Finding the Right Influence Online
On online platforms we constantly hear about jumping onto social media, but without the appropriate “why” answered. I suppose everyone figures as long as they on social media, the people they interacting with will eventually buy their products right? The bottom line is all these people that like and comment on your pages posts will eventually buy into that shiny new vacuum cleaner that has all the bells and whistles.
Now what if I said engagement shouldn’t be your only goal? What about influence?
Influence? What Do You mean?
Remember that social media platforms were created to initiate conversations and links between friends/connections. Most page admins, especially in South Africa, look at engagement only as a primary objective to having the page. The best way to leverage anything in life, as I have learned, is how we affected by influencers, whether offline or online. You always ask your friends opinions and advice on what they know right? Why don’t you ask other page’s for their content and opinions? Why aren’t page administrators asking people who know better than them about something to promote their product? You might be selling a fancy vacuum cleaner, and keeping everything within your “page likes”. How about liking a page of a product that sells cleaning products, and sharing their content with your audience and theirs with yours? You getting a far wider reach from sharing your insightful content about your product with people who are interested in pairing their “new magic” carpet cleaner. Your influencers help leverage your engagement to other markets while you focus on your own. Sounds simple right?
Build brand relationships so that eventually you can have advocates who will drive your online marketing socially without you having any direct influence. Having important influencers guarantees that a brand is driven by word of mouth, endorsements and recommendations, and isn’t that what we want at the end of the day? Let other people talk about your brand not just yourself. Talk to your audience about other brands, instigate conversations not push marketing. Focus on the bigger picture we say. Provide customer services, provide advice, provide your opinion to types of services and products so that other people who can use your content “share” it.
If you are a brand that could use being influenced or wants to influence any of our brands, you can visit our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Student Commune Facebook, and Twitter pages