Tag: Freedom lifestyle

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Influencer Marketing Software Platforms to Utilize

You may feel slightly overwhelmed about finding the right influencers. After all, there are many blogs, vlogs, and channels, and platforms out there to search. But have no fear. You don’t have to search through the platforms on your own to find the right influencer, and you can instead use one or more of these options to help you find the right influencer for your business:

 

  1. Upfluence.com – This platform offers many tools for you to use to find and run profitable influencer campaigns. They keep track of each influencer you work with, manage payments, and even offer many tools for helping you measure campaign results. You can search for and work with many influencers using this tool with ease.

 

  1. Grin.co – This influencer marketing platform is built for e-commerce sites and offers search, discovery, relationship management, campaign management, and more through their platform. If you care about building relationships with your influencers in a trusting and authentic way, Grin.co will help.

 

  1. Influencity.com – This software is focused on managing many influencers for your marketing campaigns. They have a list of over 75 million influencers in all genres, and they are updating their database every single day. In addition, they offer a full CRM, content management, and more.

 

  1. Izea.com – If you want to do sponsorship marketing, this platform will work for you. You can contact marketers who wish to promote your offers for income. Just create a profile page today to find out how it all works.

 

  1. Linqia.com – Go to the next level with this influencer marketing software. You can run campaigns, communicate with influencers, compensate them, and so much more using this software.

 

  1. Theshelf.com – This software helps match social influencers with brands who want to collaborate on promotions. This is more useful for vloggers than bloggers who have a large audience.

 

  1. Awario.com – This tool is useful to help you find influencers who are already talking about you, your competitors, or a generic search term you choose. You can locate opportunities that already exist and put your products right in front of them.

 

  1. BuzzSumo.com – This software is top of the line for influencer locating, managing campaigns, and more. Whether you need content curation, a competitor analysis, or more, you can have it here.

 

  1. HypeAuditor.com – This is one of the better tools to find the influencers you need to run campaigns. Plus, there are many features that other options don’t have. For example, it’s a super-powered AI Instagram authenticity checker and more.

 

  1. NinjaOutreach.com – This blogger outreach software can help you grow your business online by allowing you to prospect, build relationships, analyze, and track metrics and watch campaigns too.

Sales Automation Tools and Tips

Before you start looking for the right influencers, set up a checklist with the desired criteria for the influencers to meet before using them, that way, you know what you want before you start looking.

 

 

 

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Seven Common Influencer Marketing Problems and How to Avoid Them

If you want to work with influencers to market your goods and services, you must be super familiar and aware of the rules, laws, and regulations surrounding this marketing method. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, someone else has already invented it, and it works great. All you need to do is get familiar with what the ins and outs are.

 

Here are the seven most common influencer marketing mistakes to avoid and what you should do to prevent them:

 

Not Understanding Your Target Audience

 

This leads to picking the wrong influencer, and choosing the wrong platform and social media channels.

 

Not Providing Enough Resources and Information

 

Don’t expect the influencer to do the job without the proper information. While they are great at what they do, they need solid information from you first to understand the expectations and goals for your business.

 

Remember, they are influencers because they marketed themselves as the product. Therefore, they don’t know anything about your business and what content needs to be created to get the conversions you are hoping for.

 

Thinking Too Short-Term

 

It takes work to find the right influencer and even more time to keep them accountable. Due to this, you should always think about forming long-term partnerships with your influencer. Over time, they can become even more of an asset as they become experts on your brand, products, or services. When you show influencers you truly mean business and value them as humans, they are more like to stay accountable and meet all your marketing requirements.

 

Prioritizing Conversions Over Quality Content

 

While conversions are what you want, you can’t expect that without creating good content. The right content and the influencer that actually fits well with that content make the engagement rate you need to be successful with the campaign.

 

Not Calculating and Keeping Track of Your ROI

what is return on investment

Return of investment can be tracked and should be during the entire campaign and from the very start. While it is not as easy to determine, like regular social media ads or other similar online marketing, it can be done.

Focusing Only on Vanity Metrics

 

When you only think about how many people are following someone rather than their level of engagement, it’s easy to get tricked into working with them without realizing it. Pay close attention to all the metrics that matter.

 

Ignoring Federal Trade Commission Guidelines

 

Ignoring the law is not the best way to ensure that you get what you want. Familiarize yourself with these guidelines and stick to them no matter what you feel about them.

