Are you looking to get paid as an influencer?
Social media has become intrinsic to everyone’s life, and nearly every adult has a presence on at least a social media platform. Instagram has active monthly users of over 1 billion, that represents 13% of the world’s population. This makes it the best platform for brands to promote their products and services. Brands make use of influencers to reach a wide range of audience, cutting across different geographical locations, age, and class. If you own a business, you may looking for a way to create a second income stream.
Who is an Influencer?
An influencer is someone with a strong presence on social media, they are loved and respected, and consequently influences people’s decision when selecting brands and services. Most of these influencers already achieved celebrity status as an athlete, entertainer, or any other field, and being on social media provides their loyal fans an opportunity to follow their idol closely.
However, many more achieved celebrity status just by making judicious use of social media presence, the reward is wealth huge enough to live a luxurious lifestyle akin to those superstars you adore.
Types of Influencers
It is hard to classify influencers with other parameters other than the number of followers. Using the amount of followers, influencers can be classified into the following categories:
Mega-influencers: These are world-famous people who have achieved celebrity status in their various fields. They command huge respect and Influence both in real life and online. Mega influencers have several million followers scattered all over the world. They could be athletes, world leaders, models, and entertainers. Examples are Lionel Messi of Barcelona football club, Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America, Kendrick Lamar, an American rapper and so on.
Macro-influencers: This type of influencers have between 100,000 and a few million followers. Most macro-influencers achieve their fame with their social media presence. This is usually achieved by posting inspiring contents, comic contents, and blogging.
Micro-influencers: They have between 1000 and 100,000 followers, they usually specialize in a subject and usually make educative and informative posts on their chosen niche.
Nano-influencers: This type of Influencers have less than 1000 followers but have a strong presence in their local community. Local religious leaders, community chief, and local government head are examples of nano influencer.
Are you looking to get paid as an influencer?
How Can I Become an Influencer?
The basic need for your influencer career is a digital device and a good internet connection. With your tools in place, the following can help you attain celebrity status on social media and become a successful influencer as a result:
Choose your Niche: As an upcoming influencer, and it is crucial to pick a field, you have huge knowledge about, where you can make insightful posts regularly.
Always Post Beautiful and Insightful Contents: Social media users have no idea about your personality, they will relate to your posts and learn about you through your posts. Being renowned for quality posts is what will get you to the top in the business.
Quality Photos: Instagram is the leading social media platform for influencers, posts on Instagram are usually pictures. Everyone posts pictures on Instagram, to become an influencer ensure your photos are of the highest quality possible.
Build Followers: What makes an influencer is the number of followers. Take your time to build real, loyal followers, acquiring fake followers can cost you your account in the future.
Be Creative: You want to be an influencer? Don’t be boring with your posts, even if you only post about a subject, be dynamic and creative with your contents. Apart from the number of followers, the main attribute brands look for in influencers is creativity.
Engage: By the time you become a micro-influencer, you will have less time to reply to comments on your posts due to your busy schedule. However, as an upcoming influencer, it is necessary to dedicate some time to like and reply comments on your posts. This will give your followers a sense of belonging and make them more loyal to you.
Giveaways: A certain way to acquire new followers and make existing followers loyal is by giving your fans giveaways, giveaways are usually given in exchange for shares, reposts, and likes, which increases your followers.
Use Hashtags: The most important tool on social media is hashtags, it takes your posts farther and increases SEO, the more hashtags, the better. It is advised to use up to 4 hashtags per post to improve reach.
Join a Network: Influencer network is a platform designed to bring influencers together, to share ideas and knowledge about influencing in a bid to improve and be more productive.
How Can I Make Money as an Influencer?
There are many ways to make money as an influencer, and I will share them with you.
Sell Products: The primary way of making money as an influencer is by selling your products to your followers, few of your followers will patronize you, and the numbers will definitely increase with good feedbacks with time.
Sponsored Posts: You can make a post about brands and their products, what you charge per post depends on the number of followers, mega influencers charge up to 1 million dollars, while micro-influencers charge few hundreds of dollars. It is typical of influencers to indicate that a post is sponsored.
Affiliate Marketing: You can also market and promote third party products and services on your social media page in exchange for a reward. Rewards vary from monetary reward to barter of goods and services.
Brand Ambassador: Brands with continuous, never-ending marketing campaigns make use of brand ambassadors who can always represent and promote the brand in the right way. Influencer responsibility as a brand ambassador includes making posts for the brands, appearing in adverts, billboards, and product launches.
Crowdfund your Project: Another way of making money for an influencer is by having your followers invest in your dreams, loyal followers will go to any extent to contribute to the career of their favorite influencer.
Join an Influencer Agency: Influencer agencies are agencies that connect brands to influencers. They are consulted by brands when selecting influencer for their next campaign, while influencers depend on them to get jobs. Micro and nano influencers must join an agency to improve their chances of getting jobs from brands.
Influencers set trends and Influence decision of their followers when selecting a product or brand. They are classified according to the number of followers. Celebrities and superstars make up mega influencers while nano influencers are those with less than 1000 followers and are particularly influential in their local community, macro and micro-influencers fall in between with thousands of followers.
There are many money-making opportunities available to influencers, including selling products, affiliate marketing, sponsored posts, brand ambassador while joining an agency can improve your chances of getting lucrative jobs from brands.
