You might have seen all these people making millions online, posting a few pictures, and have wondered how to become an influencer.
Social media influencers have taken off Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other social media platforms. Some of these influencers literally have millions of fans hanging on to their every word every single day.
Today, it’s easier than ever to become an influencer, but it doesn’t happen overnight. By knowing what steps to take, and a little consistency, you can become an influencer too.
After all, these people make tens of thousands a month in passive income, so it’s a great way to earn money while doing something that you love.
So, in this article, we will outline a few steps to take if you want to know how to be an influencer.
#1 Identify Your Niche
The first step in how to become a social media influencer is identifying your niche. This means picking a topic that you are passionate about and want to reach others who are also passionate about it.
It’s important to pick something that you truly care about because as you are making a career out of it, you’ll be spending a lot of time and effort talking about and creating content for your chosen niche.
Start by identifying what your skills, hobbies, or interests are. Chances are, if you are interested in this, so are others. Now narrow it down to one, because it’s important to address only your target audience.
If you are passionate about dogs, your target audience will be dog lovers. And when you switch topics to maybe baseball, the dog lovers in your audience will lose interest in you.
This will slow down your progress to becoming the next top influencer. So having a narrowed-down niche with a target audience in mind is key here.
Research popular niches on social media platforms to get a good idea of what you want to be about. See what niches have a large existing audience you can insert yourself into. Once you have a niche picked, it’s time to move to the next step.
#2 Build Your Personal Brand
Once you have selected your niche, it’s time to think about your personal brand. All the top influencers have a personal brand because it makes such an impact on their audience. This is how people will remember who you are and recognize your content at a glance.
You may automatically recognize brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, or Walmart. Even without the words you would know who it is because of the colors and logo shapes. That’s how your audience will feel when they see your face, colors, or logo. They will instantly know it’s your content and be more likely to engage with you.
A tip for building a personal brand is to pick a color scheme. These are usually 2, sometimes 3, colors that will create your logo, backgrounds, be placed in images, and wherever else you may show up. Next pick a font, logo, and anything else that will help identify you as you. Remember to pick something unique because you want to stand out from the competition.
These colors and logos should be the same across all social media platforms. Meaning your Facebook fan page should have the same background look and feel as your TikTok profile, YouTube banner, and so on.
#3 Create Engaging Content
Creating content is probably the most important thing you will do as a social media influencer. This will also take up the majority of your time. Creating content consists of images, videos, as well as written content like posts and captions.
Your content will be what your audience sees from you and is what determines if they wish to follow you for more content or not. It is very important to not just create content, but create high-quality content on a consistent basis.
Your audience can’t get enough content, and if it’s not from you, it will be from somebody else. Consistency is the key to success here. They need to know you have more high-quality content coming to them soon, or unfortunately, they will just lose interest.
Coming up with a daily action plan and schedule for posting content can be a huge help. Also, a lot of newer influencers will try to do too much in the beginning and burn out making them lose consistency. Pick an amount that is sustainable for you.
There are free tools online that can help you with creating high-quality images and videos. Anything less won’t keep up with the large amount of competition today. Use these tools to create something of value that your audience will fall in love with.
#4 Grow Your Audience
Now that you have a personal brand and are creating content you will start to grow an audience. It might be a little slow in the beginning, but stay consistent and it will grow over time – faster if you follow the steps above.
Growing your audience is the best part of being a social media influencer. This is your following of your fans and it feels good to watch it grow day to day. Plus, it means having a lot more engaging conversations with people interested in the same niche you are in. And of course, for influencers, the audience size is usually a measure of how successful you are.
As long as you are creating content, your audience will grow, but there are a few ways to grow it even faster. Start by utilizing relevant hashtags in your posts and videos. This will help people searching for those hashtags to see your content, and it helps the platform better determine what your content is about.
Another tip is don’t forget the social part of social media. Interacting with others in your niche can lead to collaborations. This is where you work together and you can be exposed to their whole audience as well. Collaborations are a great way to expand your reach and grow your audience, while also making connections with other leaders in your group.
Most social media platforms will have an analytics page that shows the number of followers and engagement rate you have. Study the metrics of this page and keep track of your growth.
#5 Monetize Your Influence
After you have a large following it’s time to get to the good stuff. That means monetization. There are several ways you can start to monetize your content as an influencer. Usually, this will be through ads, affiliate marketing, and sponsored content.
Ads are pretty straightforward. We have all had to wait 5 seconds to skip ads on YouTube. But these ads also get paid to the YouTubers. Most larger social media platforms have some way to get ad revenue. And more views means more money.
Affiliate marketing is when an influencer talks about a product and an audience member buys it through the affiliate link provided. These can be physical products, recurring software subscriptions, or anything else.
Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn a large amount of residual income. Start looking for products with an affiliate program in your niche.
Sponsored content is when another brand directly pays you to promote their product to your audience. Usually, the brands can negotiate the price, so make sure to get a good deal while discussing terms.
There are several other ways to monetize your content, but this gives you a good idea of what you can start with. Decide which path is best for you, or try them all out and earn as much as possible.
#6 Network with Brands and Other Influencers
Networking with other brands is an important part of how to be an influencer. When you start working with other influencers in your niche you are exposed to a whole new group of people that can then also become your followers, and overall earn even more.
Have you ever gotten excited to see two of your favorite movie stars in a new movie together? That’s how your audience will feel when you start collaborating with others. Not only do they get more excited to see their favorite influencers working together, but it also is a good way to build authority.
If your audience sees other highly respected members of the community working with you, it puts you on the same level. Now they will also see you and your brand as a high authority figure and respected member within your niche.
Start by reaching out to other people who you enjoy following. Let them know you’re a fan and are in the same topic area. Create a conversation and see if they would be open to working together. Even if one turns, you don’t keep trying with others.
Collaborations are a two-way street. As they help you out, you are helping to expand their reach as well. The more followers you have, the more leverage you have when starting a conversation with others.
#7 Maintain Your Reputation and Authenticity
Growing your following is one side of the battle, keeping that following is the other. Throughout your time as an influencer, it is important to maintain your reputation and authenticity. Being truthful and authentic with your audience will be the best bet for you in the long run.
Be open and honest with your followers. If there’s a product you love, share it. But if you honestly hate it, don’t share it with your audience just for a commission or sponsor deal. Sooner or later, this will backfire on you.
Another tip for maintaining your reputation is how you deal with negative feedback. Unfortunately, sooner or later you will have someone who disagrees with or dislikes you. How you respond to this will reflect on you and your brand.
It’s important to just ignore these people. Maybe block them if you can. If you get in a petty fight with every negative person on the internet, it will hurt you a lot more than it will ever hurt them. Learn to let it go and only focus on the positive members of your audience.
Conclusion
You can become a successful social media influencer and start earning money online. Start by picking a niche with a personal brand and creating relevant and high-quality content for your target audience.
This will start to grow your audience, which is how you can start to get monetized. Learn to work with others within your niche and maintain your reputation to help you grow.
With these steps, you know how to become an influencer, and now all you need to do is get started. Remember, consistency is key, so keep going until you can reach your goals.
Now it’s time to go out there and become the next big social media influencer!