Are you a fan of influencers? Do you ever think about quitting your job to pursue a career on social media? If so, do you have what it takes to be an aspiring influencer? If you’re having second thoughts about becoming an influencer, then this blog is for you! It's 2024 and the traditional job culture barely exists anymore. Office jobs are slowly being replaced by remote jobs, thanks to Covid, and the world is loving it. It’s not only the mode of job that is changing but also its nature. In the modern world today, we don’t only have our conventional pilots, teachers, and doctors, rather we have something new in the mix that everyone wants to become - influencers. And the best? You don’t need any qualification or specialization to become one!
Thanks to the power of social media, we now have hundreds, even thousands, of influencers in every niche. Doctors, politicians, teachers, and every single career you can think of is living a double life as an influencer, and trust us, they’re living the best life! But is it still worth it in 2024? With so much saturation in the world of influencers, is it too late to become one? Even if you decide to take the step, are there any tools that can help you in your journey? Well, this blog answers it all. In this blog, not only will we discuss the basic dos and don’ts of becoming an influencer, but we will also see how SocialBook’s Product Launcher can help you become a rising star.
So let’s get started!
What is an Influencer?
If you are wondering how to become an influencer then let’s get down to the root of the problem - who exactly is an influencer? An influencer is a person who basically speaks to the public about their niche. They share their lives, their activities, and every single niche-related detail with their followers and hence, gain their trust and love. To narrow it down, an influencer is a social media personality who does the following:
- Share snippets of their personal life related to their niche, for example, a fitness influencer sharing their morning routine
- Create content that promotes customer engagement
- Promote different products related to their niche to their following
- Engage with their followers and hence create a loyal army of fans
- Share their niche-related secrets with their following to motivate and encourage them
Being an influencer is not only about creating and posting cute videos but there’s so much more to it. What starts as simple daily postings eventually turn into brand ambassadorships and exciting deals. Influencers can monetize their sharing talent. The more they engage with their following about their niche, the more they catch the attention of brands. Brands know that their target market relies on the opinion of these respected influencers so their aim is to cash this philosophy. These influencers attract brands with their content and hence sign up for collaboration and campaign deals with them, hence making plenty of money.
Is It Still Worth Becoming an Influencer in 2024?
Here’s a thing about the influencer journey - it's a slow “trust the process”. You don’t get results overnight. It takes tons of consistency to get to the level where you get brand recognition. Daily postings, creating routine content, and coming up with new ideas all the time may seem like a tedious job but the reward totally makes it worth it. All it requires is a long-term commitment. If you stay committed to creating content, the more chances you have of growing your following and hence getting the attention of your dream brands. One thing to remember is that every influencer, like you, started small with just one or two posts in a week. Things pick up speed once you develop a posting momentum, and the rest is history.
When becoming an influencer, you need to ask yourself the big question - am I aiming for brand deals or just for growing my follower base? If your aim is the latter, then you wish to become a strategic influencer, and if it's the other option, then quick influencer it is. The differences between the two are listed below:
- Strategic influencers have very specific expertise and their niche is specialized
- Meanwhile, quick influencers can help you reach a target audience
- Through strategic influencers, you have a higher chance of making potential sales because of their following
- Whereas quick influencers can help you reach new audiences, but the probability of converting them into customers is low
How to Become an Influencer?
Now that you know what an influencer is and what the hype is about, let’s get straight to business. Let’s talk about how to become an influencer. Following are the 4 steps that you need to follow to become a successful influencer:
1. Pick Your Niche:
The first step in becoming an influencer is pretty simple - pick a niche. Choose an area of your expertise, preferably something you enjoy doing. Your niche is based on your interest - what do you like doing? Whether you’re a fitness passionate or a makeup enthusiast, the field you feel like you can conquer is your niche. Be very affirmative about your niche. Changing your niche every other day is something that your followers will not appreciate.
2. Educate Yourself:
The art of becoming an influencer requires some research. Keeping up with the trends is the key you need to become a successful influencer. Search for other fellow influencers in your niche and analyze their feeds. Examine which of their content has high engagement. Closely observe their social media presence and learn about the key aspects that make them so loved in your niche. Before you proceed to the next steps, make sure you equip yourself with a researched checklist, highlighting the art of promotion and engagement of reputable influencers.
3. Create a Profile and Start Posting:
As we said before, becoming an influencer doesn't require any qualification. Once you decide on a niche and are done with a quick scan of other influencers in your niche, it’s time to hop onto the social media platform. In the beginning, you want to keep things simple so choose only a single social media platform for all your postings - either Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. Simply create your profile on the social app of your choice. And that’s it! Now all there’s left to do is to grab your camera and start filming content.
