engaged, and they trust the person to give them good advice on products and services.

For a small business, the big social media influencers may be out of reach, but it is possible to run a campaign using a micro-influencer who is active in your market. It will cost you some money, but it is possible.

Like all social media campaigns, you’ll need to develop a plan for how to use your micro-influencer. Map out what your goals and objectives are and the resources (money and time) you want to dedicate to the campaign, as well as how you will measure success. The big challenge will be finding the right influencers.

Finding a Micro-Influencer

  • Check your community: The perfect person may already be following you. Take a look at the people in your online community. Check their profiles to see how active they are and how many followers they have.
  • Do some Internet research: Look within the platforms you want to use by searching on relevant keywords.
  • Research your candidates: Once you have identified possible influencers, determine if they represent the image you want to portray, if they have sufficient engagement, and if they have worked with companies before.
  • Reach out: Email and direct message work best since they are private, but if worse comes to worst, you can use comments on their pages.

Locating and communicating with micro-influencers can be time-consuming and resource intensive. One good way to make your job easier is to turn to a professional. The Social Media Advisor is a great place to start. Their Social Media Analysis can help you ensure that when you undertake your influencer campaign, you target the right influencers and the right market. They can also make sure that your pages are optimized and your content is on target.

Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.

Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.

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