Tag: influencer

Types of Influencers

Posted on by Sandra Adodo

The influencer marketing industry seems to be taking giant strides into becoming one of the most frequently used industries every year. With this increase and the significant impact influencer marketing has had on the rise in profit made by different organisations; other brands are considering investing in the market.

While that seems like a good idea, you must note all the different types of influencers and how they best suit your business. Read on to see how to begin your search on the right influencer.

Categories of influencers and when to use them

 

There are four distinct categories of influencers available in the influencing industry.

  • The Nano influencers

These are the smallest category of influencers with followers between 1k and 5k. This type of influencer is excellent for businesses trying to target a specific audience that the nano influencer is managing. This influencer will do well with a particular product because of the credibility they have built with their audience and the consistency in representing a type of product. For small businesses with a small budget or those willing to pay with their products, partnering with a nano influencer will be cost-effective and be a reasonable positioning.

 

  • The Micro-influencers

These types of influencers are the ones with about 5k to 50k followers who are also committed to the content produced. Like the nano influencers, the micro-influencers also have a high engagement rate and are committed to communicating to their followers better. If the budget for influencing is a little above that for nano-influencing, the best option is to go for the micro-influencer category. If your company’s audience is active on social media, sourcing micro-influencers from the platform where they engage more will be a great move.

 

  • The Macro influencers

If you want to reach a larger audience of 50K to 500K followers, macro influencers will help your brand. These influencers have a strong understanding of influencing and would produce excellent content to promote top brands. All it takes for your brand to gain traction through these influencers are a few posts, and the message will be spread. However, because of the high level of engagement produced by the macro influencer, the budget required will be higher than for the micro or nano influencers.

 

  • The Mega influencers

This type of influencer reaches beyond your local community. They have a fan base of more than 500K followers and would get several reposts from loyal followers. Most influencers in this category are known as celebrities and usually have verified social media pages that show they are major influencers. Before partnering with mega influencers, you must sign legal documents as they are also brands. Note that you must exercise patience when working with such brands, as they are usually on different projects simultaneously. But they are worth the budget, especially if you want to reach a wider targeted audience at once. 

 

How to source for the different categories of influencers

 

The next big question is how to get the right influencer for your business. 

Depending on the budget, you can get nano-influencer by scrolling through the different influencers on social media or you can choose an employee who is ready to target your brand’s audience and has the range specified for nano-influencers.

For micro-influencers, the fastest way to reach them is through Instagram and the number of times they use your brand’s hashtags. If they fall into the category of micro-influencing and they already have an interest in your brand, then you can partner with them.

You will find macro influencers on Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram and any other platform used by content creators. By using platform tools, you can locate them quickly but check if they align with your brand’s goals before partnering.

Mega influencers are easily found as they occupy the social media space largely. If you have the budget and they are the right fit for your brand, you can get them on board effortlessly.

Bookings Africa has a bank of influencers that you can partner with for any influencing gig be it nano, micro, mega and macro influencers. Search, Compare and Book verified  influencers suitable for your business.

Grow Your Business Using Influencers

Posted on by Ugochi Obilonu

Marketing as we know it has evolved over the years. Many businesses have emerged across several industries and the competition is steep and fierce. 

To be top of mind to your target audience, your marketing strategies must be direct, frequent, and effective. The ‘top dogs’ in business are pulling all the stops to ensure that they retain existing customers and attract new customers. Hence, these businesses have also incorporated influencer marketing into their marketing alongside other marketing.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Before we address what influencer marketing is, it is best to define who an influencer is. 

An influencer is any person who has a large following online, is recognized or known for their creative content, and is able to affect the purchasing power of the community they have built for themselves. Now, it is important to note that not all celebrities are influencers, and certainly, not all influencers are celebrities but influencers can work their way up to becoming celebrities. 

Influencers are online sensations popular for their ability to create engaging content that keep audiences glued to their pages. Influencers care about their reputation & online community, and will most likely only endorse or collaborate with brands they trust.

Influencer marketing is a collaboration between a brand and an influencer to promote a product(s) or service. The influencer creates creative content that their audience can relate to, and will influence them to either purchase the specific product or use the service.

The whole point of influencer marketing is for brands to reach existing or new markets in a more personalized way than digital ads; using the services of influential people in the industry they want to target. Influencers will usually have a niche. These niches include lifestyle, fashion, education, etc.

 

Reasons for Influencer Marketing

There are several reasons why a brand should engage in influencer marketing. The top reasons will include to:

  1. Create brand awareness 
  2. Market a new or existing product
  3. Illustrate the use and importance of a product or service
  4. Amplify the effectiveness of a product or service

 

Is Influencer Marketing Effective?

In the end, business owners just want to know if the risk is worth taking. 

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, influencer marketing was worth $13.8 billion in 2021, and businesses are making about $5.78 ROI for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. That sounds unbelievable, right?

