TotalWeb Partners Blog

With social platform functionality advancing, and algorithms further limiting organic reach, influencer marketing has continued to become a more viable, valuable digital outreach consideration, which an expanding range of brands are now looking into.

But it’s not as simple as just reaching out to an influential user and asking them to post on behalf of your brand. You need to research the right influencers who have connection to those consumers that you want to reach, you need to establish goals and a strategy to maximize your effort, and you then need to utilize your influencer-created content for optimal results.

There’s a lot to take into account – which is where this new infographic from the team at Pan Communications comes in.

Here is an overview of some of the key considerations you need to keep in mind when mapping out an influencer marketing approach. Using these notes as a guide, you’ll be well on your way to building an effective, beneficial influencer marketing program.

Read more: 5 Key Components of a Successful Influencer Marketing Strategy [Infographic]

Over the years, I have worked with companies who block access to all social media platforms within their network.

This move was probably intended to keep employees focused on their work.

However, the marketing, HR, and sales teams really needed access to these networks!

No, I’m not talking about encouraging everyone to go waste their days on YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. I’m also not counting the necessary marketing tasks of running advertising and content campaigns.

I’m referring to those of us in marketing and search roles who don’t have a perceived good reason to be on social media daily – as well as those managers or decision-makers who direct the time and activities of their teams.

Social media has matured into a major digital marketing channel. It shows up in attribution models and customer journey maps in nearly all industries.

While arguments can be made about niche and old school industries, it is hard to ignore.

Using social media at work is a positive thing for marketing and SEO professionals.

We should be encouraging social media use in our companies.

When given direction and focusing on the seven reasons marketers and SEO pros should be using social media, we can leverage its power and accomplish things that wouldn’t be possible from the brand’s profile and perspective alone.

1. Company Branding
The more content employees share about their work, role in the industry, involvement in their company, and engagement in their community, the more a brand can benefit.

As long as guidance is given on how to ensure profiles are tied to the company and the content is tasteful, employees can serve as brand ambassadors on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and more.

We have all been to the stale and sterile profile of a brand that doesn’t showcase what employees are doing and isn’t connected with the people that make up that company.

If your employees are doing awesome things in their circles, make sure they are encouraged and empowered to talk about it on social media.

2. Personal Branding
Years ago, I had a client’s HR department worry that marketing’s encouragement of employees and sales team members to be on LinkedIn and engaging in their industry would make them ripe for recruitment by competitors.

This was backward thinking and thankfully, they learned to embrace the power of what their employees’ personal brands could do.

By building personal brands through sharing content, building larger networks, and engaging others, they found that individual employees were able to establish their own thought leadership and personas in the industry. This could mutually work for the employee’s career benefit as well as the company’s overall profile.

Read more: 7 Reasons Marketers & SEO Pros Should Use Social Media at Work

Q: When it comes to customer acquisition, how important is paid social media compared with other digital channels? — John L., Houston

Social media has created a beautiful opportunity for entrepreneurs: It’s never been easier to get your message in front of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. But if you want to reach all those people, it’s going to cost a lot.

It’s a simple case of supply and demand, and social media platforms are limiting the supply. Organic reach — that is, your ability to speak directly to the audience that chooses to follow and interact with your business — has dwindled to almost nothing. On Facebook, for example, organic reach touches less than 5 percent of your audience on average. Facebook simply doesn’t show your posts to most of your followers … unless you pay for the privilege. That’s one of the reasons why advertising inside social media has become increasingly expensive, as brands outbid each other in a competition for users’ attention.

Suddenly, social media isn’t such a great deal. If you’re on a budget, all of this can brutally limit your growth and acquisition opportunities.

That’s not to say you should stop using digital platforms altogether. Paid social is a hotbed of marketing insight. With just a small amount of cash, you can easily test headlines, imagery, and offers on different audiences. That’s valuable research. However, if your entire acquisition strategy depends on paid media, you could pay your way right out of business.

But there is another way! You just need to diversify. In the digital world, there are many ways to acquire customers: paid social, paid search, email acquisition, organic social, organic search (earning traffic through content), public relations, influencer marketing, and earned media. Start by identifying a few channels where you want to focus most of your efforts. (Ideally, at least some of those channels will not require the spend of ad dollars.) This way, you can test what’s working while building an omnichannel approach that will pay off down the road.

Read more: How Much Should You Spend on Social Media Marketing?

When it comes to social media marketing, there’s a lot of misinformation, and a ton of unrealistic expectations set as a result. Luckily, marketers are blessed with a massive amount of data from social media activity, so we can course correct misnomers which may lead to disappointed bosses and upset clients.

A recent study conducted by Sprout Social surveyed both marketers and consumers, in order to help identify key challenges, and offer insights on what users expect when it comes to social media marketing. After all, if your strategy isn’t meeting their needs, it will fall flat.

Here are eight key stats of note from the data, which may help inform your strategic approach.

1. “47% of social media marketers say that developing strategies which support business goals is their top challenge”

First off, I want to be direct in an observation on this point. If you’re not strategizing against what matters the most for your business, and working towards achieving that outcome, you’re not marketing. You’re just “doing the things”.

Read more: 8 Social Media Marketing Stats You Shouldn’t Ignore