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8 Lessons from Facebook Influencers

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Facebook is a powerful social media and influencer marketing platform. It remains an essential venue for advertisers and marketers because of its sheer volume of users, especially the active ones. Brands are after famous people on the site. No, brands aren’t after celebrities anymore. They are after average consumers who just know how to build huge networks and keep huge audiences.

We’ve talked to so many Facebook influencers not only to understand what they think makes an influencer but also to recognize social media behaviors that help you succeed.

  1. Tell a relevant story.

It doesn’t matter whether you write a post or a blog or you record a video, storytelling hits home. Nothing makes you more relatable to consumers than everyday stories of struggles, successes, and even failures. But the more important aspect of personal stories is their relevance to your brand. After all, you can’t just tell a story for the sake of telling one. In addition, you can’t ramble on for an hour, telling everyone how you fixed your broken tap after every plumber in town decided to hang up on you. Just interesting stories of little challenges conquered may cut it.

  1. Create engaging posts.

You think it’s enough to write clever or witty posts? You think you can design a fancy infographic and expect people to come and write feedback? Think again. Every time you decide to update your Facebook page, ask yourself this question: Will this engage my followers? Then your next concern is how to make your posts engaging.

Influencer marketing agencies in Japan or the United States have identified the chief reason why influencers are able to engage their followers. Because influencers are not celebrities, something else is working, and it’s not the messenger. It’s the message. Influencers know their niche and will talk only about stuff in their niche, because that’s what their followers expect them to talk about. Moreover, they know what their audience are interested in and what they’re not.

Keep in mind that engagement is a social media marketing currency. The more engagement your page has, the more likely you’re converting people.

  1. Connect on a personal level.

The more personal you are, the closer you get to your audience. One of the reasons people don’t like, comment on, and share a certain post is because they feel distant and disconnected to it. You can explain how to bake a cake. But if your video is emotionally flat with you reading the procedure on the screen, instead of actually talking to your audience as if you’re actually just baking in front of them, you probably won’t generate a lot of engagement.

  1. Facebook marketing is a process.

You won’t become a successful businessman overnight on Facebook. Pardon the exaggeration. However, over the years of working with brands and social influencers, we’ve determined one of the culprits of internet marketing failure: impatience. It makes people give up before they start seeing results.

So you think you can see huge returns in a week or a month, writing religiously to your steadily growing audience. The truth is, it takes a while. It takes a while to build your following size organically. It takes a while for people to trust you. It takes a while for conversion to take place. In fact, time is a misleading factor whether you’re doing Facebook marketing or influencer marketing on Instagram. It’s never an overnight affair.

  1. Ask questions.

Questions are the simple tricks that do wonders. If you want to know what your followers are thinking, all you need to do is ask. If you want answers, ask questions. If you want to find out what they think about your latest product, ask.

You see, if you’re not getting enough engagement on your pages, perhaps you should ask questions. You will be surprised to find out the sheer power of questions. The right questions will yield surprising and eye-opening answers that may just guide you in the right direction.

Influencers keep asking relevant questions. These questions are often about their audience because people are more likely to respond when they feel they are involved or when they know their opinion matters. The power in questions lies in the emotional effect they have in audiences. Asking your followers signify they matter to you.

  1. Create short videos.

People view more than 1 billion Facebook videos every day! That figure alone is enough to make brands and influencers upload videos on a regular basis. You probably should consider adding videos to your content arsenal after learning that the average Facebook user watches more videos now than they did the previous years.

The organic reach of videos outdoes that of image and text content. You can see this for yourself. Compare the engagement of videos with the engagement of images and text posts.

Most influencers aren’t even sharing professionally recorded and edited videos. Most videos on Facebook now are taken using smartphones or non-professional devices. In fact, a lot of videos that go viral are clips recorded using smartphones, the convenient everyday companion of everyone.

One thing you can learn from influencers is their videos are short and simple. People have shorter attention spans. Long videos easily bore anyone. Speak to the average consumer, who has no time to make analysis and inferences. So make things as easy for them as possible.

  1. Promote your posts.

At some point, you will have to admit that organic reach and engagement will get you as far as far as 15% of your follower count, if you’re even lucky. Most see a less impressive figure. Because of the sheer volume of content that your followers have to rummage through their cluttered news feeds every day, only a small fraction of your followers will get to see your posts.

One way of getting around this common issue is by promoting your content. Advertisers and influencers are doing this for different reasons, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be doing it. Imagine getting at least 10 times more reach.

One of our tips for influencer marketing is channeling your money to occasionally promote influencer campaigns. It works for your brand. It works for the influencer’s reach.

  1. Have a positive mindset.

Being optimistic is something no one can teach you. It’s a trait you have to cultivate gradually. Many people who become successful started from scratch. People fail when they make excuses, instead of heading straight to the battle to either win or learn.

When we started putting up an influencer marketing agency, we didn’t know if we could have clients. Getting brands to trust us was a challenge we couldn’t have taken if we were fainthearted.