Influencer marketing has become an increasingly popular marketing tool. Influencers have an innate ability to communicate with their audience, making them beneficial for brands. Often, they have a broad audience who trusts their opinions. When influencers endorse your brand, people will attach that same positive association to you. As a result, using influencers can be an incredibly valuable part of your next social media campaign.
What Makes a Local Influencer?
An influencer on social media can have tens of thousands of followers or more. Local influencers, or micro-influencers, are smaller-level or local to a specific area. They are often highly engaged in their online and social media communities but with a focus on a particular target audience. Micro-influencers may have an average of between 1,000 and 10,000 followers, rather than the tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers you might find with a macro-influencer. Still, those followers tend to be highly engaged.
Micro-influencers offer several advantages. They are often less expensive, in general, to commission or work with. In addition, they may resonate better with members of their local audience. They have a highly authentic voice, which makes them more trustworthy. Furthermore, they tend to speak to local consumers more like friends, maintaining a sense of connection that may be deeper than that experienced by macro-influencers.
Find Influencers in Your Sphere
To make the most of a social media campaign that involves a partnership with local influencers, start by looking at the engagement on your past posts. Are there local figures who already follow you? Have they engaged with your brand in the past? Often, that will offer an easy way to locate influencers who might already be interested in representing your brand.
You can also look directly for people with big followings on social media, check out where they are located, and explore how they connect with their audience and what they offer. Carefully consider who their audience is. You want influencers who are associated with your target audience, whether they're speaking to parents of young children, members of Gen Z, or an older audience.
Correspond Regularly to Provide Value
For most influencers, the connection with a brand is about collaboration. With a good influencer relationship, you will increase their brand even as they increase yours. The partnership is an ongoing collaboration, not just a one-time interaction!
In addition, continue communication throughout your partnership. The more regularly you check in, the more you can improve that connection and ensure that each side knows what the other wants and how they want to present the relationship.
Trust Their Insight in Advocating for Your Brand
Ensure that the influencers you choose to work with continue to represent your brand the way you intend; you must also have a high level of trust in their ability to reach your audience. Keep in mind that most influencers have worked hard to build their own personal brands, and they often know best how to reach the members of their specific target audience.
Allow them to form their own opinions and create dialogue about your brand without necessarily putting in your insight every time they mention your brand.
Working with people who trust and appreciate your brand will allow them to explain its benefits more honestly. Influencers often speak about products they like or trust. They may share that they're working in partnership with your brand with their audience since honest disclosure is essential.
Still, they'll also be able to give an authentic look at why they genuinely appreciate your brand and feel that their audience should check it out. As a result, their information will often resonate more deeply with that target audience.
Is Influencer Marketing Right for You?
Working with local influencers goes a long way toward increasing interest in and awareness of your brand. It's also a fundamental way to help generate trust in what you have to offer. By working closely with micro-influencers with a substantial reach in your local area, you can often extend the appreciation of your brand and offer a deeper connection to your customers. At Mid-West Family Northern Illinois, we’re involved with our local community through our very own radio influencers, connecting with audiences daily.
