Between 2019 and 2023, the influencer marketing business is predicted to nearly double in spending, and for good reason: creators are influencing what consumers buy more than ever before. And, if you’re like most businesses, you’re curious about how influencer-generated content may help you connect with your target market.
Importance of influencer-generated content
What is influencer-generated content?
Influencer-generated content, as the term implies, is all content produced by influencers that promotes your brand positively. These posts don’t have to be sponsored by a company. In fact, some of the best influencer-generated content happens without you ever asking them to.
An influencer is traditionally defined as a social media person with at least 1,000 followers on any given channel. The influencer is a reliable source of information for their audience and actively engages with them. Influencers are looked to for inspiration and knowledge, as well as buying suggestions.
Influencer-generated content also helps your brand stand out in a crowded market. Because there is so much noise from brands competing to make their voices heard, consumers have developed selective attention and retention. This means that customers will only pay attention to what they are actually interested in and will dismiss the rest.
Influencer-generated content, on the other hand, is incredibly effective at capturing your target audience’s attention because their followers have chosen to receive their messages and view their content.
The following are some of the long-term advantages of influencer content:
- Brand credibility
- Lower costs (compared to in-house content creation costs)
- Authenticity
- Increased social content
- Connection with engaged consumers (brand followers, brand communities, etc.)
- Informed customers
- Increased conversions
- Greater customer loyalty
What makes authentic influencer-generated content so important?
As people flood platforms and paid ad ROI depreciates with repetition, “moving the needle” on social media is getting increasingly difficult. Social platforms are increasingly favoring the work of creative experts in order to maintain the authenticity that users want.
These creators constantly produce interesting material and have the ability to build a fan base around a specific lifestyle or set of values. Many of these users are everyday people with distinctive voice that breaks through the “social noise.” Some are photographers, videographers, and bloggers, but many are ordinary people with a unique voice that cuts through the “social noise.” They usually provide a multi-platform strategy and a holistic approach to marketing your goods or brand.
Brands can’t compete with influencer content on consumer newsfeeds without the support of those influencers due to the high desire for authenticity.
“I believe that companies that don’t collaborate with influencers are going to be spending more and more money on paid social, and it becomes less and less effective over time.”
-Neal Schaffer
In short, customers do not place the same trust in a brand’s content or paid advertising as they do in their favourite influencers. Any social media strategy that disregards influencer-generated content is doomed to fail.
Why is influencer-generated content authentic?
The credibility of content is really important to a user. When all of the information you see online makes you sceptical, potential buyers can be persuaded to buy a product if someone they trust recommends it to them. People are more prone to trust “regular people” than celebrities, according to a study, thus micro-influencers may be the key to building the most authenticity.
By sharing your brand’s beliefs and stories with your influencers, you can help them generate more honest and engaging content. Influencer marketing is used by 89 percent of marketers because it allows them to create authentic content about their company.
Here are some more ways to improve the authenticity of influencer-generated content.
Avoid fake influencers
One of the most effective strategies for distinguishing fraudulent influencers from genuine influencers is to look at their interaction rate.
It’s not enough to have thousands (or millions) of likes or followers if you’re not actively engaging. Divide the number of comments and shares by the number of likes or follows to get an influencer’s engagement rate.
Meaningful Engagements / Number of Followers = Engagement Rate
After you’ve determined an influencer’s engagement rate, look at the content of their follower engagements. You may determine how authentic an influencer’s connection with your target audience is by listening to conversations between the influencer and their admirers.
“At first, I had the mindset that they have to have 10,000 followers or above. I feel like that was just the norm—we want people with a lot of followers. But what I’ve found is that it was the people that came into the brand and have a lot of passion for it. We switched from going after the amount of followers to their engagement on social media. By switching my mindset—they don’t need to have a lot of followers—I look for their passion for the brand and their engagement.”
– Victoria Shanley
Brand Excitement
When it comes to “passion,” the finest influencers only work with brands that truly please them. Because these influencers genuinely appreciate the brand’s products or services, many influencer marketers refer to them as “brand ambassadors.”
Audiences can tell the difference between artificial and genuine excitement, and it’s contagious when they see the latter.
Brands working directly with influencers
Opt-in influencer networks have recently made it possible to connect marketers with influencers and vice versa. On the surface, these “middleman” agencies appear to simplify the influencer marketing process. However, additional study reveals that the middleman strategy dilutes influencer credibility.
Experienced marketers recognise that working directly with influencers is the best way to get the most authentic influencer-generated content. However, without the right influencer marketing tools, managing influencer connections can be a difficult effort.
Long-term relationships
While effective “one-off” influencer initiatives have their place, long-term connections with your top influencers help to foster authenticity. Partnerships between brands and influencers that share the same values and are built on a foundation of trust can yield significant results.
Managers of influencer marketing spend time getting to know their influencers. Influencer birthdays, personal milestones, and overall well-being are all important to many marketers. Influencer-generated content gains more force when it has a human touch.
Creative freedom
Brands are very aware of their positioning and how they communicate with their target audiences. As a result, their content standards for influencers can occasionally become unduly rigid.
But what if you let your influencers create content solely on their own initiative? Increased participation.
The type of content that an influencer post is well-liked by their followers. That is the primary reason why they are interested in these individuals. As a result, don’t impose stringent guidelines on influencers. 76 percent of influencers prefer to work with brands that give them creative freedom, according to Crowdtap.
Top ways that influencer-generated content can help your brand
Inform your audience
Influencers frequently play the roles of industry experts as well as trustworthy friends. Before believing what a business says about its own products and services, consumers prefer to gather knowledge for themselves and with the support of other consumers.
