In this article we will discuss about –
- 10 Very Good Reasons Why You Should Become an Influencer
- Creating a Personal Brand
- Alternatives to Using Your Own Name as an Influencer
- Creating a Spot to Film In for YouTube Influencers
- How to Network With the Other Big Influencers in Your Niche
- How to Repurpose Your Content as an Influencer
10 Very Good Reasons Why You Should Become an Influencer
An influencer is someone that has the power to influence the thoughts and opinions of a large audience.
This is typically someone on Instagram or YouTube with a large, highly engaged following.
This kind of person is highly valuable to advertisers and to marketers alike as they have the ability to sway purchasing decisions, increase brand awareness, and even set trends and define what is ‘cool’.
You can earn a huge amount as an influencer, but thatÕs not the only reason to aim for this target.
Here are just some of the incredible perks that come from being an influencer:
- Getting recognized in the street Ð not only is this highly rewarding, but it also means you often get freebies or even the option to skip queues! And it’s great when you’re on a date and you get recognized.
- Being able to make money from nearly anything you do. Selling signed t-shirts? Giving a talk? The possibilities are endless!
- Being given exciting opportunities Ð chances to appear on talk shows, give interviews, write books, travel etc. One influencer called Joe Suggs was last year invited to take part in the UK TV show ÒStrictly Come Dancing.Ó He is now a huge celebrity and recalls the experience as one of the best times in his life.
- Being sent freebies to review. If you choose a niche you love, those will be products you’d probably have paid for yourself!
- Being able to earn huge amounts of money for a sponsored post.
- Having a huge army of loyal fans that will buy into anything you sell.
- Being able to generate interest/funds for any cause that’s important to you.
- Being able to direct huge amounts of traffic and customers to products you want to sell.
- STILL also generating a passive income and living the lifestyle you have dreamed of.
- Getting feedback and praise for writing and posting things that you love and are passionate about!
Let’s put it another way. When you have 100,000 subscribers on YouTube or 200,000 followers on Instagram, the going rate for a sponsored post is $1,000.
If you have 2M followers on Instagram then, a single post could earn you $10,000. That’s just to take a photo.
And if marketers are willing to pay that much, then imagine what you could earn by selling your own products this way!
Interested? Time to become an influencer Ð anyone can do it!
Creating a Personal Brand
Creating a Personal Brand Ð How Internet Marketing Can Change Your Life
Often internet marketing involves creating a brand and then selling products through that brand. That brand will often be cold, detached, and alien to the users.
But have you considered that this brand does not have to be a bland corporate brand? It doesnÕt need to be Òfaceless.Ó
You don’t need to have a fancy logo or to have some meaningless and hip name. Another option is to make yourself the brand. This is what’s called ‘personal branding’ and it’s a fantastic strategy for anyone that’s looking to promote a product online and that doesn’t mind putting themselves out there.
What is Personal Branding?
Personal branding means that youÕre turning yourself into the figurehead of your business in a very public manner.
This can mean either that you are the business and you trade under your own name (it saves you money on trademarks at least!) or it could just mean that you’re featured front and center on your website and social media.
A good example of this would be the Smart Passive Income Blog where anyone who reads the blog regularly will recognize Pat Flynn.
Likewise, you have the Four Hour Blog where Tim Ferriss is front and center. These are examples of personal brands that have worked very well.
Advantages
One advantage of a personal brand is that it can make you famous.
Sure, some people will see this more as a disadvantage but if you’re the sort of person who likes the limelight it may well appeal.
Another advantage is that it lets people feel as though they know you and it gives your brand personality.
This means that when you interact with someone on Twitter or Facebook, they’ll feel like theyÕre talking to an actual human being rather than just being the recipient of market speak.
They thus become FAR more likely to buy from you in future.
With a personal brand you’ll also be able to aim to become an influencer.
That means you can get paid by brands to create sponsored content. It’s common for an influencer on Instagram to get paid $1,000 for every 200,000 followers they have.
