Let me start off by saying, I am not an expert at this. I have recently become an influencer, and have done my own research and have a few tips that helped me to get to where I am. I think that what holds most of us back from becoming influencers, is that we don’t know where to start, what to say, and what our worth is. If you’re game, I’d like to share my top tips with you.
First things first, you’ll need to know what type of influencer you currently would be. Take a look at your follower count on your social media page to determine where you currently are.
Types of Influencers by Follower Count
- Nano influencers (1K–10K followers)
- Micro influencers (10K–100K followers)
- Macro influencers (100K–1M followers)
- Mega or celebrity influencers (1M+ followers)
KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
It is so helpful to know your target audience and the influence that you have on them. To help you figure this out, you should ask yourself these questions:
- What do my followers admire me most for?
- What am I passionate about?
- What am I good at?
- I get the most engagement from my followers when I (fill in the blank).
- I want my ideal audience to come to my page when they need inspiration on (fill in the blank)
This should get you started if you don’t already know your target audience. For example, my followers come to me to see my big natural hair, fashion, christian content, entrepreneur lifestyle, travel inspiration, and modeling photos. Knowing what my audience wants to see, allows me to fine tune my feed. For me, getting detailed on this step was key for me, because it helped me to get rid of the random content on my feed that didn’t align with the direction of influence I needed. Brands that you want to work with and people you want to influence need to be clear on your direction and what your influence is all about. When I finally fine tuned my feed, my engagement went up almost instantly. Having clear direction and a feed that represented clarity, caused me to begin to start getting emails about sponsored collaborations. In contrast, when my audience was not defined, I rarely had engagement, my posts were just inspirational, and I was mostly taking a shot in the dark. As a result, my engagement deteriorated, I got frustrated, and I ultimately wanted to exit stage left. Learn from my mistakes, my friend, know your targeted audience. This is a VERY important step.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR FEED TO FIT YOUR AUDIENCE’S TASTES
There is nothing worse than to have confused followers. When your followers go to your page, there should be no reason why they don’t know exactly what you’re about. This was a GAME CHANGER for me!!! When we have clear direction, we will be able to make less and more targeted posts, instead of slaving all day TRYING to figure out what we’re going to post that day. Clear direction will allow us to not feel like we are trying to keep up, but instead will allow us to create the experiences and atmospheres we want to create. There’s a big difference in keeping up and creating your own lane. You want to take a look at your current feed AND the things you have been posting on your story and ask yourself:
- How does this align with my audience?
- Which posts are random and don’t make sense as it pertains to my direction?
- Which posts have substance (meaning which posts give value to my followers)?
- What types of posts can I begin to create that will give my followers the most value?
- Do I have any share-worthy posts that I haven’t already shared? What types of share-worthy posts can I create?
- Is this a high quality post?
Archive the posts on your feed that do not align with the purpose and intent of your influence. Another helpful tip is to archive all of your FEED photos that are overly filtered. Save those for your story ONLY. Quality is king in the field of influence, so you want to make sure that you don’t have cringe-worthy posts. It doesn’t matter what your target audience is, people want to see authenticity on your feed, PERIOD. Trust me on this one, it’ll hurt to rip that bandaid off (especially if most of your posts are overly filtered) but in the end, your feed and followers will adjust to the elevated change.
HAVE A CONTACT EMAIL IN YOUR BIO
Make it easier for brands to reach out to you by having your email listed in your bio. Brands look for ease of access. If they have to jump through hoops to reach out to you, they will most likely just move on. This is a simple but important step, don’t miss it.
HAVE A RESPONSE EMAIL TEMPLATE IN YOUR BACK POCKET
In the beginning of your influencer journey, there will be tons of requests for unpaid sponsorships or even brands asking you to be an ambassador (most of the time they send you a code to get their merchandise discounted and will give you another code for your followers who want to purchase using your code). This is perfectly fine if this is the route you’d like to take starting out. My issue with this is, if they see your worth, then they will pay for it. Sometimes, brands will rethink their proposal and offer you a paid collaboration. You can use this template to turn an unpaid collaboration into a paid collaboration. Just insert your own info and make sure to proofread for errors. Don’t say I never did anything for ya 😉.
Below are a couple of recent emails I received for paid partnerships.
Friend, if you decide to take my advice with your influencer journey, you will soon see benefits of the work you put in. Below are a couple of emails from two different brands that wanted to work with me. Anything is possible for those who work towards it. Faith without work is dead. I pray these tips help you to get started on the right track.
