So You’ve Found Your Influencers, Now What?

Looking for the right influencers is tough. Keeping them is harder. And making them work for you is a serious challenge. Get these things right, and your influencer marketing strategy will definitely fly. Screw things up, and you’ll be wasting your efforts.

Encourage them to talk about your brand

Happy customers can become your influencers. When you find them, you find gold. That’s what we’re after. Finding these people can sometimes be like finding a needle in a haystack. But it doesn’t have to be like that. We at expaus are active in finding the right influencers for your brand. There are different ways to do that, and sometimes you need to sacrifice. For instance, giving away free products to potential influencers. Then ask them to blog about you or write a post about you or feature you on their Instagram photo or video.

Sometimes to effect action, you just really have to ask. Some potential influencers are willing to give you a plug for free if you ask them politely. Some may need more than just a polite request, but we’ll get to that in a short while. In other words, consider talking to them about what you want.

Build a relationship with your influencers

It’s not enough that you find them and ask them just one time to talk about your product. You have to find ways to keep them, and the surest way to do that is to build a relationship with them. We regard people positively when they engage in meaningful conversations with us. So talk to them. Have a chat. Give them a call. Know what their quirks. Find common experiences you can talk about. That’s how you build friendship, and friendship is a strong relationship, stronger than business associations. Your influencers who become deeply connected with you will talk about you like they talk about their dear friends. This is the kind of “talk” that is effective from a marketing perspective.

Talk about them on your channels

Now there’s a bit of a dark secret about influencers. When you look at them through the lens of psychology, people with huge following on social media have narcissistic tendencies. It means they crave for attention. They like being talked about as much as they like to flatter people who they seek the approval of. You can use this bit of knowledge to your favor. And it’s easy. Feature them. Praise them. Give them a plug on your own channel. And guess what, they’ll freely talk about you on their own channels or pages after that overwhelming sense of entitlement they got after being featured by you.

Give them freebies, discounts, or commissions.

There are different ways to compensate your influencers without you making them feel like you’re hiring them. Give them goodies in return for using their influence in your brand’s favor. You can actually just pay them, but we advise that you proceed with care, because then their willingness to give you a plug may depend on whether you compensate them this way or not. The most important compensation — and you have to keep this in mind — is attention. Make them feel that what they’re doing for you matters to you.