Whether you have considered running your own social media accounts or have conducted research on what marketing agencies can offer to help you enhance your online presence, I’m sure you have come across influencer marketing and the benefits of running campaigns featuring influencers for your service or product. 

Back in the day (and some might still prefer doing it this way), it was mostly an organic process. After figuring out which influencers you wanted to collaborate with, you would start engaging with them, developing a relationship with your favourite influencers, hoping that when the time comes and you want to feature them in your campaign, they would be happy to do it. In more recent years, businesses have chosen to use influencer marketing agencies and platforms that specialise in this field and have an amazing database that you can choose from for any campaign you have in mind. 

Why not just choose the ones you like and reach out to them? Well, there have been controversial challenges within the influencer community lately, mostly relating to engagement rates, effectiveness, and industry-focused influencer marketing. With accounts able to purchase followers, there was an opportunity for some people to quickly grow their following overnight and to appear like a valuable influencer account to potential brands on Instagram. Of course, their engagement rate or conversion rates were not up to the standards the clients were expecting, leaving brands disappointed and bitter about this style of marketing.

However, influencer marketing can be an amazing marketing tool for your business if done the right way. According to Oberlo, about 93% of marketers are using influencer marketing and 9 out of 10 believe it is also effective. That being said, by looking at some of the influencer marketing trends this year, it will be easier for any brand to understand exactly what type of influencer they need, what to ask for before signing a collaboration and how to approach influencer marketing strategically. 

Influencer Platforms

An increasing number of brands make the choice to outsource their influencer marketing projects to platforms specialising in this. In recent years such platforms have become quite popular, providing marketers or businesses with a great influencer database, and also other complementary services such as tracking and monitoring campaigns, insights and analytics that will provide the client with a more clear understanding of the campaign’s success and the influencer’s reach and engagement. 

More Regulations

With little to no regulation for the influencer marketing industry, it became harder to create a system that is fair and transparent for online users, as well as brands and influencers. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has stepped in the right direction, establishing some ground rules that both brands and influencers need to follow before and after running a campaign, ensuring that there is a more transparent, as well as seamless process for the influencer marketing world. One example is that the FTC clearly states that influencers must disclose their relationship with brands and the products or services they are advertising are suitable for their followers. 

Going Niche and Micro

A very popular trend in the influencer marketing industry is going after niche and micro-influencers, choosing ambassadors for your brand who are not only perceived as trustworthy and relevant by their online community but also have quite high engagement rates as they only focus on a particular niche or industry, getting to really know what their followers need and want to see on the subject. With engagement rates of 6.3% for micro-influencers, more often than not brands are starting to redirect their campaigns and budgets towards these influencers who seem more reliable, authentic and engaging for their target audience. 

Long-Term Relationships

Going hand in hand with the reasons why you would opt for micro-influencers for your campaigns, maintaining long-term relationships with them is also a plus. By a long-term relationship, we understand working with the same influencer across brand campaigns, for at least a couple of years. Since you are choosing a niche influencer that is a thought leader for the online community in your field, working with them long-term won’t be a problem because as long as they stay within your niche, they will always be a relevant choice for your campaigns. Businesses around the world are embracing this new trend and they would rather focus on fewer influencers whom they work really well with, who deliver relevant results and contribute to the success of their campaigns. 

More Audio and Video 

Another trend in the influencer marketing scene is: more audio and video content! We all know by now that video content tends to get more attention and engagement on most social media platforms and it looks like this is not changing any time soon. According to Influencer Marketing Hub’s report, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year, meaning that video content is a key element to an effective content marketing strategy. What’s more, audio formats are gaining popularity by the day with more podcasts than ever taking over the online environment. 

While the social media world is constantly changing, there is no doubt that these trends are here to stay for a while. With influencer marketing you can elevate your business, raise brand awareness and increase conversions by choosing to collaborate with influencers that are relevant in your industry, have built an amazing online presence and have a close relationship with their community in the digital space. 

If you would like to know more about influencer marketing and how we can help, don’t hesitate to get in touch at hello@socialgamma.com.

