Guest post by Nate Vickery.
Who would you trust more, a brand trying to sell a product or a friend who vouches for it? You’d go with the latter option, of course. Nielsen says that 83% of customers would do the same.
Today’s customers are blind to TV ads, billboards, and flyers. They want brands to go the extra mile in providing them with the raw, personalized user experience.
That’s exactly where influencer marketing shines.
So, what’s the catch?
In the world of online marketing, an influencer is a like a mutual friend, bridging your brand and your target audience. They will not only connect their online community with you, but also improve your social media exposure, boost user engagement and conversions, and drive more traffic to your site.
Here is how influencer marketing will help your SEO efforts.
It Helps You Build a Diverse Link Profile
Asking influencers to link to your content is one of the most powerful ways to build quality links. However, getting them to do so may be a daunting task.
Bear in mind that influencers are highly respected people, who invest years in creating quality content, developing an authentic personal brand, and building a relevant base of their customers. So, before they link to your site, they need to make sure that these links won’t compromise their authority, as well as that they will be valuable to their target audience. Most commonly, they label these links as sponsored, which may affect your site’s credibility.
So, how to deal with a situation like this?
Well, instead of observing an influencer as another link building opportunity, you need to treat them like real celebrities. You could start with a campaign relevant to them and ask them to be your brand ambassadors.
- Create a valuable piece of content that covers the hottest industry trends and ask the influencer to share it on their social networks.
- Ask them to take part in the content you share on your blog. For example, you could do a mini interview with the most authoritative people in your niche, asking them to give their opinions on a particular subject matter. When you get the answers, you can create a cohesive blog post, where you would cite their quotes, mention their names, and link to their site. Once your blog post is live, you could share it online and ask them to share it, too.
- Gift them one of your products and ask them to share their opinion about it online.
To determine whether you’ve targeted the right influencers, you need to analyze your SEO reports and observe how the implementation of influencer marketing impacts your website’s performance. If your traffic, rankings, conversion rates, and the number of followers are stagnant, this means the influencers you’re working with do not resonate with your target audience.
It Improves your Brand Awareness and Transparency
When building your digital marketing campaign, you need to keep in mind that you’re not the only one out there. There are dozens (hundreds?) of your competitors, promoting products similar to yours, to the same target audience, using the same customer acquisition channels.
So, one of the major problems brands face is making themselves heard.
However, getting your customers to choose you over your competitors isn’t just about screaming louder. It’s about using the right means of marketing to set yourself apart.
And, that’s where influencer marketing steps in. According to some recent statistics, 49% of consumers on Twitter search for reviews from social media influencers before making a purchase, while 40% of them stated that a tweet from an influencer inspired them to make a purchase.
The great thing about influencers is that they aim to build wide communities of their followers. So, once you connect with them, you actually give their followers the opportunity to find you. Most importantly, their mentions, reviews, or links serve as outstanding authority boosters and a primary source of trust online.
It Provides You with a Steady Stream of Fresh Content
Content marketing and SEO are like fish and chips. They simply go hand-in-hand. To boot your rankings and improve your domain authority, you need to create relevant and reliable content that engages. Most importantly, you need to share it regularly.
Namely, content freshness is one of the Google’s most significant ranking signals and, if you haven’t updated your blog for months, your rankings will drop. However, creating fresh and interactive content regularly can be challenging and this is where working with influencers can help you.
Their job is to create and share lots of unique content that grabs people’s attention. They can also get their followers to create content for you. By inspiring their community to create posts for you, they will significantly boost the flow of your content. They will also show how relevant your brand is, improving your traffic, conversions, visibility and, of course, rankings.
Back to You
To make the most of influencer marketing, you first need to do your research and figure out who your customers are.
Second, you need to take numerous factors into consideration, including the influencer’s niche, reach, and engagement. Most importantly, you need to make sure the topics they cover are relevant to your target audience.
You also need to know where to find them and how to approach them. And, there is a plethora of tools for social media monitoring and platforms like Buzzsumo that will help you do so effortlessly.
Finally, you need to constantly analyze how this form of marketing impacts your SEO efforts.
Even though it requires you to invest a lot of time and effort, implementing influencer marketing is always worth it. It will not only give your SEO a boost, but also help you establish yourself as authoritative and set yourself apart from the sea of similar brands.
About the author:
Nate Vickery is a marketing consultant and an online author mostly focused on digital marketing trends and practices for startups and SMBs. He is also the executive editor at Bizzmark Blog and an author on The Next Web.