Five ways B2B influencers can increase their value to brands: network at events to signal credibility, guard your audience by choosing paid work carefully, actively repurpose and promote content, stay current on platform mechanics, and share audience insights from dark social conversations.
Hey everybody, welcome to this next episode of Influence Unpacked. And today I'm going to talk to you about some tips that I think B2B influencers can use to become even better at what they do and offer more value to brands. So that they become more attractive to them to work with. So, in particular, let's start off with the first one. The first one is make sure you're not operating in a silo. And by that I mean it's very easy in the virtual world today to sort of just operate all to yourself and, you know, never get out that much and, you know, maybe not network that much. But my advice to you is take the opportunity to get to events when you can. Network with your peers, network with other influencers, because that is something that brands tend to look for. They will look at that. They'll say, well, so-and-so looks really good and they're connected to this other influencer that we know, so now we know they're in the same network. It kind of increases the comfort level. The second thing is remember that your brand and your audience are sacrosanct. Treat them that way. You're only as good as your audience in the end run. If you start to sell out too much or you're perceived as selling out too much to anybody and everybody for just doing pay-to-play things, you're gonna probably start to lose your audience a little bit and you're gonna start to lose some brands as well probably in the long run. So my advice to you is remember that, just remember, I mean, I know it's confusing at times and it can be difficult if you're getting a lot of different offers from brands and agencies and whatnot, But choose selectively and make sure it's a good fit with your brand and your audience. Respect that audience no matter what. Treat them like gold. The next thing is to be a good content partner. Be a good content partner with other influencers. Be a good content partner with the brands that you're working with. So what do I mean by that exactly? Well, what I'm getting at is that when you publish some content, don't just let it sit there and go stale and maybe tweet about it once or twice for the brand and say, well, now I'm done. Instead, think about how you can be a better content marketer and you can use that content to not only promote the brand that you're working with, but also to help the audience that you're serving and also to promote your own brand. If you've done a large white paper or a long blog post or an article or something, be sure to promote that more often than not. It's not a sin to promote the content as much as you can on social media. Twitter is ephemeral, for instance. Nobody remembers what was tweeted 24 hours ago, really. Yeah, you can go in and dig around and look for it, but most people don't do that. So don't be afraid of repromoting it. And you can also reframe the copy that you used to promote that post or that article or that piece of content again. And then also think of ways you can slice and dice your content up into smaller pieces. Maybe do a short video about something to sort of emphasize the article or whatever you want to do. But think like a good content partner. Brands will really, really appreciate it, believe me. They will. Next is stay on top of social media trends. You need to know how the different social media platforms are operating at any given point in time so that if you're in a conversation with a brand, you are knowledgeable and you know what works. I know that all of you are out there testing things, trying things, promoting, you know, trying different ways to promote content on social media. So use that to your advantage. When talking to brands. Make sure that they understand that you really understand these platforms, especially the ones that you work with directly the most. Maybe it's LinkedIn or Twitter or something like that. If it's Instagram, then be an expert on Instagram and know what's working and what's not working. Bring some insights and feedback to brands about the content that you co-create with them or the content that you create for them. That they directly just pay for. Let them know how the audience thinks about it because there's a lot going on in dark social today, back-channel communication. We all know it's there and, you know, a lot of times the brands and even the marketers are wondering, well, what the heck is being said? So if you could bring some of that feedback back to the brand you're working with or the agency you're working with, it's going to be really appreciated and they're going to look at you as even more of a valuable person to work with. So keep that in mind. And that last point is really one that I think that you really need to think about going forward, especially into 2020. It's getting more and more competitive out there, and the B2B influencer marketing realm is getting busier and busier. So I want all of you guys and gals that I work with as influencers, I really want you to be able to get the most out of this and to get the most out of working with brands. Look, that's about it for today. If you've got any questions, feedback, anything you want to let me know about, just shout out in the comments. Again, I appreciate each and every one of you. I appreciate every view I get, and I just want to say thank you. Until next week, talk to you soon. Thank you.
