By Kristina Adleina
Working as an influencer is not only for celebrities and famous bloggers, now anyone can hop on the influencer marketing train and I am going to give you my top 6 tips that I am using everyday on social media and as an influencer.
About 5 years ago now, I have tried to learn everything I could about influencer marketing, social media marketing, blogging, affiliate marketing and various other streams of income you can create while working from your phone at home. I have always worked in the beauty industry and had already started my beauty business about 7 or more years ago and I wanted to learn to generate extra income as a side hustle. After a good year of trying to do everything on my own, I finally said I need to focus on my niche and build it from there. It took me many years of trial and error and that landed me exactly where I wanted to be. Which was creating content for brands that fit with my brand and earning cash to do so.
Now, I am doing just that and I am able to pick and choose who I would like to work with based on their brand, their mission and how it all fits together with what I am doing. When I think back to the first post or reel I made, yes it was scary and I truly had no idea what I was doing. I must have tried all other types of content creation and the trick was to get in front of the camera and establish yourself as the authority in your niche. I had also taken a free training masterclass not that long ago and after I took that class with Christina Galbato a known Instagram Influencer, it was her that showed me that you can get paid cash to work with a brand and that you should be getting paid your rates as well. After taking this free masterclass, I had landed my first paid brand collaboration, then shortly after I had done 5 paid brand collaborations to create content for some fashion brands, jewelry brands, beauty brands and bridal brands as well.
Even though I haven't been working as a paid influencer for that long now, I have been working as an Aloette Influencer for some time and I have been creating content for my own business. Ever since I have been focusing on my own social media presents on Instagram and taking the necessary steps to be successful with it, I have grown to over 3 thousand followers now and when I post a reel I am getting up to 3 thousand views on it right away and this is from creating a solid social media strategy on Instagram and working as an influencer seemed to naturally follow.
I have been lucky enough in such a short period of time to work with brands like Aloette Cosmetics, Mariz Jewelry, Swim Nova, Bride Brite & Groom Glow, Bolani and various other brands and now I can say that I am able to pick and choose who I want to work with and represent the brands that fit what I am looking for. I have already been getting paid brand collaborations and working with brands to create content for cash. This is all I was interested in, was working with the brands that aligned with my brand and my mission and I want to get paid to create amazing content for amazing products and brands and this is exactly what I wanted to be doing with working as an influencer.
There is a lot that goes into working online as an influencer or affiliate marketer, it's not as easy as people think to work as an influencer. There is so much more than just posting selfies of yourself, you need to be organized, you need to have business sense, social media marketing skills, photography skills, video and editing skills, writing skills, technology and other various skills that are needed to be able to work online as an influencer. I am going to give you my top 6 influencer marketing tips that I use everyday when working with other brands.
HERE ARE MY TOP 6 TIPS ON HOW YOU CAN BECOME AN INFLUENCER:
Make sure you create an online presence for your brand, making your social media cohesive and aesthetically pleasing. Have a solid social media strategy and content that is educational and entertaining. You need to have a consistent posting schedule and you need to show up for your followers on the same time and the same days you should be posting. Example: I post every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 4:45 PM. I have an engaging headline, have some.great information inside your caption, use your 30 low value hashtags. Then when I post, I alway post stories everyday for the post part, I post stories before and after I post, I engage with my followers before for 15 minutes and after I post until about 6PM. When you have a business account you can see your analytics and everything for your Instagram account. When you see the peak posting times on Instagram it is always in PST Pacific time. This has really allowed for my full engagement potential and when I do this schedule with posting and it is an Instagram reel, I always get anywhere from 1500 to 3000 views at a time. P.S: Instagram Reels are being pushed out before all other content, consistently post reels for the best outcome.
When I am creating content for my social media accounts, I typically spend 2 days over the weekend creating content on one day, then scheduling it out and planning everything for the week. I usually do this once a week for all my content for the week. Typically, you can get this done in one day, it just matters how much time you spend on it at once.
Educate yourself on influencer marketing, content creation, social media marketing and affiliate marketing. Find out everything that you need to know in order to be successful at it. The 2 influencers that I have followed is Christina Galbato and Marina Ginovanni. Create a plan and execute it. I use trello boards to keep all of my information organized whether it's my content board or my influencer board, I have everything there waiting for me every time I need to post. I save all my captions, hashtags, links, photos, stories and much more. This way I can stay organized and when it comes to repurposing content, it makes it that much more easy for you. (This is great for those days when you're busy--- if you have content that performs well you should always use it.)
And the last things I would suggest that you do, I would suggest you study up on sales funnies, website creation and landing pages. This is a great lead magnet to push people onto your content. This is where you can create landing pages with your offer, it could start with a free offer like an ebook or a webinar. Then, you can add products or services at a special discounted price. You can create online courses, programs, services and various other streams of income. This is a great way to start building your email list. Your email list is going to be where all of your prospective clients will go and this is how you can weed out the clients who actually want to work with you, without you having to do all the work. This is something that all online businesses and brands need when you are trying to establish an online presence.
When you are working with other brands to create content in exchange for payment, you need to determine your rates. Many brands that are offering cash for content creation do already have a set number in mind per post or story. Typically, when starting out $100-$250 for posts, carousels or videos and stories. This is a great starting rate when you have anywhere from 2,500 to 10,000 followers and the rates will go up from there. When brands contact you to work for free or to pay for their products, you can politely decline. By stating, "I am currently only looking for paid work for my content creation with brands." And always be careful with some brands that are fakes and will lie to you about cash for content creation. You need to use your better judgment, if the deal seems far too good to be true, if they are constantly messaging you and harassing you. Always check out the brands accounts and even message the accounts, because it is typically brand managers who contact you to work for brands.
The easiest thing is that anyone who is looking to generate income from influencer marketing can sign up on various websites that have this platform, brands looking to collaborate with influencers for cash. You can sign up with websites like Intellifluence, #paid and Influcracy. You sign up and brands can contact you and pitch you or you can pitch brands to work with them and they put up campaigns when they are looking for influencers to work with. This has to be the easiest option for influencer marketing.
This is just the beginning for me as an influencer, I am finally creating content for brands that are paying me to do so and I couldn't be happier with this decision I had made to focus a lot of my time on building my social media presents and my Influence in my niche. As I grow and become more knowledgeable in the influencer world, I would love to work with all of my favorite makeup brands and skincare brands and more bridal brands as well. There will be no limits on what I can do, who I work for, who I create content for and the amount of money I am paid for my work. You have the power to do this, as a part time job or a full time gig. You will be your own boss and you will rock it.
Kristina Adleina
Check out Intellifluence's Blog Post on Tim Liu in the Influencer Spotlight.
Check out this blog post on Tech Funnel about Influencer Marketing.
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