Let’s begin with defining what influencer marketing is. According to Sprout Social, influencer marketing is, “a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers–individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche.”

I began to hear about brands using influencer marketing around 2015. I was an Ad Sales Coordinator working alongside two directors - one in traditional talent and one in influencer marketing to manage influencer campaigns from end-to-end. Another part of my job was to connect with prospective brands around the time they had been finalizing their budget for the year with hopes that they would choose to work with one of our clients. Now, more traditional brands actually have a specific ‘set aside’ budget for influencer marketing because it has proven to be effective with introducing new products and getting real feedback on them from a targeted audience. Influencers have built up trust with their followers and can reach people in ways that traditional marketers could not.

Some influencers have turned their social media pages into real marketing opportunities leveraging their originality and creativity in a space like beauty, travel, or sports. Take a look at a few brand partnerships below.

Influencers aren’t just people, they can be companies too. For example, take a look at Mielle Organics Instagram page and see how they leverage working with other influencers to promote their products.

Now let’s get into how influencer marketing works.

Let’s use Brittany Holmes as an example. She’s a beauty influencer whose primary audience is on Youtube. She does hairstyle tutorials, storytimes, and product reviews at her leisure. She’s noticing her followers growing week over week wants to make her hobby into a career.

1. Reach out to companies for potential collaborations.

Since she naturally does product reviews, this may be the first route. But how? The first thing she can do on her end is to have a media kit ready and available for those who may request one for consideration. We offer high-quality media kits starting at $55.

According to The Shelf, an influencer media kit is “a digital portfolio that tells brands what they need to know about you.” There are a few things that we include in yours:

• Name

• Location

• ‘About You’ section

• Social Network and reach

• Past campaigns that were successful

• A creative and unique design

If you don’t have any past campaigns, we may include a few posts that were successful on your channel in terms of reach and engagement.

Once you have your media kit completed, you can move on to outreach and be strategic on getting recognized. Make a list of potential companies that you would like to work with, then check their social media channels to see if they have deployed any campaigns lately. Another thing you can do is check out the hashtags they follow on Instagram and include that hashtag in your photos. When they check that hashtag, yours may pop up and they may share your content or reach out to do something specific.

2. Join an agency that specializes in helping you get connected

Working with an agency will save you time. Time that could use to work on making your content spectacular and worthy of what you would like to charge for it. All influencer agencies are not created equal. Most agencies have specialties - youtube, next-gen, beauty, micro, etc. so you may want to do some research before you reach out. I mentioned micro before and that refers to the size of your following. Check out the infographic from MediaKix below:

Lastly, you should know is that a lot of companies are already using influencer marketing as a channel. The ROI for campaigns is comparable to or better than other channels. A lot of companies will offer a unique discount code for your followers, a brand ambassador code for you to purchase products, or even send you the products for free to feature in your content. Don’t let this distract you from getting paid for your content, though. You are doing the work, and what you do is valuable. If you need to reach out to agencies to see how much you should be charging for content then do so.

Whichever way you decide to start this journey into influencer marketing, I am content knowing that you have a general understanding of how it works. If this article has helped you and you know another influencer it may help as well, share it with them. If you are looking to do the work yourself, why not start off the right way and grab a high-quality media kit customized for your brand. Take care!