4 Tips for Becoming a Social Media Influencer
By Anne Leonard
What is a social media influencer, exactly? Social media influencers are essentially everyday people who have gained a high-level following on their accounts and are now paid to promote products.
Of course, reaching this status is easier said than done. Becoming a social media influencer doesn’t happen overnight. However, with a little know-how and advice, you’ll be well on your way to earning your own paid gig.
Here are four tips to becoming a social media influencer:
1. Identify your passions, then openly share your lifestyle on social media.
Start with narrowing down your passions. Interested in food? You should be sharing photos from restaurants, reviews, recipes and other similar content. If you’re passionate about a vegan lifestyle, your feeds should reflect this as well.
In addition, following the accounts of experts and social media influencers within your field can be helpful for steering the content you produce.
The bottom line is this: The more authentic you are, the more your followers will connect with you. Be careful to not allow your content to become solely promotions. If you do, you run the risk of becoming ‘spam’ to your followers.
2. Curate your feeds apart from each other.
While it’s easy to click the ‘share’ button from Instagram to Twitter, you shouldn’t make this a habit. Do you want to see duplicate content on different feeds? Your followers don’t either.
For example, share a photo of that great recipe you made on your Instagram account. Then, share an enticing line from your blog post on Twitter in addition to the photo. That way, you are promoting the same content in two different formats.
3. Be careful to not blindly accept an influencer gig.
Now that you’re an influencer with thousands—or millions—of followers, it can be tempting to accept any gig a brand offers you. For instance, it’s common for influencers to post on their feeds twice per day. But what if a brand sponsor requests that you post 10 times per day? You followers might see this content as spam-like and inauthentic. The result? You’ll quickly lose your followers and your hard-earned credibility. Since you know your followers and their interests, make sure to weigh the result of each offer to see if it’s a good fit for your brand and your followers.
4. Post consistently and be patient.
It takes time to curate your feed, establish a following and get noticed by brands. In the meantime, build your voice, share your life and be relatable. When you’re relevant and relatable and you build engagement, you become one step closer to being a true influencer on social media.