 

There are legal requirements to follow before you can safely post influencer content. First, you must legally disclose whether or not a post is sponsored, for example, and whether or not links are monetized in order to keep consumers aware.

 

Ensure you read the information provided by the FTC guidelines and get to know them so that you don’t make these types of legal mistakes. Otherwise, working with influencers is a very profitable joy that you won’t regret doing.

 

 

 

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Four Influencer Marketing Myths Destroying Your Results

If you’ve been worried up until now about getting involved with influencer marketing, let me reassure you. There is no reason you can’t incorporate influencer marketing into your overall marketing plan regardless of your reach or budget.

 

Here are four influencer marketing myths stalling your results and hindering your ability to run and create a powerful influencer campaign:

 

You Must Have a Large Budget to Be Successful

Why Influencer Marketing Works

Unless you want to work with a mega influencer, you don’t need a large budget to get started or see results. A big budget doesn’t necessarily correlate to a successful influencer campaign. Choosing the right influencer with your specific and targeted goals in mind does.

 

Nano and Micro-Influencers Don’t Bring Conversions

 

Actually, nano and micro-influencers often have higher engagement rates. Virtually 22% higher than mega and macro-influencers. You may generate better results using smaller influencers than large ones.

 

High Popularity Means Instant Exposure and Success

 

The size of an influencer audience does not instantly equal success. Using audience size as your only or main factor to contract them is a major mistake. You should never discount influencers with lower audience totals as they can have a higher engagement rate than those with millions of followers. An audience can be bought, but engagement, the metric that matters most to your return on investment, is harder to fake.

 

Reach is More Important Than Relevant or Quality Content Creation

 

You must have relevant and quality content together to run a successful campaign. Again, just because an influencer has a high audience does not mean you will gain the same amount of reach.

 

Influencers that make the best impact create content their audience needs and wants. Meaning who they partner with should always be relevant, or they will likely ignore it. Their audience could also feel deceived or feel the partnership is ingenuine, further hurting your results.

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Important Questions to Ask Before You Work with An Influencer

The following are important questions to ask your potential influencers and key information they should provide back to ensure you pick the right influencer for your campaign:

 

  • Who Is Your Target Audience? – Ask them if they have an audience persona created or if they can provide audience demographics so you can be sure their audience really will want what you have.

 

  • How Does Your Target Audience Algin with My Brand and Message? – You need your own brand message and reason for existing, and it should align in some way with the influencers you choose to work with. Let them explain how they align.

 

  • What Type of Content Do You Produce? – It will help you to know the type of content they can produce to start with. For example, some influencers do life-like vlogs and don’t do scripted commercials or advertorials. Work with influencers who give you what you need but be open to new ideas.

 

  • How Often Do You Publish Content? – Knowing their production schedule can help you ensure that your campaign is launched at the right time.

 

  • What Is Your Engagement Like? – They should tell you about some actual numbers regarding their engagement but understand if you choose to work with new influencers (which works great, by the way), they may not understand yet, but you can show them.

 

  • Have You Ever Worked with My Competitors Before? If so, Why and Why Do You Want to Work with Us Now? – This can help you ensure that they’re going to be upfront and honest with their audience about their recommendations.

 

  • Have You Worked with Similar Brands Before? How Successful Were You? – Getting these stats will really help you project the type of response they might get for your campaign.

 

  • How Often Do You Share Sponsored Content or Affiliate Links? – You want to ensure they have a good ratio of information and sponsored content or affiliate content. This will help you determine if they have staying power.

 

  • What Are Your Overall Expectations for Partnering with a Brand? – You want to know from them what they are expecting to gain from this too.

 

  • What Are Your Thoughts About Exclusive Brand Partnerships? – If you want them to work with you exclusively and not another brand that competes with you, this is good information to know.

 

  • What Is Your Content Creation Process? – Understanding their process can help you understand how you’ll work with them, including timelines and other info.

How to Easily Crank out Content Daily

  • Do You Want to Work with Us to Create the Content and Share Before Posting or Be on Your Own? – How autonomous will they want to be, and are you okay with this method? Of course, you can’t make them work how you want to work, but you can judge whether you can work together or not.

 

  • What Are Your Fees and Other Compensation Needs? – Try to get them to give you a fee schedule instead of telling them what you’ll pay. Not only will they feel more in control, but it’ll make working together easier.

