Simple Steps to Becoming an Influencer (On any Social Media Channel)

Social media influencers, it's the big thing. Are you wondering how you can get in on it? Stick around, I'm going to show you how. Welcome back, guys. My name is Dan Willis of millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire your audience. If you're new to the channel, I put out videos to help businesses, small businesses, and entrepreneurs grow their business. From Monday through Saturday. So 6 days a week, you're going to see videos hop up here. Go ahead and click that subscribe button down below and the bell. And without further ado, today I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about influencer advertising or influencer marketing. For those of you that don't know, and you've just heard the chitter chatter about it, essentially influencer marketing is this. It is when instead of you placing ads traditionally, so when I mean traditionally, I'm talking about online, But you placing ads into Google Ads or you've got Facebook Ads, you've got Twitter Ads, you've got, you know, a simple pay-per-click campaign somewhere. Instead, what you're gonna do is you're gonna reach out to somebody who has a massive social following. So let's say somebody that everybody knows, like Casey Neistat, right? You reach out to him and say, hey Casey, I want you to talk up my YouTube channel in one of your videos. He gets back to you and says, yeah sure, here's what that's gonna cost. That's how the whole transaction works. Now, there are lots of people out there that see this as a great way to leverage their accounts that already exist, whether it's a YouTube channel like this or Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, lots of different opportunities for influencers out there. The question is though, if you're looking to become one, what steps do you have to take? So I'm going to break it down for you with some simple steps that you can take in order to get out there, create your influence, make sure that it's relevant, make sure you can pick up some advertisers, And then I'll drop you some channels that you can reach out to, to try out your luck in the influencer market. Okay, first things first, guys. Which social networks do you want to be an influencer in? And this sounds like an obvious one, but the reality is it's not. There's a lot of people that do a lot of different things on several different networks. So, oh, I've got a Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. I'm on Instagram. Snapchat. I've got 15 accounts and I kind of do a little bit on every one of them. This is the first crucial mistake you're gonna make as an influencer. Where you engage and build a community is where you will have influence, thus influencer. So the best thing that you could do if you're not currently in a place where you are a relevant influencer is find a network that you are comfortable with. So if you're not comfortable taking photos or being live, you know, Instagram is probably not for you. If you're not okay with making videos 3 to 5 times a week, YouTube is not for you, right? What you need to do is get out there, find out which social network does what, and then speak into it. Go, okay, how do I like it? Do I like how people are talking on Twitter? Do I like how that system works? Or do I need something more like YouTube? Do I need something more like Snapchat where it disappears when I'm done? Target networks specifically. Take the time. This isn't a rush. You're not going to rush through this, okay? Okay, what you want to do is take the time, pick a network, maybe 2, possibly 3 if you've got a lot of time. Okay, but I know for me, I target Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. That's it. Those are the 3 that I target. Instagram's out there as an extension of Facebook for me, so the 2 work together, but the reality is I can only actively engage with 3 networks. I pick them, I know where I'm headed, And that's how you can become an influencer. Don't spread yourself thin, 'cause you won't be able to engage in the community, okay guys? Let's get to the next point. So I already touched on a little bit on the last one, but once you've selected your networks, it's about engagement. An influencer isn't made just by whoever posts the most often. That's not how it works. Companies that are looking to reach out to an influencer wanna see somebody that has built a community that has a dialogue, right? So you're putting out your content, your information, your, whether it's your content or you're sharing other popular content out on the internet, Doesn't matter. What matters is this: when you put it out there, there are people that engage with the content you put out. So like, tweet, reshare, heart, whatever the metric may be, but people are engaging regularly with what you are putting out onto the network. And then even further, you're engaging back. So you're actually creating more of a conversation than just a one-way street. The beauty of this is that it gives the advertisers, the people that want to drop money into your influence, The reassurance that it's real, okay? So it's important that you pick a network, and it's important that you build it by putting out content and engaging with the community. So start off small, you know, make sure you're posting 3 to 5 times a week at minimum on the networks, whatever it is. More if you can, but at minimum 3 to 5 times a week, and relevant content to who you're targeting, who you want to influence. So if you want to be a dad, great, put out dad stuff. If you want to be a video gamer, put out video game stuff. Stuff. You like comic books? Great, put out comic book stuff. That's the nuts and bolts of it, guys. And then as people engage with your content, like, reshare, whatever, make sure that you're engaging with them. Go into their profile. Somebody reshares one of your tweets, go in, drop them a DM. Hey, thanks for resharing the tweet, really appreciate it. The more that you can create that