For many content creators, being a social media influencer isn’t a pipe dream – it’s a source of serious income. The influencer industry was...
For many content creators, being a social media influencer isn’t a pipe dream – it’s a source of serious income. The influencer industry was worth $21.1 billion in 2023, and an influencer who has a large following and is good at negotiating with brands can claim a chunk of that money for themselves.
But how do you even get started building a career as an influencer? It’s not enough to be passionate, although it certainly helps. You need to find your niche, create your content strategy, and choose the right platforms on which to share your content. You have to find a way to set your content apart from that of the thousands of other influencers who are posting about your niche. And you’ll need to engage with your audience and share content consistently to grow your network.
Find a Niche
In order to be successful as an influencer, you have to decide what kind of content you’re most passionate about, and what topics you’re most interested in addressing, and then find a niche within that topic where your content will be relevant and appreciated. For example, if you're passionate about cats, perhaps your niche could be dressing your cats up in cute little costumes and writing voice-over skits for them. If your passion is healthy eating, perhaps your niche could be finding ways to make healthy eating more accessible.
If you’re not sure what your niche should be, think about your ideal follower. Create a buyer persona for them to help you understand what kind of content they’re looking for. Consider your ideal follower's goals – decide what they need and want from your content, and then give it to them.
Create Your Content Strategy
You will need to create and share high-quality content in order to succeed as an influencer, and you need to have a strategy for creating and sharing it. Working with a Phoenix SEO services agency can help you nail down your content strategy if you’re struggling with this aspect of becoming an influencer. But you need to decide what formats you will use, what times of the day and week you will post, how often you’ll post, how you’ll connect your posts to external events and seasons, and what voice you want your content to use.
Choose Where to Share Your Content
Where you share your content is an important part of your content strategy as a beginning influencer. Most influencers actually share their content on several platforms. You need to share yours wherever people in your target demographic might be looking for entertainment or information. Look at which platforms other influencers in your sphere are using, as well as how you want to format your content (i.e., videos, images, or the written word). These considerations can help you choose platforms that are suited to your needs and can give you access to the right audience.
Be Yourself
If you want to succeed as an influencer, you have to find a way to set your voice apart from all the other voices on social media. High-quality content is essential, but it must be unique as well as engaging.
What makes your content unique? In a word, you. No one else can create content from quite the same perspective as you. Don’t be afraid to bring your personality, your vulnerabilities, your hopes and dreams, into your content. Don’t be afraid to occasionally mess up. These things will make you relatable and will endear you to an audience, as well as set your content apart.
Engage with Your Audience
Influencers build trust by engaging with their audiences – and it’s that very trust that makes them such valuable brand ambassadors. Engage with your audience by replying to comments and messages or asking followers to share their answers to a question you ask. If some members of your audience also create content you like, highlight it in your own content. Ask your most enthusiastic followers what kind of content they’d like to see. Poll your followers for insights. Above all, take your followers’ feedback to heart and use it to make changes.
Share Consistently – And Don’t Give Up
You have to share consistently to build up and keep a following. Post erratically, and any success you see will be short-lived. But don’t get discouraged if you don’t start to build a large following right away. It can take a while to build up a following on social media, and it takes consistent efforts applied over time. Keep creating your best content and engaging with your audience and you’ll soon see the fruits of your labors.
Becoming an influencer sounds like a cushy job, but it actually takes a lot of hard work to make quality content on a regular basis and develop a large following. It’s worth the hard work, though, if you’re passionate about sharing your content and working with brands.