 

  • What Sort of Timeline Do You Need to Get to Publishing? – Knowing the timeline will help you get your information to them promptly.

 

Use these questions to figure out whether you can work with the influencer in a seamless way that matches your own needs and includes their needs. You’ll be very glad you took the time.

 

 

 

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Six Steps to the Influencer Outreach Process

In order to find the perfect influencers for your campaigns, it’s important to go through an outreach process that ensures you find just the right people. After all, if you do this with a plan in mind and seriously check your information and data for accuracy, you can practically guarantee that you’ll be successful. Truly, you’re not even taking that much of a risk when you do this work to get it right.

 

Step #1: Create an Influencer List

Define Your Influencer Marketing Goals

Form a list of the influencers you would like to work with the most. The bigger the list at this point, the better. Shoot for locating at least 20 to 30 potential influencers per platform. Focus on one platform at a time to streamline this process.

 

Step #2: Review Their Profiles

 

Find the information required to make decisions before reaching out to the influencer. Find their social media handles and business credentials. Many influencers include links and special e-mails for business inquiries. Avoid using their personal e-mail or profile when contacting them. Instead, follow their accounts and actually view their profiles and content for a period of time before reaching out.

 

Step #3: Develop a Brief Project Goal

 

Determine why you want to work with an influencer at all. What is your goal? Do you want to boost traffic? If so, how is working with them going to do that? Do you want to make sales? How will this influencer help you make more sales? Figure out the mechanism to reach the goal you’ve set by setting SMART goals to ensure that you have a plan going forward.

 

Step #4: Pick Your Medium

 

You may need to be flexible and communicate with each influencer in the way that they desire to. For example, they may choose to use e-mail, direct message, management contact, video chat, phone call, mail merge apps, sponsored product packages, or something else. Typically, the influencer will have guidelines on their business page about what they need from you. If not, choose what you want to present to them and how.

 

Step #5: Create and Personalize Your Message

 

Be specific, clear, and direct about your goals, what your products or services are and how you’re going to work with them on this project if they choose to work with you. Always make sure that you include follow-up information and server times that will work for you to get the collaboration started faster. Be flexible but only within the guidelines you’ve already set for yourself and your campaign’s time limit and deadlines.

 

Step #6: Edit and Review

 

Always edit and review everything before sending it on to a potential influencer. The clearer you are, the easier it’s going to be to work together. You want to be professional as possible when you reach out to them. The higher quality your reach out is, the higher quality they’re going to expect from themselves as they create your campaign.

 

Once you reach out, make sure you record how and when you reached out to them so that you can follow up quickly when needed. The more records you keep, the easier it’s going to be each time you set up a campaign.

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Affiliate Vs. Influencer Marketing: Key Differences to Know

While you will likely give your influencers an affiliate link to help them make money marketing your products and services, there are some differences between straight affiliate marketing and influencer marketing.

 

Let’s explore some key differences between affiliate and influencer marketing:

 

  • Costs – Most likely, it’s going to cost you slightly more to work with an influencer, at least initially. The main reason is that affiliate marketers do not charge anything up front, but influence marketers often make money both up front and per sale depending on the deal you make with them.

 

  • Compensation Models – You will pay your influencer a set fee according to their schedule to create the video or images or review for you. The cost depends on how many subscribers or followers they have, how much engagement they receive, and how motivated their audience is to follow them to purchase. You never pay affiliates anything unless they make a sale and how they make it is not usually your concern.

 

  • Marketing Goals – When you work with affiliates, you don’t involve yourself in their marketing or creation other than to provide the tools for them in your affiliate dashboard. Still, they promote when and how they want to within those guidelines. If you work with an influencer, it’s more likely that you’ll have more control over when they promote your products and services per your contract.

Are You Being Realistic About Your Goals?

  • Performance Tracking Metrics or KPIs – You probably don’t look at the stats of your affiliates as closely as you will your influencers. Mostly because you’re going to work with far fewer influencers over your business life than you will have affiliates, affiliate marketing is more hands-off.

 

  • FTC Guidelines Abidance – There are many guidelines for promoting products and services that you need to follow, and they all actually boil down to the same thing. Don’t lie, don’t mislead, and tell the truth. You may get away with an affiliate breaking a few rules against your TOS, but if an influencer you work with does it, it’s going to affect you more.

