If you ever thought of using social media influencers as a way to market your brand, you may need to avoid these few dangerous common mistakes.
Using social media influencers to promote brands is now considered a big thing in marketing, but also a misused one. Influencers, whether they were online or offline, are good simply because they have a good number of audience that listen to them, influence. But an influence can only happen when their audience know they’re sharing their own opinion and not paid to do so. Otherwise, the influencer will be more like a radio advertisement but with less audience.
So, the first step in using an influencer is to make it sound as genuine and as original as possible. Businesses that are less creative might find the idea of not being obvious in using influencers, especially social media influencers, hard to buy. This is basically because they consider them a mean of advertising.
The Art of Product Placement
Remember Wilson in Cast Away movie? This is a simple and powerful product placement example. I personally consider Wilson a cast member of the movie, but “Wilson”, as we all know, is the volleyball brand. The brand name was repeatedly used in the movie without even sounding as if they were promoting the brand, or even that Wilson is a brand name.
Wilson, the company not the movie character, succeeded in their product placement because the director of the movie used the brand as a part of the story, unlike advertisements, were the brand or the product is the main part of them. Using your brand as a part of an entertaining content will increase brand awareness and at the same time the audience will not look at it as a piece of advertisement.
“Using your brand as a part of an entertaining content will increase brand awareness and at the same time the audience will not look at it as a piece of advertisement.
To do so, you need to choose the right influencer that fit your brand and product, an influencer that usually share a type of content that your brand can be part of. So, when your brand becomes a part of this influencers’ content, it will still feel natural.
The audience are smart. Don’t pay someone with a big number of followers to share a compliment that, for example, your restaurant is his or her favorite when he or she just said the same thing about another one. Choose the influencer that “can” influence your brand, and make sure of the content he or she will post before it’s posted. Sometimes, just one regular content taken while in your store (with the logo clear in the background and a Geotag on the post) is enough.
When to be obvious?
Being obvious when using influencers is not always a terrible idea (but it usually is). You can ask any social media account to post an advertisement like the one we see on newspapers if the price was really good and if you don’t mind becoming a spammer. There are two issues to consider here. The first is that you shouldn’t expect the effect of product placement (trust). The second is that it may be considered as some kind of a spam, which is negative to both you and the person posting it, especially if it was repeatedly seen by the followers (but that’s really not your issue).
On the other hand, you can be obvious and avoid the negative appearance of the paid content by using sponsored content. Sponsored content is when you post a content that the audience will want to read or watch and doesn’t directly promote your business or products but states that the content is sponsored (or produced) by your brand. You can safely do that when the content is aimed to raise awareness of a good cause or charity.
“In the age of social media, we forget that influence and word-of-mouth happens in the offline world as well, and probably even more than online!
Go offline
In the age of social media, we forget that influence and word-of-mouth happens in the offline world as well, and probably even more than online! In a recent study, researchers in the health industry in UK found out that vaccinating the “popular kids” is a good strategy to get their friends to get vaccinated. And I’m talking about a medical vaccinating not fashion trends or new gadgets. The same methods of using influencers online can be adopted offline but instead of it taking place on Instagram it will take place in schools, malls, coffee shops, and restaurants.
P.S.
Before you use any marketing tool think of the following: Your brand position, your targeted audience, and the message you need to spread.