If you have 1M followers, you can get paid $5,000 for something that takes literally five minutes. That’s pretty good hourly rates!
It’s definitely worth considering and if you’re interested, pay close attention to the web’s big names to see how they’re making it work for them!
Alternatives to Using Your Own Name as an Influencer
Becoming an influencer will often mean creating a personal brand. A personal brand is a brand that places you as the creator front and center.
That means that youÕll be using your name on the website, on the social media accounts, and in any marketing.
This is one of the smartest decisions you can make from a business standpoint, as it will help to make you seem more like a ‘real person’ and far more accessible.
People will therefore be more likely to order your services or products, because theyÕll feel as though they know you and theyÕll be able to get a response from you should anything goes wrong.
But this strategy is not for everyone.
When you create your social media account or blog using your own name as your branding, you might find that this makes you feel somewhat anxious.
Many people are shy to put themselves out there, and might even worry about security and privacy issues.
This is something that you should aim to overcome.
After all, if you are too shy for your friends to see your content and know it is yours, then there is a good chance that you need to rethink your strategy!
But there are genuine occasions where using your own name might not be ideal.
In these circumstances you have a few options:
- Create a ‘screen name’. This can be an obvious username you might pick for YouTube or Instagram that is used in addition to your real name Ð you then make your real name harder to find.
- Use a pseudonym. There is no reason this canÕt work Ð just make sure it is believable. Of course things like WhoIs information might give you away though.
- Create a brand name but make yourself more prominent. A good example of this is Pat Flynn, who is the owner of SmartPassiveIncome.com. That website is a brand in itself, but Pat is also ‘known’ to the users.
- Create a brand that is the ‘influencer’. This is much harder to do, but is achievable if you are smart and lucky.
- Team up! A great way to protect yourself is through strength in numbers. If you have friends with a similar interest, then you can all create a website or social account together and this way give your audience multiple people to respond to. This can be a great strategy because it helps to start that sense of community early on.
All these tips work well, but wherever possibleÉ use your own name!
Creating a Spot to Film In for YouTube Influencers
Becoming a YouTube influencer means creating lots of content that looks professional and that provides value. This can take a LOT of time, and be difficult if you aren’t a natural presenter.
What makes life much easier is to create a permanent spot in your home for doing this Ð a spot that will always be ready for you to just step into and start filming, and a spot that will look great on film. Let’s look at how to create such a thing.
Choosing Your Spot
Firstly, you need to choose your spot. Ideally this should be somewhere where you can leave your camera permanently on its stand and where you can set up lighting around the area too.
The hope is that you’ll then be able to start recording immediately without worrying about things getting in your way, or about having to clear the area first. Making content for YouTube takes time, so the more you can optimize the process, the more value and content you can put out.
As such you’re likely to want to choose somewhere such as a porch, a basement or a study where you don’t entertain guests or have to work often.
At the same time though there are also some other important considerations for your filming area, which should also be:
- Light and spacious
- Not backing onto any windows that will create difficulties
- Not prone to getting cluttered easily.
- Good in terms of acoustics
- Be large enough to provide space for your videos Ð especially if you’re doing exercise instructions etc.
- Able to look good on camera (kind of crucial!) Ð and suitable for your niche
Dressing Up Your Spot
This last point is important. If you’re creating a YouTube channel that you hope will be able to promote your site and your business, then you need to make sure that it looks professional and that you are ‘selling the dream’.
That means your home should look great, so make sure that you pick a room that makes you look like someone worth listening to/emulating.
At the same time, you should also think about how the area matches the niche of your site. In other words, if your site is about bodybuilding then a weights room or a kitchen will make more sense than a living room.
Likewise, if you’re vlogging about video games then you might want to do it in a man-cave filled with games memorabilia.
Here you are basically trying to make your space into a backdrop that is fitting for your topic.
That might require you to hang a poster, or it might mean installing LED lights.
