Are you an influencer or are planning to become one? Or are you a brand searching for influencers to hop on their campaigns? Either way, if you are reading this blog, then chances are you already are one! With over 3% of the US population being social media influencers, the rising number of people wanting to quit their 9 to 5’s to become full-time influencers is not surprising. But being an influencer is not as easy as it sounds. Sure when you log into social media, you see all these cool people living their flashy lives and show-boarding their earnings, but the bitter truth is, it takes YEARS, not even months, to get to that level. Some influencers started from scratch and worked their way up to become the millionaires that they are today. They cracked the code on how to make it big in the influencer world and how to navigate their way through it. But times have changed and so have the codes, what once worked for the influencers of the past may not be the solution for the modern influencers.
In the modern era of influencing, influencer marketing is all the rage. Influencer marketing is what every influencer needs to crack the algorithm. But influencer marketing is not just about promoting random products and posing with them. There’s more in-depth to it. Influencer marketing can only be successful if it is niche-dependent - meaning if the niches of the influencer and the brand do not correlate, then chances are that the campaign would probably be a failure. Relevancy is the key here. It is highly important for both influencers as well as brands to only take on deals that are relative to their niches, and respectively their target audience. With so many influencers out there, it becomes quite challenging for brands to handpick the influencers that best suit their aim.
To overcome this challenge, there are multiple platforms available online to assist brands in choosing the right influencers for their campaigns, and among them all, SocialBook tops the list! SocialBook is the ideal interactive platform for brands, as well as influencers, to reach out to eachother. It provides great assistance to brands to particularly handpick the influencers based on multiple factors such as niche, target audience, geographical locality, and many others! SocialBook allows you to reach out to influencers, maintain conversations with them, and also keep track of these convos, as well as the performance of the influencers.
While SocialBook has the perks of being the topmost influencer-hunting platform, many users fail to utilize it to its full potential. This article is specifically written for those users who want to navigate their way around SocialBook and make use of all its features. So let’s take a look at some of those lacking streams that users are facing trouble with and how they can use SocialBook to create a win-win situation. So, let’s get started!
Crafting Engaging Emails
The most ideal and professional medium to reach out to the influencers, or vice versa, is through emails. Let’s be real, DMs are overrated. If you wish to contact an influencer via their DM, there is a high probability that your request for the campaign would go unnoticed under the piles of unanswered DMs of the influencer. So to make sure you are ‘noticed’, it’s always best to go for emails. Even with emails, don’t get too disappointed if you don’t urgently get a reply back. This is one of the most common hurdles that brands are facing nowadays, even on emails, they fail to get a reply back. A couple of factors contribute to this cruciating issue:
Pitfall: Low Open Rates for Outreach Emails
A few reasons why brands have low callback rates is because their emails lack a personal touch. With the rise of AI, most brands are going for automated emails which don't do a good job at capturing the interests of influencers. What brands can do to avoid this dilemma is customize their emails. There are multiple ways through which you can customize the emails. One of these ways is to keep the subject line of your email attractive. The subject line is the first thing that is going to pop up once the receiver gets your email so you need to make sure it's an attention-grabber.
Next up, you have to keep the email short and to the point. People dread lengthy emails that explain the purpose in the end, they are draining and boring. So make sure to keep your email short and concise. The more to-the-point your email is, the better your chances of getting a reply! Lastly, always add a personal touch to your emails. Do your homework on your influencers and investigate what attracts them the most. Once you crack this code, incorporate it into your email and viola! Your plain old boring email is now customized and guaranteed to get you a reply back!
Clarity in Communications
Another factor that deteriorates the brand-influencer relationship is unclarity in communication which often leads to misinterpretations and misunderstandings. Sometimes the influencer is unaware of how to clearly communicate their demands and at other times, the brands fail to speak out about what they want. This results in the commencement of a campaign where both parties are unclear from the start about their role. Not only does it break the trust bond between the brand and the influencer but also impacts the campaign, making the brands lose tons of money, and the influencer lose tons of followers, all owing to the following pitfall:
Pitfall: Vague Emails that Lack Clear Offers and Expectations
Ambiguity in emails and not clearly stating the expectations not only leaves the influencer confused about what the brand wants but also costs the brand way more than just money. To elude this issue, the solution is simple - be clear in communications! But the question is - how? Well, for starters, brands can clearly state their requirements and qualities which they expect the influencer to follow, along with the offers that they are willing to present to the influencer. They can vividly declare their plan of action along with various milestones that they expect the influencer to follow.
