It’s no secret that content marketing is a long-term strategy, and influencer marketing ROIs are best measured over time as well. Individually, they’re two sides of the same coin.
When you strategically blend both into one comprehensive strategy, they’re perfectly aligned to work in harmony. Together, they create an immersive experience for your target audience.
Marketing data suggests that content marketing revenue has already reached nearly 66 billion dollars this year and is expected to double revenues by 2026. Influencer marketing is also projected to increase in 2022 by more than 10% over 2020 numbers in companies larger than 100 employees.
With these top two strategies on the rise, it’s time to leverage the power of both for your 2022 marketing strategies. Here’s how to augment your influencer strategy with your content marketing.
Keep Your Goal In Focus
What do you need to achieve with your campaign? There should be one goal for both prongs of your strategy that will give clarity of purpose for content and engagement.
Do you need to grow your brand awareness and visibility? Are you trying to start a conversation around your products and increase engagement?
Does your brand need to build trust with your target audience? Or are you focused on driving sales and conversions?
Whatever your goal is, use it to inform every other element of your content and influencer strategies to easily measure success metrics.
Build A Community of Niched Influencers
Niched influencers work best for campaigns that are intended to drive engagement, credibility, and conversions. These content creators are considered experts or authorities in their niche and have established strong trust with their audience.
If you’re working with an influencer marketing agency, this process is streamlined and done for you with a curated selection of influencers to work with. There are also influencer platforms you can leverage, such as Influence.co, Social Blade, and Zoho Social, which will populate potential influencer matches based on your needs.
Depending on your budget and your objectives, you can work with only one or you may need to recruit several in order to reach your goals.
Determine The Best Content Type
Content type largely depends on the chosen platform, but video content is definitely the top dawg of content these days. With Instagram Reels and TikTok owning the social media space, you should plan to leverage short-form video content but don’t dismiss other formats out of hand.
For example, on Instagram, you have Feed posts, Carousels, Reels, and Stories, all of which have their place and offer different kinds of engagement possibilities. Feed posts are great for longer written content and are easily saved or shared.
Reels are excellent for growing overall reach and remixes, carousels offer a visual format for long-form content, and stories are perfect for raw and interactive sharing.
What does your target audience like best? Choose the top performers and stick to them.
Collaborate For The Long Haul
Your influencer is a content expert. That’s why their audience follows them, and it’s why they have a strong sense of trust in their community.
Give them a seat at the table when strategizing your content marketing. They will be able to give valuable target market insights and details on hot trends. An influencer can inject a healthy dose of creative innovation into your strategy.
1. Leverage User-Generated Content
Once your influencers start creating content around your brand, this is your golden opportunity to leverage those pieces into other channels. You now have the opportunity to show your own followers that you’re not the only one excited about your products and services.
Share this content across all of your primary social media channels and keep your campaign at the top of your target audience’s feed and mind.
2. Create New Product Lines Together
This happens often on social media and is a strong tactic for both increasing brand credibility as well as driving sales. An influencer promotes a brand over time and eventually becomes a figurehead for that company.
Collaborations on new lines of cookware, makeup, and skin care abound. There are also book deals, fitness gear, clothing, and outdoor equipment just to name a few you can easily find on any social media platform.
3. Come Together To Support A Cause
What causes and missions align with your brand? Is there a popular and trusted non-profit that operates in your niche? Poll as many followers as possible and get their take on who they want to support.
Connect with your influencers on this cause and raise awareness as well as support through merchandise or matching donations. This is a powerful way to put a purpose behind a purchase and inspire deeper customer loyalty.
Influencer Marketing Ideas that Dovetail with Content Marketing
Your community of influencers can help you achieve every level of marketing goals, from awareness to conversion. In turn, their efforts create new content that you can leverage across other channels, including email and print media.
Here are a few ideas to get the ball rolling:
1. Build Hype
If your product is still pre-release or going through a design overhaul, build hype around it by giving influencers exclusive access to product sneak peeks.
2. Generate FOMO
Offer exclusive discount codes or limited edition product lines that are specific to one or more influencers and stimulate a little bit of FOMO.
3. Gain Awareness and Inspire Credibility
Collaborate on product giveaways with multiple influencers. Offer a new product early or a limited edition item to generate buzz and brand awareness.
4. Start A Conversation and Increase Engagement
With the help of your influencer, develop several unique hashtags. Start a social media conversation using these unique hashtags and increase engagement.
Create a trend with new video transitions, fun filters, or audio files. Get people excited to interact with your brand by being trendy.
5. Offer Bonus Items
If your goal is to drive sales, offer order bumps, and free bonus add-ons with influencer-specific codes.
Augment your Influencer Strategy with your Content Strategy
If you don’t have a community of influencer relationships to augment your content strategy, yesterday was the day to get started. Enhance your comprehensive marketing plan by blending influencer and content marketing!
About the author
Chris Jacks is the Director of Growth Strategy at HireInfluence. As Director of Growth Strategy, Chris is tasked with analyzing and adapting to the every changing influencer marketing industry to ensure HireInfluence is positioned for long term success and remains at the forefront of innovation.