Using influencers to provide information to your audience can help you establish credibility and set your products apart from those of your competitors.
Examples of influencer-generated content that inform your audience include:
- Product reviews
- Before/after posts
- Influencer guest posts on your website
Promote social values and lifestyle choices
If you’re like most brands today, you operate in a specific manner and cater to a specific demographic. Both of these options show that you care about your customers and want to reach out to others who share your values.
Consumers routinely interact with influencers about social concerns and lifestyle choices. When you work with an influencer to align your audience, you’ll create customer excitement that goes beyond a superficial admiration for your items.
To put it another way, influencers assist you in achieving brand loyalty based on your brand’s unique DNA. The following are some examples of influencer content:
- Cause-awareness posts
- Lifestyle images and videos
- “I love this brand because…” posts
- General industry or lifestyle guidance
Publicize special events or announcements
If there’s one thing influencers excel at, it’s spreading the word to specific audiences. Influencer postings that assist you in making relevant announcements garner considerably more impressions and engagements than if you made similar announcements on your own.
Influencers can spread the message in a variety of ways, including:
- Sharing brand hashtags
- Promoting RSVP links to events
- Posting ephemeral content (e.g.., Instagram Stories)
- Joining or hosting live video posts
- Sharing influencer whitelisting posts
Quality backlinks
Blogger influencers can help boost your website’s search engine ranks dramatically. They will not only attract visitors to your website, but if the influencer’s website has a high domain authority, a backlink to your site may also help to boost your domain authority.
“Behind the scenes” looks
Authenticity is becoming increasingly important to brands. An influencer partnership could provide customers with a “behind the scenes” look at your company. This strategy can increase brand awareness and endear audiences to your business.
Top types of influencer-generated content to use on your website
Most marketers image social media posts when they think about influencer-generated content. While it’s true that the majority of influencer content is created on social media, many marketers are seeking methods to add value to their existing online content by incorporating influencer posts.
This strategy should benefit both the brand and the influencer.
- Integrating influencer material with your website will result in increased visitors.
- Using your website to highlight influencer material can help promote your producers.
SlumberPod, for example, shows some amazing methods to incorporate influencer-generated content into their website.
How-to and FAQ content
“How-to” lessons are among the most popular sorts of material on the internet today, particularly on YouTube. In addition, Google searches for instructions and product queries are common. You can embed an influencer’s tutorial or question-and-answer post into portions of your website once they post it on their social media channel.
Product reviews
Influencers who unbox things or compare multiple products at once are popular with consumers. These movies assist your clients in making informed decisions and can also elicit excitement at the idea of owning the goods.
You can include product reviews on your home page in the same way that tutorials and FAQs are. You can also transform a product review into a long-form blog article. They can be excellent references.
Virtual events
Whenever you decide to hold an event virtually, you’ll want to provide specifics for others to learn about the event and join. Create a dedicated page for your event and ask your influencers to include a link to it in their material.
This website should include any pertinent information, as well as sign-up instructions and methods for attendees to interact with your business during the event. If you’re co-hosting an event with an influencer, make sure to include them in the event page creation process.
You may choose to post the live event to your brand’s social media accounts and embed the video on your website after the event.
Contests
It’s always a good idea to build a distinct web page for your contests, similar to your event website. Not only will you have a central site to post all of the contest rules and prizes, but the URL will also be simple to share with your influencers.
You can use the same page or a new one to announce the winner and promote your next contest at the end of the event.
Guest blogs
Influencers make excellent guest bloggers if you produce blogs on your website. Influencers are usually quite educated about your customers’ problems. Additionally, posting a post from a well-known blogger can help to boost interest in your site.
If you’re going to use influencers to write guest blogs, be sure they’re qualified to do so. It’s always better to ask the influencer what they’d like to write about and how the issue will help your audience.
Creating an influencer-friendly website
An influencer-friendly website;
An influencer-friendly website accomplishes two goals:
- It puts your influencer content on display.
- It gives your influencers all of the tools they need to succeed..
To accomplish both properly, you’ll need to talk to key influencers about how they feel about your website and how you can improve it to connect with your audience more effectively.
Create an influencer-friendly website
Depending on your product and industry, creating an influencer-friendly website may take a varied form. However, the most popular methods are as follows:
- Make sure your website is optimised for search engines. A website that is SEO-friendly has a secure domain and is indexed by Google. This stage develops the credibility of your website among both influencers and consumers.
- Make your website responsive to mobile devices. It’s crucial to remember that the majority of people use their mobile devices to access the internet. Websites that are difficult to navigate through on a mobile device can turn off visitors.
- Create a sign-up page for influencers and ambassadors. As your company expands, you’ll get a lot of requests from influencers who want to be a part of your community. You can create an informational sign-up page to facilitate these requests.
- Make all of your website content social media-friendly. Influencers and other users can quickly promote the content they love if your site content is easy to share on social media.
- Every special event or promotion should have its own landing page. Virtual events, sweepstakes, and promos are just a few examples of things that should be highlighted on their own page on your website. This strategy allows social media users to share the unique event with their followers while also allowing you to organise your information.
- Make as much use of influencer content as possible. Influencers can frequently create better product photos and videos than you can. Repurposed influencer material also saves you money on production. Finally, influencers will be gratified that their material will be featured on your website. Make sure you have the rights to influencer content before using it on your website, as a disclaimer.
Finally, in the creator economy, influencer-generated content is vital to success.
Influencer-generated content can help brands create trust with consumers by cutting through the clutter of digital adverts and sponsored content. Influencers can give your business legitimacy that would take years to earn otherwise, in addition to improving brand awareness and driving sales.