4. Consistent Posting and Growth:
Growing on social media is a slow and steady trust-the-process movement. Don't be disappointed if you don’t blow up overnight. It’s gonna take a lot of consistent postings and content creation to become an influencer superstar. Consistency is the key here. In the beginning, make sure to post at least 1 video every day. Posting daily is definitely gonna take you places!
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
As becoming a successful influencer is a slow journey, some people tend to take shortcuts that may seem right for the short term, but in the long run, these shortcuts are gonna be the demise of your influencer career. You don’t want to be one of these people. Listed below are some of the shortcuts and mistakes that new influencers often make, and trust us, you want to avoid these:
- Purchasing Followers: To quickly develop a social media presence, most new influencers purchase followers. These are not authentic and they won’t even engage with your content
- Purchased followers may make your following number skyrocket, but your engagement metrics will remain low as these bots don’t engage with content
- Fake Engagement Pods: These are chatbots that people purchase to engage with their content. These chatbots provide the same engaging comments on every post
- These chatbots although do engage with the content but they provide the same engaging comments on every post, giving the impression that they have been planted
- Brands can easily detect these fake pods and once a brand recognizes these fake pods, your chances of securing a brand deal become zero
- Damaged Authentic Reputation: These shortcuts can ruin your reputation as an authentic influencer. Brands go for authenticity and if your content is not authentic, you can kiss them goodbye
- Copying Other Influencers: There’s a difference between getting inspired and straightway copying. Try to create content inspired by fellow influencers but do not rip them off
- Inconsistent Posting: Try to avoid inconsistency and make sure to post at least once every day
Monetization Timeline
Becoming an influencer is a slow process but once you get to that level, the rewards are endless, in monetary terms as well. You must’ve seen numerous influencers taking international vacations every other day, well, the good news is you can be one of them too! This all comes from consistent postings, creating a following, securing brand deals, and making tons of money from all of them.
Monetizing your influencer profile is gonna take some time, earning money overnight is impossible. First, you need a benchmark of followers. Brands do not always go for mega-influencers who have their followings in millions, the trend is shifting towards micro-influencers now. But the benchmark for these micro-influencers is at least 5K followers. You need to get at least 5K followers to charge the brands for promotional deals. The number of followers you have is directly related to the money you can charge the brands.
Below is a brief list of a few streams through which you can earn money on your social media platforms:
- If you’re an Instagram influencer, make sure you have your account on professional settings that display the professional dashboard
- Make sure to sign up on the Instagram monetization community
- If you’re a TikTok influencer, conducting live streams should be your priority
- You can also join the “Creator Fund” community on TikTok to earn some bucks
- You can even ask your followers to send you virtual gifts which you can monetize
- Paid or subscription content is also a great way of making some extra cash
Finding Brands to Collaborate With
In the past, influencing was sort of a hard job because nothing was categorized or streamlined. The influencers had to do all the struggle by themselves, from growing their presence to searching for brand deals. But luckily, in the modern era, we have a bunch of helpful influencer marketing tools and softwares that can assist you in your influencing journey! From content creation to searching for the optimal brand campaigns, these tools do all the hard work for you. And among all these tools and softwares, SocialBook is the best! How? Read on to find out.
How SocialBook Can Help You?
SocialBook has launched its new feature specifically designed to help out beginner influencers just like you. SocialBook presents the Product Launcher. It’s a great platform that helps brands to connect with micro-influencers and sign up for some promotional deals. You can read all about it at https://socialbook.io/launcher/influencer.
On the SocialBook Product Launcher, brands post different types of promotional campaigns. Brands from every niche are present on this platform, be it from beauty, fashion, fitness, health, or even gaming. These brands post all sorts of campaigns along with the product that they would like the influencer to promote. Influencers can then fill out simple easy peasy applications for each campaign and submit their entry. All it takes is a click of a button! Once the brands get the application, they can review the influencer’s profile and hence sign up for a deal with them. It’s like Tinder for brands and influencers.
The Product Launcher is extremely easy to use. You can easily navigate your way around it, both as a brand and as an influencer. You can have infinite chances and thousands of campaigns to send out your applications. The best part about the Product Launcher? It’s completely free! And it doesn’t take any commission charges.
Conclusion
It’s never too late to take a fresh start and the same goes for becoming an influencer. The fact that it's 2024 and the influencer market is saturated is not a dead end. Maybe what you have to offer is completely out of the box, or maybe your perspective is entirely unique. Even if it's not, don’t be afraid to take the risk. Just take the plunge, click that button, and start posting. You never know where your silly little postings may lead to one day!
For a seamless and smooth influencer experience, make sure to get a hands-on experience with SocialBook Product Launcher. Trust us, you won’t regret it!
We hope you liked this article, stay tuned for more!