When creating this set up, spend a day shopping around for items that might help it to look better and you’ll find that your videos become much more popular.
How to Network With the Other Big Influencers in Your Niche
If you want to grow quickly in your niche as an influencer, then it is very important that you learn how to network with the other big influencers.
In any industry or niche online, there will always be a community of established content creators.
Just look at the YouTube Òfitness communityÓ for an example.
If you can ingratiate yourself with this audience, then you will not only gain access to a larger audience very quickly, but you will also be able to gain from the endorsement of people that the audience already trust!
How to Work Alongside Big Names
The first thing to understand then, is how to enter the space in a non-threatening way.
While there is always room for more than one influencer, some creators might be reluctant to give you too much of a boost for fear of being usurped.
A solution to this problem is to try and position yourself not as a direct competitor.
The way you do this is to carve out your own niche in the market, rather than tackling them directly head on.
Getting a Response
The next challenge is to get the creators you want to work with you to actually answer your emails.
This is extremely difficult, but the solution is to start by just interacting with them in their comments section and elsewhere.
Become known to them.
Only then should you email, at which point you need to be polite, be respectful of their time, and not expect anything from them.
If they don’t answer, leave it a while but do try again Ð they might simply have been too busy to respond.
Try not to start too big.
Don’t immediately approach the most prominent names in your niche, but instead target those that are a similar size or just bigger than you.
This way you will be more likely to get a response and you can gradually climb the ladder.
Failing that hire the individual and use this as a way to speak with them.
If they offer consultation or coaching that is perfect.
Playing Dirty
If this doesn’t work, then there is one more strategy you can use but must be very careful with: thatÕs to create a video that challenges or critiques them. Do this in a respectful manner, but it can be a great way to get more eyes on your content AND a good way to get noticed by them!
How to Repurpose Your Content as an Influencer
If you hope to run a successful blog and become a big influencer, then you need unique content. Google will only rank unique content, and thus you need to post original and new things in order to gain traction.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that content that isn’t unique has no purpose.
And in fact if content is duplicate, there’s still plenty you can do with it.
If you’ve written hundreds of articles for your own website, then it’s important that you get as much use out of these as possible and that’s why you might be interested in recycling your content.
Giveaways and Digital Products for Marketers
For instance, how about making an e-book?
If you’ve got a website on bodybuilding, then that means you probably have hundreds of articles on how to build muscle and get strong.
You can’t make another website because Google won’t like it, but you can make an e-book and then sell it through your blog or social accounts.
As an influencer, people will be eager to get more content for you, and while they might have seen some of your posts, they won’t have seen all of them Ð certainly not collected in this way and with additional chapters thrown in.
This is an excellent way to monetize a big audience without lifting a finger!
The possibilities are endless in fact for recycled content Ð you can put it into an Android or iPhone app (a site on mushrooms can become a ‘Mushroom Encyclopedia’ app for instance with very little programming involved), have an ‘e-zine’ to go with your site, or even use it in a newsletter.
There are plenty of places where having some content can provide value to your fans without needing to rank Ð and where it won’t hurt your current position in the SERPs.
Additional Income Streams
You can also sell that e-book through forums, social networking sites or ClickBank and it will never matter if it doesn’t rank. Or how about making a Kindle book and selling your bodybuilding knowledge through the Kindle store?
It’s free to do and once it’s up there it’ll bring a small yet steady stream of income with no need for you to moderate it or manage it.
You can even use that copy on Lulu to produce self-published books and sell it as a hard copy book (or just have it on your shelf for your own ego).
Additional income streams like this can make a huge difference for influencers.
Re-Post
One more powerful tip? Re-share your old posts! If you want to maintain a visible presence on Facebook for example, then thereÕs nothing to stop you re-sharing old archive posts.
A lot of your followers wonÕt have seen those posts before, and they will be just as effective at bringing people back to your content and increasing your status as an influencer!
