How An Online Influencer Can Help Drive Sales

What is an online influencer?

An online influencer such as a blogger, is an individual who produces digital content around subjects they are really passionate about. Specialising in a particular topic such as beauty, travel, lifestyle, parenting, interior design and food. A talented blogger will create a loyal following, by producing engaging content which is appreciated and shared on social media by other like minded people.

What type of online influencer should you work with?

Ideally you’ll want to work with an online influencer who brings brand synergy. For example, if your ecommerce business sells stain remover it’s unlikely a dedicated beauty blogger is going to feature your products on their social media channels. However if a beauty blogger knocked over a bottle of fake-tan onto a cream carpet, this would create an ideal opportunity for the online influencer to promote your ecommerce business and amazing stain removing product.

How to reach-out to an online influencer

Due to the power of social media, its easy for a brand to reach out to an individual and visa versa. Therefore take look at your own social media audience to see if any of your followers has a following of their own. If so, simply reach out to them and start to build a professional relationship.

For the sake of their social media audience, online influencers want to maintain a natural persona. Therefore its important you don’t go straight in with the hard-sell. Especially as this could turn off a blogger and more importantly their audience. So if you are not doing so already, start by following the individual and then “liking” some of their posts; and you may even find they approach you first about potentially working together.

What product should they promote and feature?

When it comes to deciding on the best product for your appointed blogger to feature, you need to put their audience first. It’s not a good idea to force the blogger into talking about a specific product you want to sell, as this may lead to a lack of genuine enthusiasm within the blogger’s content, and as we mentioned, online influencers need to stay true to themselves and their audience in order to stay relevant.

So talk to your online influencer about which products they fancy and what real world applications it has for them and their audience.

How should you compensate your online influencer?

Some high-profile online influencers not only have formal representation but also a rate card. However for bloggers just starting-out or wishing to remain neutral, free product samples and the opportunity to work together on other activity should suffice. Therefore decide on the amount of financial commitment you’d like to make and then ascertain which potential bloggers fall into this budget.

So why not reach out to a blogger and see how their online influence could accelerate your sales.

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