Influencer marketing is the most trending now. It paved the way to millions around the world to showcase their skills and influence people to make money from home. In this article, you can learn how to become an influencer marketer and 6 ways to make money from influencer marketing.
What is Influencer Marketing?
In simple words, as the name tells influencer marketing is to influence someone to become aware of something or take an action.
Speaking about the awareness, it’s letting the world know about the brand or a product.
Similarly, action means making people to subscribe to a service or purchase the product or building brand awareness.
Who is an Influencer?
The person or a company who is popular or considered an authority in the niche/ a field capable of influencing a group of people.
For example: Cristiano Ronaldo, a soccer athlete, is the biggest influencer in the world. He can influence millions of fans and followers around the world with his smallest moves.
He earns around $2.3 million for publishing an Instagram post.
So, now you know who is an influencer. Let us learn how the influencers make money in the latter part of this article.
The Misconception of Potential Influencer.
Most people think that people on social media with more followers are influencers.
This is a misconception.
A person with 10000 followers can be called a potential influencer, while the one with 100000 cannot be called so. Why?
The influencers should have the ability to influence their followers. I’ve seen people with very few followers were able to influence them to purchase the sponsored products or help promote brands while the so-called influencers with millions of followers can’t sell.
Even if the real influencers have a small follower base, they are pro in the niche and their content is professional. While the social media users who gained followers posting time pass content can’t be a pro.
So, plan to be a potential influencer and don’t fade among average content creators.
Social Media Influencer Types:
Now you know what is influencer marketing, and who are true influencers. Based on the number of followers, the social media influencers are classified into 5 types.
Nano Influencers: 5,000 – 10,000 followers
Micro Influencers:Â 10,000 – 50,000 followers
Mid-tier Influencers:Â 50,000 – 100,000 followers
Macro Influencers:Â 100,000 – 1,000,000 followers
Mega Influencers:Â 1,000,000+ followers
Everyone starts with ‘0’ followers and only a few reaches the heights of mega influencer.
How to become a Potential Influencer
Here are the two most important steps to become a potential influencer.
1. Choose a Niche:
To start, you need to pick a niche. You can choose multiplet topics but don’t make it too broad.
Analyse your interest and strength; make sure you have some level of expertise in that area to prevent yourself becoming a joke.
I’ve seen people posting videos on how to prepare whey protein at home using lentils while the whey protein itself is prepared using Milk extract. So, be careful about what you say.
Still, the world wide web is open to anyone who starts with no idea. You can learn and talk about things you didn’t know.
You must be able to create content at a regular interval. Don’t choose something where you’ll run out of content.
Here are some examples of influencers:
- Fitness influencers who post content about workouts and diet.
- People who love to cook share new recipes and cooking tips.
- Entertain followers by dancing, singing, organising shows.
- Travel bloggers who share travel experience.
- Foodies who love to explore restaurants, street food around the world.
- Niche content by professionals like doctors, engineers, etc.
Prepare a realistic roadmap.
2. Choose the Platform:
When people think influencer, the only thing comes to their mind is Instagram. But Instagram is not the only influencer platform. Let’s see various influencer platforms and the benefits of the platforms.
i. Instagram
Instagram has become the synonym of influencer and the home to influencer marketing.
When Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter was ruling the social media world back in 2010, Instagram emerged as a unique social media platform to share photos and videos with the followers.
Unlike Facebook, which was the medium for connecting with close circle, Instagram has been designed to express ourselves to the entire world.
Instagram influencers showcase themselves and create content to attract followers. Up on reaching certain numbers, they start to promote brands, products, other influencers to make money.
With the combination of hard work and smart work, anyone can accomplish the greatness using this platform.
ii. YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine next to its parent company, Google. It’s a video platform where anyone can post videos and small video called YouTube shorts.
People who can create engaging video content can make user of this platform to make money.
Unlike other social media platforms, where we need to become an influencer to make money, YouTube remains the best platform for the beginners to make money using their partner program.
Up on growing the number of subscribers, the YouTuber will get a chance to collaborate with brands to make more money.
While social media doesn’t have strict rules for the users, YouTubers must ensure that their content should comply with YouTube community guidelines. Also, they are very strict about copyright.
iii. TikTok:
TikTok is the modern, most trending social media started the trend of short videos.
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook followed their model to come up with shorts and reels.
TikTok is a best platform for the entertainment content.
If you’re planning to post dance, comedy, meme, fitness, food, travel, etc. you should try TikTok.
iv. Facebook
Facebook is the largest social media in the world used by billions of users.
It is the platform loved by social media marketers since it has a high conversion rate compared to any other advertising platforms been said advertising conversion rate is not relevant to influencer marketing.
It’s a combination of YouTube and Instagram. Facebook gives us the ability to post text content, photos, videos, and more, unlike Instagram, which only allows visual content. This makes Facebook more versatile.
Facebook influencers have to create a separate Facebook page to publish content and get followers.
Facebook will suit people who create long form useful content since it has a separate video section which is the most watched compared to posts.
Instagram and YouTube influencers can create a Facebook page and be active on all the platforms to cover a more follower base.
Learn more about how to make money on Facebook.
v. Blog
Do you hate creating videos, showing your face on the internet? Blogging is for you!
“Writing blogs is old school” boasts the new age influencer. But I feel blogs remain a stable influencer platform for years.
Being a blogger, I know how hard it is to become an influencer. This is not like social media, where their algorithms help us reach heights over night.
Blogging is traditional, which requires hard work creating content, doing SEO to rank on search engines, and strong marketing knowledge to promote content via content marketing, email marketing, etc.