 

Both forms of marketing, affiliate, and influencer, can cross over. An influencer may ask for an affiliate link, and an affiliate who is doing an amazing job may actually be an influencer who found your product on their own. All types of marketing are essential to use, but the subtle differences need to be known.

 

 

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Influencer Marketing and the Pyramid of Influence

The pyramid of influence is a great model or image to categorize your different audiences and the influencers who represent them. It’s designed to quickly show you who and what makes up the most of your engagement to create the right content and materials to develop and run a successful campaign.

 

To put it simply, a pyramid of influence is designed to allow you to quickly understand who makes up your community and how they each influence your audience. This way, you can easily develop content and strategies to reach your target audience more efficiently and ensure you get the right influencer on board.

The pyramid of Influence is made of the following levels:

influencer Pyramid

First Level: Brand Content Creators

 

They are the brand experts and make up most of your content that your influencers can’t wait to use, share with their audience, or use inspiration to make new content. The content is produced by your company, by those you hired, or even mega-influencers.

 

Second Level: Influencers or Leaders

 

This is where digital influencers come in and make up the bulk of the content and engagement. They spark interest within those who want and must get your products. They inspire and influence transactions and engagement. They are the ones that will do anything to get their hands on your product and share it with their audience because they love your products or services. They are the leaders of your content and mission.

 

Third Level: Prosumers or Seed Planters

 

Prosumers are active in the community consistently, usually using third-party platforms such as Facebook or YouTube. They are the ones that build groups and posts questions or spark interest in topics supporting your niche or brand. In other words, they plant the seed of interest and increase engagement and interaction.

 

Quite a few people in this level of the pyramid will eventually move on to the second tier as low level, or nano influencers can also be found in this level as they often plant the seed. They look up to those above them in the tier to help them create content, answer any questions, or sound the alarm to a common problem within the industry.

 

Bottom Level: Consumers or Readers

They consume content but don’t generate it. They are known as consumers and will make up the bulk of your audience and are responsible for revenue. They are the ones that are influenced by the rest of the pyramid and make purchases or other actions that can positively affect your conversions.

How to Drive Traffic to Your Landing Pages

Understanding the pyramid of influence helps you see how your customers, influencers, and content writers can influence different types of people. The ones on the top have the most impact, while those on the bottom make purchases and increase your conversions.

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Set Up A Product Creation Schedule For Yourself And Your Team

Let’s talk about money. More importantly, let’s talk about how you profit from your online properties. You do it through ads, by making affiliate sales, or my personal favorite – by selling your own products. Those products are what we’ll be talking about today. More specifically, we’ll be discussing creating information products consistently. Why information products? Because you create them once and sell them again and again. No supply line, no storage, no overhead. When you make a sale, it’s almost pure profit.

 

I’m going to let you in on a secret it took me a while to discover when I first started out. It’s much easier to sell an existing customer a second product than it is to find a brand new customer. It’s even easier to sell them the third, fourth, fifth one. You get the idea. That’s because you’ve done all the hard work of earning this person’s trust already and if you’ve done your job right, the first thing they purchased from you is already helping them solve their problem. That’s what information products are all about. Solving a problem. To create that next product, look at where your customers are at and think about what they need to do next. What’s another problem they will face and how can you help them solve it.

 

For example, your first product may be an eBook or course on setting up a WordPress site. Next, your customers may need to learn about creating content that attracts the right type of reader. And then they need to learn about traffic, and list building, and effective social media strategies. Each one of these could be a new info product or new content for your paid membership site.

 

Once you have an idea of what types of products you want to create, it’s important to get them out consistently. You want to have a new product out there for your existing customers to buy. Of course, you’ll also attract new buyers along the way who will then not only buy the new thing you’ve come out with but hopefully also some of the other titles and courses you have out there.

 

Start with a list of products you want to create. Do your best to estimate how long it will take you to create the product and all the infrastructure that goes along with it like a sales page, a download page, autoresponders, and solo emails to promote it, a promotion schedule, etc. Make a list of everything you need to do before you can launch this new product. Then get to work. Chip away at it every day and continue to consistently work towards each of these new product launches, adjusting your timeframe as needed.