Clearly stating the expectation is a very vital part of strong communication, and this needs to be observed by both parties. In case of any ambiguity or vagueness, it is the duty of the influencer to call out the brand on the spot to avoid any conflicts in the future. Similarly, it is the major responsibility of the brands to make sure that the influencer is well educated about the campaign and knows their key roles and duties. Being transparent about the expectations and setting a course of action with various milestones aligned with deadlines helps to keep both parties on the right track. That’s the secret to a successful promotional campaign and SocialBook is here to help you through it!
Broadening Your Search Criteria
A ton of brands usually complain about never finding the right influencer for their campaigns. They search and search but in vain. And this is a problem that they are facing not only on SocialBook but on other influencer marketing platforms as well. These brands keep the influencer searching criteria so specific that the hunt almost ends with no prey. The reason for this is that the more you restrict your niche, the lesser your chances of a potential match. This will deliver you with limited options, making it difficult for you, the brand, to choose the right influencer corresponding to your target audience. Hence, the following troubling issue needs to be addressed:
Pitfall: Overly Specific Search Criteria Leading to Limited Results
Luckily for our users, SocialBook has the perfect solution. An easy way to increase your chances of potential influencers being matched is to expand your search criteria. For instance, if you are a sports brand looking for influencers to promote your new sports gear for women, instead of listing down all the specifics such as gender, target age group, country location, reach, race, etc., you can expand your criteria. You can incorporate multiple factors in your search domain in order to expand your options such as geographical settings, subscriber ranges, and using a broader set of keywords.
All you have to do is to challenge your creative potential and search beyond the obvious boundaries. Once you do that, you will find the ideal influencer! SocialBook offers a variety of features that can add to your search. It allows you to connect with the right influencer not just on the basis of niche, but by taking into account additional essential elements of your campaign as well. This makes your promotional campaign even more diverse, allowing you to generate maximum revenues by reaching new audiences!
Practical Tips for Using SocialBook
SocialBook is the only platform that you need for your influencer marketing campaign. It’s like Tinder but for brands and influencers, allowing you to connect with your dream influencer or brand, and sign a lucrative contract that works for both parties! SocialBook allows you to sign up on the platform both as an influencer as well as a brand. There are a wide variety of features that you can have access to. The best thing about SocialBook is that it not only works in the favor of renowned brands and mega influencers, but it provides a dedicated spotlight to small brands and helps them to reach micro-influencers, thus breaking the big fish algorithm!
As a brand, when you sign up for SocialBook, a variety of features appear that you can make use of to get to the perfect influencer. SocialBook presents you with a variety of plans and subscription offers that you can get on board with for your promotional campaign. Once you sign up, you will see a menu bar on the right-most side of the screen with a variety of options, linking you to the SocialBook features.
As a brand, you can search up any influencer that you want which we will dive into in the coming sections!
1. Influencer Search
The first thing for any brand is to search for the ideal influencer. To do so, first, move toward the right-most menu on the screen and scroll down to the option of ‘Influencer MKT Pro’. Once you do, a drop-down menu will pop open allowing you to access a variety of influencer-related features. From this menu, select the option of ‘Search’.
You can search for any influencer on various social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram. You can also enable various filters to scrutinize your search so that you land on the right influencer. You can apply filters such as content, country, continent, language, bio factors, and much more!
2. Contact Influencer
Once you have made a shortlist of all the influencers that you think will be a good fit for your brand, all you have to do now is to contact them. For this purpose, refer to the same menu again and scroll down the options in the ‘Influencer MKT Pro’ section. Just below the search for the influencers, you will find the option of ‘Contatc Influencers’. This option will help you contact your desired influencers on the basis of emails.
You can refer to templates of emails or craft new ones from scratch depending on what you want and require. Just go for any option that works best for you. While writing the email, keep the points we mentioned above in mind to truly grasp the attention of the audience!
3. Monitor Campaigns
Among many other essential features, another important feature is to monitor campaigns. Once you get your desired influencers on board and you initiate your promotional campaigns with them, the next thing you require is to keep a track of these campaigns. You need to know how well the product is doing, how well the campaign is performing, whether the influencers are doing their jobs correctly, and whether your revenue is increasing. For this purpose, scroll down the same menu bar and you will see the option of ‘Campaigns’. Under this segment, you will find a full track of all your promotional campaigns.
You can always update your plan to access more advanced features.
And that’s all that we have for your folks! We hope you found this article helpful and you found our influencer search tips useful to get to your targeted influencers. Do try out the SocialBook features at Socialbook.io and let us know your feedback!