How to be an influencer: 9 tips to reach people and have followers.
Tips for launching a career as an influencer, from the psychology of marketing.
The media has been evolving and with it, so has the way to become famous. While singers, actresses and TV celebrities are still widely admired figures, a new type of celebrity has emerged in recent years: influencers.
Influencers can be anything, but they all share the trait of being content creators. Drawings, music, movie reviews, exercise routines... there are many types of content in the form of photos and videos that, because of their originality or because they have offered something of very good quality, have catapulted them to fame.
Becoming an influencer is not easy, but not impossible.. There are several aspects that must be taken into account to get our Youtube channel or Instagram account to become influential. Next we will learn how to be an influencer.
How to be an influencer: a challenge for thousands of people.
With the rise of social networks and large platforms for publishing content, more and more people want to be influencers.. Influencers are defined as people who provide content on a certain topic, whether photos or videos, which are original, of good quality or simply have been successful and serve as a reference for many people. As these people have many followers, companies and commercial brands see them as a very effective platform to promote their products.
Nowadays, influencers are admired people, on the same level as singers, actors and other celebrities. For this reason many are those who enter the world of social networks, whether Instagram, Youtube, Twitter or Facebook, publishing all kinds of content and waiting to see if they get a little fame. The problem is that they don't know how complex, competitive and select this world is, so most of them end up failing in their attempt. most of them end up failing in their attempt to become influencers..
Not everyone is an influencer and not everyone knows what they should do. There are many aspects to take into account when publishing content that makes the posts, photos and videos we publish have an impact or not, and of course, if we do not get many people to see and interact with what we post, we can not earn the title of influencers. No matter how many influencers we think we are, if nobody follows us, we are nobody.
If the content we post is not original and it is not competitive, we are not going to stand out among the many users who try to succeed in this community. in this community. Here are a few tips to make the content we publish, whether in the form of photos or videos in any of the social networks that we can think of.
Tips for being an influencer and managing your digital identity.
Let's look at some tips to become influencers or, at least, that our content attracts attention and not only provide a lot of "likes", but also a quality and relevant audience, taking into account the type of content we generate.
1. Set a goal
Before starting to publish content, we must first ask ourselves what we want to post. Not everything goes, since an account that publishes very diverse and unspecialized content tends to go unnoticed.. We must set a goal when we open the account on the social network, choosing the topic and type of audience we want to attract.
It is essential to be clear about what we want to post. Whether it is cooking recipes, exercise routines, drawings we have made... all of them are specific contents that must be related to the name of the account or, at least, its biography.
We should also aim to publish the content with a certain frequency.. Ideally, the frequency of publication should be between 3 or 4 days minimum.
2. Talk about the subject we master
People have many skills but in some we are better and in others we are worse. We must know what our strengths are and what we are good at and start there. We can only be influencers if the content we post is of quality and shows that we have mastered it. If we do so, our followers and the brands that can advertise us will be interested in us.
Whether it is about a specific training (e.g., nutrition, medicine, psychology...) or a hobby (e.g., sports, music, art...) our content must show that we know what we are talking about or what we do, which will make us compete with our competitors.This will allow us to compete with other accounts that offer the same type of content but not as carefully as ours does. Of course, we must try to have some originality, something special that makes our content a little different, something new.
3. Avoid diversification
Closely related to the previous point, we must avoid diversification, that is, talking about anything. It is true that there are many influencers who have secondary channels and accounts where they talk about content that is little or nothing related to their main account, however, we must not forget that these people became famous because of the specific content they offered on their first account.. When they saw that they had enough success they dared to open more accounts.
We cannot do this, at least for now. We must first wait until the first account we have opened has some kind of impact. If this is not the case, what we should consider is to change the type of content of the main account, not open a new one. If we are lucky and we become famous with the first account, we can consider opening a new one with a different theme, but understanding that it is still a risky action.
4. Be original
As we have mentioned, there are many who try to be influencers and it always happens that there are thousands of accounts specialized in the same topic. Each of these accounts has a really difficult time offering 100% original content, since there is so much competition and there is so much content on offer that it is very rare to publish something radically different from what the others offer.
It is possible that we see another author's content and it inspires us to publish something. For example, if we have a drawing account we may see another account's art and want to draw a picture of theirs but with our style. That's fine as long as we give credit the original sourceand ask the author for permission and thank them for allowing us to do it.
What we should never do is copy from influencers, or take a content that has gone viral and publish it on our account hoping that some clueless user ends up on our account believing that we are the original source of it. Copying is not only ethically wrong and the users of the social network will see us as an unoriginal and dishonest account.. In addition, all social networks have algorithms that detect SPAM, causing our account to be closed for violating the rules of the community.
