Why Your 2023 Social Media Strategy Needs Influencer Marketing

Read Time: 4 minutes

In today’s times, having a strong social media presence and incorporating influencer marketing is crucial for businesses and brands across industries. If you’re running a company or managing marketing efforts, these strategies are essential for successful lead generation.

Adapting your social media marketing strategy to align with current trends can be a crucial step in staying relevant and engaging your target audience effectively. Research indicates that about one in four marketers partner with social media influencers as part of their marketing strategy now.

You should do the same. Partnering with a social media influencer can help your brand thrive by dramatically expanding your audience. The following guide explains the benefits partnering with a social media influencer can offer and how you can take full advantage of this relationship.

Understanding the Power of Influencers: What is a Social Media Influencer?

Before you can determine how to optimize your social media marketing strategy by partnering with influencers, you need a basic understanding of what influencer marketing actually is.

An influencer is essentially a social media personality who has cultivated a large following of loyal users. Influencers tend to share the types of content that their followers find valuable.

Perhaps more importantly, the most successful social media influencers seem to be able to forge personal connections with certain users. They may do so by speaking in “their language,” discussing problems or topics they can relate to, and generally understanding their needs and tastes. These types of successful social media influencers often have significant influence over their followers. If a popular social media influencer promotes a brand, their followers who trust them may be more likely to support that brand as well.

It’s easy to understand how a company could leverage this type of social media popularity to its advantage. If you identify Instagram influencers, TikTok influencers, and other such individuals whose audience overlaps with yours, partnering with them could give you the opportunity to market your brand to users whose odds of becoming paid customers are relatively strong.

Benefits of Using Influencers in Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

The advantages you might enjoy by partnering with social media influencers are numerous. Examples include:

Expanding your brand’s overall reach
Reaching new audiences that you might have overlooked
Leveraging the credibility of an influencer to increase consumer trust in your brand
Boosting engagement through influencer-generated content

If influencer marketing still seems intimidating, remember that partnering with traditional celebrities is a standard marketing practice. Influencer marketing simply allows smaller brands to experiment with this tactic.

Factors to Consider When Choosing an Influencer

A social media influencer marketing campaign will deliver the strongest results when you partner with the right influencer to represent your brand. Factors to keep in mind when searching for a social media influencer to partner with include the following:

Whether the basic demographics of an influencer’s audience mirror the demographics of your audience
Whether the values of an influencer’s brand correspond with your brand’s values
The number of followers a social media influencer has
Whether you get a sense that an influencer has a relatively “authentic” relationship with their followers

It’s also important to account for basic practical factors. For example, you must have an understanding of how much it will cost you to partner with a particular influencer in order to determine if this type of marketing campaign fits your budget. It’s also wise to ask an influencer to describe their past successes. You want to know that they have partnered with others before and helped them expand their brand reach.

Researching and Evaluating Influencers

Thoroughly research an influencer before deciding to partner with them. When doing so, you should:

Learn how to check for fake followers to confirm an influencer’s following is as large as they claim
Evaluate the overall quality of the content an influencer posts to ensure they would represent your brand in a positive manner
Communicate with an influencer and negotiate your terms

Pay attention to your “gut feeling” during that last step. For a partnership with a social media influencer to be fruitful, you should feel comfortable working with them. You might decide partnering with a certain influencer isn’t the right idea if you find them difficult to communicate with.

Building Effective Influencer Partnerships

A relationship between a brand and an influencer should be beneficial to all parties involved. Ways to optimize your partnerships with social media influencers include:

Establishing clear expectations and goals
Developing a collaboration strategy that’s mutually beneficial
Researching any applicable regulations to ensure maximum compliance

That said, you don’t want to stifle the creative freedom of an influencer. Provide them with brand guidelines to ensure they understand your brand’s identity and values, but allow them to flex their unique creative muscles when they develop content. This ensures the content they release feels genuine.

Measuring Success and Return on Investment (ROI)

You should monitor and track all marketing campaigns to ensure they’re delivering results. Influencer marketing is no different. Ways to track a social media influencer marketing partnership’s performance include:

Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) that will let you know whether a partnership is succeeding
Tracking engagement with influencer content
Tracking conversions (such as whether those who engage with a piece of content click a link to visit your site)

Constantly analyze the data you gather. Use these insights to guide your future decision-making.

The Evolving Landscape of Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing isn’t a fad. It’s simply a relatively new form of marketing that’s continuing to evolve at a fast rate.

For example, an influencer no longer needs to necessarily have a large social media following to be worthy of partnering with. It’s becoming increasingly popular for smaller brands to partner with micro-influencers. These are influencers with small followings (10,000 and 100,000 users) who may help brands target niche audiences.

Continue to research these trends and developments. By leveraging them early, you’ll give your brand a competitive edge.

Empowering Your Influencer Marketing Strategy with Powtoon

Creating strong influencer marketing content may be a collaboration between yourself and an influencer. Luckily, using the right tools can simplify the content creation process.

For example, while you may know that video marketing drives high levels of engagement, you might not have much video production experience (or a large video marketing budget).

That’s not an issue with Powtoon. Our intuitive video maker and animation maker allow even complete beginners to develop high-quality video content for social media influencer marketing campaigns. Learn more about what Powtoon could do for you by signing up today!

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Hanna Abitbul

Hanna is Powtoon's Content Marketing Strategist. She joined Powtoon as a copywriter in 2019, after graduating from university with a specialized degree in marketing and business. She continues to inspire people to create incredible video content with blog posts, videos, guides, and more. Hanna's passions include reading, singing, and caring for animals (#proudvegan). Nothing makes her happier than waking up to her two black kitties who, contrary to popular belief, are good luck!