Once we establish our blog with a good position on SERP following, it requires minimum maintenance and content refresh to stay on the top of Google. This enables us to make money continuously, putting in fewer efforts.
While social media has limited money making options, bloggers have a lot of potential to make money. This includes direct advertising, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, CPC advertising, CPM advertising, and more.
If you love writing, or want to earn money writing, start a blog today.
vi. Twitter
Twitter is a unique social media. It has its own users who love to post short text tweets and video posts.
Twitter remains the important social media platform for most businesses. They make important announcements on twitter more than any other social media.
Twitter influencers make money on Twitter with sponsored posts, video monetization, super follows, tips, etc.
3. Setup Your Profile
Setting up your profile is the single most important thing for influencer marketing.
Your profile picture speaks what’s inside. So, choose the display picture and cover picture wisely.
Add an engaging bio to your profile.
4. Develop Content Strategy Based on your Audience:
It’s all about the content you post.
Your content should create a deep connection between you and your audience. Only then you can influence them to connect with the brands.
While anyone can keep on posting the content, the quality will be the key to unlock the potential.
Be unique, research more, take time to develop a content strategy.
Post content on regular interval to reach the targeted audience. Consistent in posting and user engagement are the signals for social media to promote your content across more audience.
5. Engage with your Audience:
Interact with your audience’s comments, give heart to featured comments, reply to their messages.
This help you create a personal relationship with them and influence them with ease.
Also, their feedback will be helpful to improve your content.
6. Build Connection with Similar Influencers:
To grow your audience base, you can get help from other content creators.
Enjoy the mutual benefits by promoting each other.
You can start building connections by engaging in the influencers’ content. Do not comment just for the sake of doing it.
This will not happen in one day. It will take months to establish a good relationship with the people.
Also, this will help you learn new stuffs from similar content creators.
Here is an example of an influencer engaging in another influencer’s content.
Greg Doucette, an IFBB pro, collaborates with hundreds of influencers to promote his YouTube channel and his HTLT supplement brand.
By this way, his subscriber count has grown a lot, so does his business.
7. Stay Consistent, Make use of the Trends:
As I said earlier, you must post content regularly in order to make both the audience and the algorithm happy.
While you will have plans, don’t miss the chance of making use of trends on the internet.
Make use of Google Trends and social media to keep up to date on current trends and post content based on that.
By posting regular content and trends in your industry, you can attract more followers and keep them engaged.
How to Earn Money as an Influencer:
Apart from brand collaborations, there are several ways to earn money as an influencer.
Diversifying the income stream as an influencer is very important to sustain competition. Let us look at the ways to earn money as an influencer with examples.
1. Paid Partnership:
The paid partnership is the most common influencer monetization method.
Mostly high potential Macro and Mega influencers make a good deal out of paid partnerships.
Celebrities and athletes are the one who collaborate with brands to make the most out of paid partnerships. They have insane popularity and influence over their followers.
Unless you’re one of these, you must work very hard to establish yourself and your brand to attract the advertisers for paid partnerships.
Brands pay millions of dollars for a post based on the number of followers and influencer’s potential.
2. Paid Promotions:
Promotion and paid partnerships are pretty similar.
While paid partnerships mostly promote the brand itself, promotions are done to promote products and services of third-party brands.
The influencer will publish a post about the products and services or promote them inside the content. This can be video content with YouTube, Instagram, TitTok, Facebook or blog posts, articles in the case of bloggers.
Here is a best example of paid promotion where the YouTuber promotes a service.
To attract brands to promote products, one doesn’t have to be a celebrity. High-quality content with a decent number of followers is the formula.
Brands never fail to notice the user engagement signals like comments and likes to measure the quality of the content.
3. Selling Own Products:
A lot of influencers sell their own product besides collaborating with the brands.
Usually, selling online requires investment, such as spending on digital marketing agencies to run SEO, PPC, SMM campaigns, or influencer marketing.
But if the product owner itself is an influencer, they can promote the product themselves.
However, this requires a deep relationship with the followers to trust the product.
An example of this will be a brand writing a blog post about the pain points of the customers and promote their product in the article and a social media influencer creating relevant content and promotes his product alongside.
4. Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing is for the influencers of all the levels, no matter if its micro influencer or mega influencer.
If you’re a beginner, then affiliate marketing is the place to start.
Affiliate marketing is helping advertisers to sell their products or subscribe to their service. For every sale or a lead generated, the affiliate marketer will be paid with percentage commission, which can range anywhere between 1% to 50% depending on the product.
Affiliate marketers will be given a unique link or code. When someone clicks the link or uses code before making a purchase, they will count it as a valid sale.
It’s a vast topic. If you’re interested in getting started here is the affiliate marketing guide for the beginners.
5. Online Advertising:
This is purely for the YouTubers and the bloggers.
YouTubers can sign up for the YouTube partner program and make 55% revenue generated from the skipable and non skipable ads. This is as simple as turning on a switch if they meet the basic requirement.
On the other hand, the bloggers can choose to monetize their content by a becoming publisher of ad networks such as Google Adsense or Microsoft Media.net.
6. Sponsored Tweets:
Exclusive for the twitter influencers.
As the name suggests, Twitter users with a huge follower base will be paid for posting sponsored tweets.
Twitter influencers can make use of third party services like sponsored tweets to attract sponsors.
Final Words on Becoming an Influencer to Make Money:
Hope now you got an idea of what is influencer marketing, types of influencers, how to become an influencer and make money out of it.
Experts predicted that influencer marketing will be an enormous market in the future.
With proper planning, hard work and smart work, you can make thousands if not millions and enjoy the financial freedom of working from home without depending on full time jobs.