Blogging is a great marketing channel that can provide your business with both online visibility and credibility within your field. It’s likely that there are other companies out there offering a similar product or service to you. Creating a blog is a great way to set you apart from your competitors. It gives your business a personality and the chance to share information and insights that will make you stand out. But sometimes, it’s hard to know what to write about. Finding the right balance of entertainment, interest and information can be tricky. So, we’ve put together a few tips to help you create killer content that your users are going to love.

The following diagram illustrates the perfect choice of a blog post. The topics you choose should sit in the middle of the three circles – they should have the potential to drive high volumes of traffic to your site, they should be highly relevant to your offering and for the greatest success, the subject matter should be a novel topic with relatively little content already available.

Share information about your product or service

One of the main reasons people visit your site is to learn more about your product or service. So, your blog is a great place to share what really sets your offering apart. Maybe you follow an innovative process, source materials from sustainable suppliers around the world or have a unique and exciting way to welcome new customers. This is your chance to shout about it and let readers know why your product or service is so great. Make sure your posts are clear and concise, avoid any technical jargon and include appealing visuals that illustrate the points you’re making.   

Incorporate a human element

Humans love learning about fellow humans. Be sure to balance out the product-focused posts with those with a more human touch. You could share the story of the origins of your company, focusing on where the idea came from, the challenges you faced and any key milestones along the way. This will allow readers to feel a connection to you as a person, and not just see your business as a soulless entity. Alternatively, focusing on the people who make up your business is another great way to incorporate human interest into your blog. You could do a Q+A session with some of your team members or share details of what they get up to behind the scenes. Anything that keeps your blog friendly and relatable is likely to build trust with your readers.

Give advice

As a business with a successful product or service in your industry, people will look up to you for advice on achieving their own goals. Compile posts with handy tips, step-by-step instructions or some useful insights into the knowledge you’ve gained during your career. If your post is filled with helpful and practical advice, readers may even bookmark it to refer back to when they need a reminder, which is great for keeping your brand at the front of people’s minds. Incorporating well-designed infographics that readers can easily share will also help increase your reach and establish your blog as a useful and knowledgeable resource.

Share industry updates

If someone has an interest in your product or service, it’s likely they’re also interested in the industry in general. Keep up to date with current news and trends and share this on your blog alongside your own opinions and, of course, how this relates to your business and why it might be relevant for your customers. By showing readers that you’re on top of the latest developments in the industry, you’ll gain authority in the field and your blog may even become a place people visit to keep themselves informed, which will drive lots of traffic to your site. This kind of post is likely to get shared on social media too, which is another great way to build awareness of your brand.

Be inspiring

People are much more likely to read your blog if it makes them feel good. Keep your tone upbeat and make sure you leave your readers feeling positive, even empowered. If you’re giving tips, ensure they’re easy to follow. If you highlight an issue, make sure you emphasise how to solve it – even better if your product or service is the perfect solution! Remind your readers of the values that your company believes in, and inspire them to instil similar positive values in their own lives. Just remember, those reading your blog are already a captive audience so always ensure you give them enough reason to come back!

While blogging can bring many benefits to your business, it can also take a significant amount of time which is something many teams don’t have a lot of. If you’d like support from an agency in creating engaging and well-informed content for your blog, please get in touch with us at hello@socialgamma.com or visit our website at www.socialgamma.com – we’d love to help!

Widely known in the marketing industry, your target audience is key to the success of your marketing strategy, regardless of budget spend, chosen channels or industry. Whenever you are looking to determine your target audience, you must pay attention to demographics, taking into account geographic location, age, sex, religion, marital status, income and other important elements. 

Whether you have just a rough idea of who you’re trying to target or you have already developed a more complex description of your target audience, it is important to dig deeper and really narrow it down to factors beyond demographics in order to start building up your marketing persona. 

Sure, knowing that you want to target young women in the 25-30 age group based in London begins to paint a picture of who your audience is and, while this is helpful, it’s just the first step in the journey of determining your marketing persona. Now is where you want to look at psychographics and learn which of these young women would genuinely be interested in what you’re offering. What are their psychological tendencies? What are they passionate about? What does their lifestyle look like? You also should find out their interests and hobbies, where they get their favourite products from and their expectations and experiences with products or services that are similar to yours. 