Outsourcing: The Key to Success for The Life Affirming Entrepreneur

In the beginning, it will probably be just you working on this product creation. Maybe you’re hiring out the graphics. Put that on the schedule and communicate with your graphic designer early to avoid bottlenecks. As time goes by, you may choose to outsource some of the product creation. Maybe you’re hiring an editor to proofread your work. Or a VA to help with the setup, infrastructure, and customer service. Eventually, you may even hire some writers to create these products for you. As your team expands, it’s even more important to have a schedule everyone works off to make sure these new products come out regularly.

 

 

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Eat One Meal a Week with Your Extended Family or Close Friends

One thing that is very important for your long-term happiness, even if you’re the biggest introvert alive, is the strength of your relationships within your family and your connection to the world at large. Study after study shows that maintaining a connection to others regularly is essential for health and happiness and is directly correlated with longevity.

Positive Attitude

A favored way to stay connected to someone is through sharing a meal. Everyone has to eat, and eating is an emotional experience for human beings. When you share an emotional experience with other humans, it connects you. This is probably why we’ve invented so many food-related holidays and even associate funerals with food.

 

Along with other positive ways to connect like phone calls, emails, and text messages – enjoying a regular meal with those who are important in your life, or those you desire to be important in your life, will make a huge difference in how connected you feel to them and how connected they feel to you.

 

If one of your long-term life goals is to have strong, loving, and powerful relationships, you know that focusing on the long term is the most effective way to impact this part of your life as it’s what you do over time that impacts today, and what you do today that impacts tomorrow. How your relationships feel about you will be about combining the last memorable connections weighted toward the last time you were together.

 

Since you understand this and want to start now forming daily habits that change your life and set you up for success, start setting aside one day a week, at a minimum, for enjoying a meal with someone in your extended family or to share a meal with someone outside of your family.

 

One week it might be that you enjoy lunch with Aunt Alice, and the next week it might be drinks and wings with a business connection – it’s okay to mix it up as long as you make it a habit to clear your schedule to enjoy a meal with someone outside your immediate family on a weekly basis.

 

This one addition to your calendar and act will keep you connected to the world at large and expose you to new ideas and thoughts, as well as solidify a deeper connection to those you choose to meet again and again. Plus, it may even push you out of your comfort zone and allow you space to discover new things and interests.

Write Down 3 Things You’re Grateful for Each Day

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Learn The SMART Goal Making Process

Proper goal setting is one of the most important skills you can learn in terms of how much goodness it’ll add to your life. By learning this goal-setting system, you’ll gain a sense of direction so that you can organize your resources in a way that helps you reach your goals.

 

When you craft a SMART goal, the way you phrase the goal helps you focus on what’s important so that you can make decisions about the actions you’re taking in a way that impacts your goal. Not only that, but the goal also provides the motivation you need to take the small daily actions toward success.

 

Example of a SMART Goal: “By Sunday night, I’m going to increase my total weekly word count from 7000 words to 10,000 words a week by adding 427 words a day to my normal daily 1000-word goal.”

 

  • Specific – The goal you set has to be very precise in order to help the person reading the goal understand and become certain about the expected impact or deliverables. Ask yourself questions to get this right, such as: What am I doing, why am I doing it, what do I need to do it right?

 

  • Measurable – As you craft the goal, you also need to use numbers that allow you to judge whether or not you’re reaching your objectives. Numbers like time, range, weight, steps, and so forth all make sense.

 

  • Attainable – Don’t bother setting impossible goals. If you have never walked an hour a day in your life, don’t start with that as your goal. Instead, start with five minutes and then craft a plan to add on a minute a day until you reach your goal of walking an hour a day.

 

  • Relevant – Also, each goal that you make has an overarching objective you’re trying to accomplish. For example, if you’re trying to write a novel writing the words is just one aspect of the novel publishing goal, but it is directly related.

 

  • Timely – Never leave a goal timeline open-ended. Even if you have to adjust the timeframe due to reality, the truth is we all fill up the time we give ourselves. If you give yourself three hours to check the mail, you’re going to take three hours. Tighten up your timelines to create a schedule that includes structured action that is easy to habituate – no motivation needed.

 

As you craft your goals, consider who will do the actions that help you reach the goal and think about what you really want to accomplish. When you do that and create a realistic time frame for it all to be done, you’re more likely actually to achieve the results you want and need.

Better Goal Setting Tips for Maximum Productivity