In this post we’ll cover strategies for becoming an influencer as well as how to get started as an influencer on social media networks like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. In future posts we’ll dive deeper into how you can use your social media following to build a business and implement influencer marketing strategies.

First off – what is an Influencer?

The term influencer comes from the world of advertising and marketing, but it’s really just a fancy word for someone who has influence over others. That doesn’t mean you have to be famous or well-known; it just means that through your actions and what you say, people are likely to trust your opinions enough that they’re more likely to be interested in your recommendations. Whether or not someone purchases a product an influencer posts about is not the responsibility of the influencer, and influencers should not be mistaken as sales people by brands, but that’s another topic for another post. When working with brands for pay, staying authentic to your established brand is more important than driving sales. Your content should drive sales if people end up being interested in the product, and you don’t control anyone so that is totally out of your lane and control. Remember that with any collaborations you agree to!

Step 1 –  Determine the type of content you want to share

Do you prefer graphics, videos, or pictures? Short captions or long form blog posts, or spoken content? Do you want to talk about fashion, make up, fitness, technology or food? All of these things can come into play. Even though you need to be a little bit selective with your content as it could limit your audience, don’t let it stop you from sharing everything you’re interested in as long as you stay to course with the core content pillars. It’s best to start with a clear vision of what content you want to share and be centered around it mostly and especially in the beginning to ensure you’re reaching your target audience and the algorithms know what to do with your content – as in who to push it out to! You don’t have to stick 100% to this vision throughout your influencer career, but this is an excellent place for the first step. Sharing more behind the scenes, day in the life, etc types of content is essential to build your interpersonal relations with followers but they still will want to see what they signed up for, aka your niche content.

Step 2 –  Plan to get creative with your content

Creativity is the name of the game, so please don’t be afraid of making mistakes. You can’t know what will work unless you try, and often some of the most random and quick reels or content ends up taking off for people! If you’re already an influencer with a following, keep in mind that most people who chose to follow you are going to love your content no matter what because they already like you – and if they don’t, we talk about ways to embrace and deal with haters here! If you’re just starting out, it’s absolutely crucial that you get creative with your content while staying in your niche as much as possible. Plain text posts are good to mix in but overall, your content should grab attention and engage the audience to take action in some way. Whether commenting, liking, tagging, sharing etc, this will be your golden ticket to growth! In addition, you can try leaving some comments on other people’s photos, or posting original images that are not graphic but show your interests (such as pictures of foods you like or styles of clothes that look great on you) to your stories and tagging the creator. Just make sure those posts don’t become more frequent compared to the original content you produce.

Step 3. – Start posting to a specific target audience

Repeat after me: “my content is not for me, it’s for my target audience.” Ok good. If you go into this game knowing your job is to grab the attention and help or entertain a specific target audience, you’ve already won the first part. If you speak to everyone you’ll speak to no-one and the account will likely grow stagnant and posts will fail to convert into new followers who care about what you are sharing. So, now that you have your plan for the types of content you want to create, the second step is to speak to an “avatar” you create who is a representation of your target audience. Staying consistent with this as your goal, along with a combination of luck and hard work, and you’ll end up reaching the right people from where they’re active. Think about what kind of content you’re interested in sharing and then select a target audience based on where they hang out (or might be active on social media). For example, if you’re planning on sharing in depth gardening tutorials over 15 minutes long, you may want to start on Youtube as your base platform and share smaller segments on other platforms.

To get started, those steps are basically what you need. Once you’re rolling with this, stay to course to ensure you’re consistent enough to grow! Along the way, always make sure all of your content is speaking to and helping your avatar. Prior to posting, ask yourself, “what would (your avatar’s name) think of this post?” and ensure that it would be ideal for them.  Analyze the popularity of your content in social media feeds, and always be ready to pivot and adjust to ride the wave of areas that do well. This is the ongoing step that shows you how much people actually like your content. You don’t have to share everything, but you need to make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. Your post should be up on at least one of your social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram and/or YouTube) and should include hashtags that are in high demand on each one. If you’re not sure how well something will do, start with a couple posts in a couple of high-volume hashtags, but don’t stress too much about them. It’s been proven that accounts can do very well with or without them. Remember that different people see your posts on different social media platforms, so it’s best to share the same thing to all three. If you’re not sure how well something will do at first, start with a few posts on each and adjust more focus and attention as you see where the majority of traffic is