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Why Every Content Marketer’s Mix Should Include Influencer Marketing

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Why Every Content Marketer’s Mix Should Include Influencer Marketing

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OCTOBER 2017

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With so many marketers claiming to “do” content marketing, how can you break away from today’s online clutter and offer true value to your target audience? Influencer marketing is the solution.

96% of buyers want content with more input from influencers. What’s more, customers who are referred to a brand have a higher retention rate than those who are not. This shows us the power of word-of-mouth. Influencer marketing packs a powerful word-of-mouth punch as influencers build a significant amount of trust with their followers. As a brand, your content is considered bias, but when an influencer talks about it, it is unbiased, personable, and authentic – all the key ingredients to developing lasting relationships.

Here are four primary reasons to add influencer marketing to your content strategy mix.

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1.      Influencers Build Authenticity

Influencers share stories that are told from a personal perspective, which enables them to meld a brand into their passions. Their story is seldom a list of pros and cons, but rather, influencers strive to create a sense of authenticity and provide relevance to a brand, without coming across as phony or paid to review something. Influencers show their audience how a brand fits into their daily lives, compared to a brand telling an audience that it ought to be part of their life.

2.      Influencers Create Real “People” Stories and Now Just News

It has been reported that most people would not feel any different if brands disappeared from their lives. As a brand marketer, this is not something you want to hear. Brand stories are an important part of your content marketing efforts, but today’s consumers demand people-oriented stories. People trust their peers and influencers have the power to bridge the gap between people and products, and help consumers understand why they ought to care about a particular brand, product, or service.

3.      Influencers Can Bring in New Audiences

Influencer marketing can be a bonus for established brands, since the aim is to draw the attention of different audiences. Influencers can help your brand do that by using their already-established social standing and audiences’ trust and in turn keep your brand relevant and engage new audiences to drive your sales.

4.      Influencers Reach Beyond Mere Brand Guidelines

Content marketing is about adhering to your brand message. For influencers, there are less guidelines, which means they might bring new use occasions to your product. For example, an outside blog can serve as an out-of-the-box way to boost sales.

When you add influencer marketing to your mix, you have the opportunity to reach new audiences and amplify your message beyond your own platforms.

The Important Link Between Influencers and SEO Data

Combining influencer marketing and SEO helps content marketers ensure they are identifying the right influencers for their brand, based on the content and keywords they are already optimizing for.

Digital marketing revolves around SEO, and this includes influencer marketing. The use of influencers should not just be a supplement to your content plan, but an extension of it. That means you need to apply the same amount of planning and strategizing to your influencer marketing as you would for any other element in your content marketing mix.

When you sit down to plan a content marketing strategy, one of the first things you do is research keywords. The same should be applied to your influencer strategy. By understanding and knowing how to apply your keywords, you will be better positioned to identify the right influencers who will help promote your content, and therefore your brand.

Long-Tail Keywords Help Find Long-Tail Influencers

Influencer marketing is about finding influencers through data sources. While longtail keywords used to be a no-no, they can help when looking for key influencers. You want to narrow down your choices as much as possible. Unlike old-fashioned SEO, which would see us casting a wider net to search for something, using influencers that are perfectly matched will ensure your content reaches a specific target audience.

Think about the long-tail keywords you have already proven generate search results, traffic, and even conversions. Apply that logic and the same keywords to an influencer database to find the influencers who are frequently and diligently talking about your products, or related products, and whose audience is already captivated. For example, if you sell orange high heels with silver embellishments, use that long-tail keyword to find a niche influencer instead of one who randomly talks about high heel shoes. Influencer marketing is built for addressing niches.

Just like any other digital marketing decision you make, good data is the core of influencer marketing. But, don’t stop there – you need to measure and collect data with regards to the impact your chosen influencers are having on engagement with your content.

More and more influencers have begun to adapt and optimize their own content for keywords and topics, which is a win-win for you. It means that their content is better positioned for a strong search and social performance, and it makes it easier for you to find influencers who are aligned with your content marketing. If the influencers you really want to use are not optimizing their content in line with yours, you can arm them with the necessary know-how and data that they need for your content to succeed in front of their audience.

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Contact Iris Content for All Your Content Marketing Needs

If you like what you read, you should know we have a full guide ready just for you, that contains a lot more useful tips on how to make your content relevant with influencer marketing. Contact us today for the full guide. Looking for help? Reach out so we can discuss how we can help you reach all your content marketing help needs.

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Annie has 20 years of experience as an editor and content creator and manager. With work in television and written media, she has dedicated her past 10 years to learning the ropes of online content creation, from writing to editing, from SEO to content management.

Contact Annie for more news about the content marketing world.

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