5. Take care of the photos and videos we publish
It seems obvious that to be a good influencer it is necessary to take care of the photos and videos we publish, but the truth is that many are those who do not. The quality of the multimedia content of our site must be taken into account.The images are often the letter of introduction for new followers and, also, what our most loyal "followers" are looking for. The poor quality of the images is synonymous with a lazy content creator.
Regardless of the type of photo or video we upload, the important thing to take into account is that it looks sharp, with a good composition and with the right light. If necessary, we should pass it through a filter, a feature that all smartphones have in their camera. Taking into account the great facilities that smartphones offer us, nowadays making quality videos and photos is not something complicated at all..
6. Add and take care of the text
It is highly recommended that publications are accompanied by some text. The text should be brief, direct and with a hook.. If we go overboard with the length, what can happen is that we waste a lot of time working hard on a text that no one will read, since when using social networks people do not want to read "texts", but rather look at images and relax.
In addition to being short, the text must be well written, without spelling mistakes and using an appropriate register according to the type of content we publish. Publication and text must be at the same level of quality.If the written part is not pleasant to read, it may give the impression that the person who publishes it is lazy, lazy and ignorant.
7. Have quality followers
Many people believe that to be a successful influencer it is necessary to have many followers. This is true, but only in part. The most important thing is to have quality content that has served to attract those followers, and not the other way around. However, many prefer to go to platforms that offer paid followers which are nothing more than bots, fake profiles that do not interact with the content and are very susceptible to the algorithms of the page to eliminate.
Buying followers is not recommended at all. First, because it means spending money on something totally unnecessary. Second, because an account that has followers that are clearly bots gives the feeling that it is uninteresting, even a little illegal. And third, because we will be lowering the quality of our content, which will make our account uncompetitive and we will have very few influencers.
We are interested in having quality followers, real people who interact with our publications, contribute content, criticisms and suggestions.contribute content, criticisms and suggestions, as well as sharing our publications. These are the people who in real life will talk about our account, recommend it to their friends and through word of mouth will make our page grow.
8. Be honest with advertising
Influencers with more followers are coveted by brands, and this is not a bad thing, quite the contrary.. Television and newspapers have begun to lose strength, being replaced by content creators, so it makes sense that companies have become interested in convincing influencers to promote their products in exchange for gifts and payments.
That's the way the world is, and no influencer should feel bad because they "got bought". Who hasn't wanted to earn money in exchange for doing what they like? Yes, it is true that there will be some followers who will take a dim view of the fact that their youtuber, streamer or blogger is promoting a product or service, but what they are really doing is their job.
However, if we want our followers to stick with us, we need to be honest with the advertising. If we have to talk about a brand, we must do it explicitly, saying clearly that we are promoting their product or service. Doing it in a more "subliminal" way may make our followers believe that we are trying to deceive them and feel bad and, of course, they may start to unfollow us; or it may even lead to legal consequences.
9. Use hashtags, tags and geolocation.
Every time we publish a video or photo we must use hashtags, tags and indicate the place where the image was published or taken (geolocation). These three aspects are something that characterizes the world of influencers and, in fact, are the elements that can give us more visibility.They can make people who do not follow us but who are close to us or interested in the topic we are talking about start following us.
With hashtags and tags our content becomes easier to find when using the search engine of the social network. These hashtags and tags are keywords that, by clicking on them, take us to all the public posts on the social network that talk about the topic in question. Geolocation is useful for those who are looking for images taken in a specific place to see ours and, if they are interested, click on our content.
Likewise, we should not abuse hashtags and tags. Just as we mentioned that nobody reads a long text, too many tags can give the impression that our content is heavy and overloaded. The most advisable is to put at most 10 hashtags, all of them directly related to the content of the photo or video we have published and the place and time where it was taken.
We should not use words that are not related to what we have published.. This looks pretty bad, since users can interpret it as "clickbait", that is, using a word or thumbnail in a video that has nothing to do with what is actually published, making the person who clicked on that content feel cheated. No one follows an account that has made them feel bad.
Bibliographic references:
- Schouten, Alexander P.; Janssen, Loes; Verspaget, Maegan (2020). "Celebrity vs. Influencer endorsements in advertising: the role of identification, credibility, and Product-Endorser fit". International Journal of Advertising. 0 (2): 258-281. doi:10.1080/02650487.2019.1634898. ISSN 0265-0487.
- Rowels, David (2014). Digital Branding: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Strategy, Tactics and Measurement. Kogan Page.
- Khamis, Susie; Ang, Lawrence; Welling, Raymond (2017). "Self-branding, 'micro-celebrity' and the rise of Social Media Influencers". Celebrity Studies. 8 (2): 191–208. doi:10.1080/19392397.2016.1218292. hdl:10453/98736. ISSN 1939-2397.
(Updated at Apr 13 / 2024)