Understanding their lifestyle will help you to really determine what impact it has on their consumption behaviour and that will contribute to your overall strategy and get you a step closer to achieving a better conversion rate. 

All of this might sound overwhelming but follow these steps and you will have gathered a lot of useful information about your marketing persona before you even know it. 

Firstly, you need to really define your target audience as a group through the demographic characteristics. 

When looking at demographic factors, they might not all be relevant for your target audience, but you should still consider them all when determining your ideal audience.

Here are some elements you should analyse:

• Age
• Sex
• Ethnicity
• Education Level
• Income Level
• Marital Status
• Occupation
• Living Status
• Nationality
• Political Affiliation
• Religion

Once you have already created a group of people that you plan on targeting based on demographics, it’s time to narrow it down and research the psychographic information to start building your marketing persona.

These should consist of:

• Lifestyle
• Interests and Passions
• Beliefs
• Personality Traits
• Activities
• Preferences
• Values
• Opinions 

When you supplement your demographic persona with psychographic elements, you will have a much more complex profile. All that’s left to do now is make sure this profile is relevant to your brand. You now know a lot of information about your marketing persona. You know about their behaviour, their personality, where they are located and a lot of additional information from researching their generation. This can all be incorporated into your marketing strategy when creating campaigns targeted at them. Your final milestone is taking all this information and using it to understand how and when your brand is relevant for your marketing persona. 

To achieve this, create a document or a slide and add everything you have learnt about the persona you’re building, adding as much detail as possible, even assigning them a name. A good strategy, suggested by Quicksprout, is to use your marketing persona’s demographic information to identify when they were born, look for the top baby names in that year and choose one for your persona. By the end, you will be able to see a complex profile which will provide valuable insights into which marketing techniques will maximise conversions and really speak to your audience. 

If you’re not sure where to begin, a good starting point might be to look at statistics and research general psychographic information for the generation of your target audience. From there, you will be able to find out more about other details and don’t forget to look into credible and multiple sources to ensure you have accurate data. 

Facebook and Instagram are major players in the modern social media marketing game. Any business worth their salt invest time and even money into excellently curated feeds, so that they can have that unique connection with customers that just didn’t exist before the age of social media. But what are the benefits of these sites, and is one better than the other?

Let’s look at Facebook first.

Benefits:

Facebook has a massive impact on how the public interact with each other and has been around far longer than Instagram. It’s a great place for businesses to update their consumers on upcoming events and happenings, as well as sharing articles they are interested in. Facebook’s algorithm supports video content beyond all else, so video ads or updates are a great way to get a bigger reach.

Negatives:

Most Facebook users primarily use it for social purposes. That is, they connect with friends and family while businesses are less of a priority. Even the name itself doesn’t promote “faceless corporations”. It also has an overall older audience than Instagram, which can be bad depending on your target market.

What about Instagram?

Benefits:

Instagram is a highly visual form of media, allowing businesses to showcase some design and aesthetic skill, and reinforce their visual identity. The more a company’s brand identity is seen, the more associations a customer builds with the brand, making it more memorable and more likely to be used. Instagram also has a more current feel to it, not just because it is a younger site, but because of the “instant” share element of stories. Companies can show themselves as more relatable by sharing day-to-day happenings through stories. While Facebook has this option too, it is used much less.

Negatives:

Instagram has a lot of content restrictions, for example you cannot share hyperlinks in posts. This means that businesses cannot make use of article and blog sharing as easily, something that is beneficial to the tech and finance industries. Another issue is that many companies use bots to increase their following, and Instagram is catching on. The anti-bot algorithms make it difficult to keep up with what is acceptable and what isn’t. Optimising hashtags is a constant job, discovering what is relevant but also unique enough that you won’t get buried. Having a social media team to keep on top of all the changes is the best way to get the best of both worlds.

There are plenty of positives and negatives to both sites, and which site you should focus on also depends on your intentions. If you have a younger audience, Instagram is the way, whereas if you’re more business focused, the lack of link sharing on Instagram might be detrimental. The best approach to social media is to make use of all the available platforms, and a combination of both Facebook and Instagram used in the correct way can be a powerful strategy.

Get in touch through the Contact page to find out how our Social Media Services can help your business bloom.