Social media is a great place to market your brand and products. Combining social media marketing with influencer marketing can further improve your marketing prospects via those influencers.
For every $1 spent on influencer marketing, brands can get up to $18 in earned media value.
Influencers are people who can have a significant impact on their followers’ purchasing behaviors.
While Instagram is the #1 platform for influencer marketing (according to 79% of marketers), Twitter isn’t far behind, (according to 24% of marketers).
In order to partner with influencers on Twitter, you need to first engage with them. Here are some of the best practices for doing so.
1. Identify Your Influencers Properly
Before you even engage with influencers on Twitter, you need to first identify which are relevant influencers for your brand.
Connecting and partnering with wrong people will not help you market your brand on Twitter.
That’s why it’s critical to invest enough time and effort into finding the right influencers. You can look for people who regularly tweet in your niche.
Alternatively, you can check if people are tweeting about your product or other similar products. Some of these people may be influencers.
You need to be careful when you’re choosing influencers. They should not only be relevant to your brand, but should also have similar values and be located in your target market.
You can use tools like BuzzSumo to find relevant influencers based on reach, authority, and engagement.
You can use the location search feature of tools like Influence.co to find influencers based on their location. This will help you reach your target audience more effectively.
Image via Influence.co
2. Engage With Them on Twitter
Once you’ve found your Twitter influencers, you need to reach out to them.
The best way of going about it is by starting on Twitter, of course.
Begin by following, retweeting, and commenting on their tweets. This way, they get an idea that you are following and engaging with what they are posting.
Don’t reach out to them for partnerships right in the beginning. It is critical to show them that you are genuinely interested in the content that they share and appreciate it too.
Once you’ve developed a relationship with them on Twitter, you can go ahead and pitch your ideas to them.
3. Engage With Influencers Who Show Interest
While you may be reaching out to influencers and interacting with them, there may be a few influencers who show interest in you. Never ignore these people — they’re warm leads for you.
To find them, you can use social listening tools such as Awario.
Some influencers may even end up messaging you. Ensure that you reply and engage with them regularly.
It’s a great idea to thank them for liking your content. You can also start following and retweeting them.
Make sure that you put effort into building strong relationships with them as well. They could become great assets for your brand as time moves forward.
4. Keep an Open Dialogue
Once you’ve engaged with your potential influencers, put effort into keeping an open dialogue with them.
Start by reminding them regularly that you’re following their content, and enjoying it.
It’ll be worthwhile to compliment them on their achievements as well. Doing so can improve their trust in your brand and may encourage them to collaborate with you in the future.
5. Ask Questions
To engage with influencers on Twitter even further, consider asking them industry-related questions every once in a while. They will appreciate it when you respect their expertise and knowledge.
However, be sure that all the questions that you ask them are:
- Relevant to the industry and their work.
- Meaningful in nature. Don’t ask questions just for the sake of interaction.
- Related to something that they’ve already mentioned in their posts or on their website.
- Not too frequent. Don’t bombard them with questions. Space them out a bit.
Asking relevant questions makes more impact than merely retweeting. It’s a more active form of involvement in their posts.
6. Discuss Campaigns
Finally, once you’ve interacted with your key influencers for a while, you can start pitching your campaign ideas to them.
It is a good idea to communicate your goals clearly and even ask for input on the campaign.
Influencers are creative people who aren’t just looking for income, but have unique ideas on producing content. It is also a good idea to discuss the hashtags for the campaign with them.
They are experts in influencer marketing and know their followers better than anyone else. Taking their input into account will help make your campaign more powerful.
One way of going about this is by reaching out to them individually and discussing the campaign. Alternatively, you can post a tweet about the campaign and ask them for help.
If you’ve already built good relationships with your influencers, it’ll be better to do the former. It also gives you a chance to send your request for collaboration.
7. Give Your Influencers Incentives
When you’re engaging with Twitter influencers, you need to ensure that you offer them something of value.
Asking them to collaborate with you isn’t sufficient. You need to offer them some sort of compensation in return for promoting your brand to their audience.
While it doesn’t necessarily need to be monetary in nature, about 57% of marketers prefer monetary compensation.
Other options — You can also give them a friendly shoutout on your social media page or give your products to them for free.
Image via Linqia
How you pay your influencers for their services will vary based on your specific campaign and the influencers you select to assist with that campaign.
While some micro-influencers may be very happy to get a friendly shoutout or a free gift, macro-influencers will usually want monetary compensation.
Final Thoughts
It is crucial to engage with influencers on Twitter before you collaborate with them.
Engage with their tweets, retweet them, and even ask them interesting questions related to the industry.
Make sure that the influencers you engage with are relevant to your brand’s niche.
Lastly, ensure that you don’t ignore those influencers who show interest in your brand. They may become your greatest assets.
Feature Image Credit: CC 0; Public Domain, sourced from picpedia.org.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
Gaurav Sharma
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- Engaging with Influencers on Twitter: 7 Best Practices - October 1, 2019