conversation and awareness of your channels, your media that you're putting out, the more of a community you will build and you will expand your influence. So you've got your networks, you're putting out the content regularly, You're having great dialogues, you're having great conversations with people, and it's starting to grow slowly. What do you do next? Well, the next step is really simple. So once you've got all of your ducks in a row, you're putting out content and you're seeing engagement, you start to escalate. See which posts, analyze it, so which posts perform the best. If I'm a music influencer and I put out hip-hop, pop, rock, and I see that my rock content is really resonating well, focus on what's working. Engage with that audience. There's something that you're doing that's helping that engage. So once you've got your, okay, I know the networks I want to go to, I'm putting it out, I'm starting conversations, step back, analyze what's going on. Who, who's engaging with what, where, and why? Find the content that works best for you and go for it. Just sink your teeth in, make that happen, and put out that content as much as you possibly can. So in the music example that we gave. If you're putting out rock music because it's successful, don't stop putting out the other stuff as well. You want some diversity, but make sure for every one post you put out of either the, the rap or the pop, you're putting out at least 2 of the rock. Okay, so that's the strategy, guys. Analyze what's working, put it out there. One more to go. Next up, guys, it's pump it up. Okay, so You've got your channel, that's great. You know that, you know, it's Twitter, it's YouTube, it's Facebook, that's where you're going. You've targeted what you're gonna post, you're putting it out there, either you're creating content or curating content, perfect. You've analyzed which one's gonna be the best for you, now you need to amp it up, okay? So if you were seeing success on, let's say you picked 2 channels, you picked a Twitter and an Instagram. You're seeing tons of success on Instagram, and it's specifically with dog photos, let's say. Cat photos didn't do well, bird photos didn't do well, but your dog photos are nailing it. Great. So up the content. Make sure that you are putting out content regularly. So if you were doing 3 to 5 times a week, go to 3 to 5 times a day. Most people say, well, that's too much. You're going to inundate. You're going to bog people down. Uh-uh. Social feeds move so quickly these days. Honestly, you could put out a Twitter post, refresh the page, it's gone. You're not going to inundate people posting 3 to 5 times a day. What you are going to do is engage the people that are watching your channel. People that love the content you put out, if they see more of it, they're going to share it more often, which is going to grow your network and influence, okay guys? So there it is guys, nuts and bolts. Pick your network, plug your network, know what's working by analysis, post more often. It's that simple. Super simple steps that you can take to grow your influence, build a community, have the engagement, okay? Now, what do you do with it? Last step here guys. Go ahead, open up your Brave search bar, your Google search bar, whatever browser you're using. If you're not using Brave, you should be as a YouTube creator. But the reality is, go into a search bar, type in influencer marketing. You're gonna see a bunch of guys show up. For me, influencer.co is probably the best one I've seen so far as far as an actual agency of influencers. Um, it takes a little bit of reputation to get in, but it will give you a feel for what metrics they're looking for. Most of them have a requirement of you need this many followers with a certain percentage of engagement. And what percentage of engagement looks like is this: if you put out a post, they want to see that— if you've got 30,000 followers as a benchmark, they want to see 5% engagement. So if you have 30,000 followers, at least 5% of those should be engaging with the post that you put out. What this does, guys, it's a security for them to know that you don't have a fake account with fake followers that don't care, because they don't want their brand— they don't want their advertisers branding your channel with their brand when you are just a spam bot. Okay, so be legitimate, don't cheat it, work it, build it up, do the posting like you're supposed to, target content, and then find what the different influencer groups expect of you. Once you start to hit those benchmarks and those thresholds, start as soon as you can. There are some with really, really low requirements. You can find them in the Google search. It'll be— honestly, we're talking 5,000 followers is what you need to get into it and get going. And then just do whatever you can. Find the influencers that you can, pull them in, make it happen, and start to build a portfolio. I've worked with this company, I've worked with this company. Here are the advertised posts, this is what they look like, this is the percentages of how they performed. That's gonna be crucial, guys. It's, it's a marketing agency. You need to show people when they advertise on your channel, this is the return they get on that investment, whether it was good or bad. That's it for today though, guys. I know it sounds like it's a easy. It's not. It's going to take time. It's going to take consistency. It's going to take some effort, but stick with it. It'll be worth it. Influencer, influencer marketing is greatly underpriced at the moment, and you will have the ability to be at the forefront of this industry if you dedicate the time now and get yourself in a good position. Thanks again for watching. Hit that subscribe button down below if you found this helpful. Helpful. Question of the day is, which network would you target if If you're gonna be an influencer. Let me know in the comments down below, and I'll catch you Monday for another great video, guys. See you then. See you then.