 

But there has been a 465% increase in searches for the phrase “influencer marketing” on Google alone since 2016. 90% of survey respondents believe influencer marketing to be an effective form of marketing. 67% of brands use Instagram for influencer marketing. 1360 Influencer marketing-focused platforms and agencies entered the market in the last 5 years alone and every other day, someone is trying to start a career as an influencer.

 

 

How to Grow Your Business with Influencer Marketing

With all the information in this blog post, you are probably wondering how you can start using influencer marketing to grow your business and we’ll share that in a bit. 

The first step to a successful influencer marketing campaign is understanding which influencer is suitable for your marketing campaign. Without this, the campaign might be ineffective and capital investment wasted. 

By choosing the right influencer, we don’t just mean the person but the influencer category. The individual is also important but that is a minor challenge compared to choosing the wrong category.

After determining the suitable influencer for your campaign, launch your campaign in the following ways:

  1. Engage the influencers or use an influencer marketing agency such as Bookings Africa. 
  2. Create an influencer brief stating the deliverables of the influencers
  3. Distribute the products to the influencers
  4. Initiate posting on social media
  5. Track the results

 

Make Money as a Bookings Africa Digital Influencer

Posted on by Ugochi Obilonu

Unlike celebrities, influencers/influencing is one of the fastest-growing professions in the 21st century. If your goal is to become an influencer in 2022, you need to be armed with the resources to launch you to success.

In your quest for financial freedom, be sure to explore all options available and influencing is one of the ways to financial freedom. 

Influencer as the word implies refers to an individual who can convince a set of people to like a service, product, or person without sounding like a salesman. Influencer marketing is the newbie digital marketing method that is making a lot of waves in such a short while. 

Once an influencer has a large and loyal following, can sway people’s decision-making process, and is known as an industry leader, brands and businesses are willing to pay their rates to grow their businesses. 

Now, you might ask, “How much do influencers make?”. Influencer marketing industry grew from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $9.7 billion in 2020. In 2021, it soared to $13.8 billion and has reached $16.4 billion in 2022. This is an indication of steady growth and it will only keep growing as the world keeps growing digitally and advancing in technology. In fact, our Bookings Africa top influencer spoke about this here.

Ways to Become a Digital Influencer

Here a few ways to kickstart your journey as a social media influencer:

1. Pick a niche: In Influencer marketing, niching is a big deal. You can decide to influence in two or more related industries but brands interested in working with you must know you for a particular niche. 

For instance, you can decide to become a beauty and fashion influencer (this is one of the top influencer jobs). Your branding or social media posts can revolve around hair tutorials, make-up hacks, and fashion tips. Alongside beauty influencing, you can also add a few lifestyle posts. These two industries: beauty & fashion and lifestyle, are closely related and do not have so much disparity. 

Niching is important because it helps your visibility. It assures your potential partners and collaborators that you know your stuff and it establishes your position as an industry leader. If you are just starting as an influencer, take some time to learn about industries, then find one that matches your skills and gifts. If you already started without having this knowledge, it’s okay to start over or rebrand from where you are.

 

2. Start Branding: You’ve picked your niche. The next thing is to start building your brand. This will involve you creating clean, crisp content regularly and posting it on your feed. In this digital age, videos reach a wider audience so you might want to infuse lots of high-quality videos on your page. 

At the stage of branding, you should decide what your brand tone and voice would be. Be intentional about being authentic and real because if you start a brand in a certain way, then you have to maintain it. 

Tip: No one likes fake people so be yourself every time. 

 

3. Build a community: Since influencer marketing is big on loyalty and numbers, you should be focused on building a community. Your community is your tribe. You build one by responding to DMs and comments as respectfully and as often as you can. 

People like to be acknowledged. So if your content is relatable and speaks to your audience’s gain and pain points, they’ll appreciate you. Influencers are known for adding value to the lives of their communities so ensure that your posts are interactive and engaging.

Talking about engagements, most brands will only work with influencers who have a high engagement. So ensure that you can notice the active contributors in your community. A fair engagement rate for an influencer is between 6-7%. Any percentage above 10 is considered to be viral. Use influencer engagement tools to calculate your rates frequently.

 

4. Networking: The world is a global village and you never know who views your content. As much as you can, support the craft of other influencers, collaborate, and partner with other influencers. 

Attend events relevant to your niche and network. Talk about what you do as often as possible and just enjoy being you.

 

5. Sign up: If you are looking to take your influencer work seriously, then you have to sign up on the Bookings Africa Platform as an influencer. 

Ensure that you set up your profile properly and set comparative prices. This will help your visibility and help you make more money.

Becoming a Bookings Africa influencer is a great way to grow in your career but you need to have something going for you. You can become a Digital Influencer on Bookings Africa by registering on the website or filling out this form.