Niche Influencer Marketing - 5 Proven Ways to Build Your Brand

Nowadays, brands are willing to collaborate with not macro-influencers only yet even with nano-bloggers. Niche influencers are well-known in certain circles and are opinion leaders. Seeking advertising with microbloggers is an extremely good idea that will help promote a product or service while doing it softly and unobtrusively.

Brands try to opt for niche influencers with a pool of followers reaching 50,000 - 200,000. However, even micro-influencers popular among a really small and narrow, so to say, audience, may be offered an endorsement deal from a giant company.

Why buy promotion from niche influencers?

Marketing experts often use most diverse activities to boost sales, and there are brands that have grown through influence marketing alone, never employing any other channels to attract potential customers. Business people involving social media will typically benefit - they get the company turnover growing through the activities in the social network, which is popular.

More and more often, brands prefer to seek promotion not from celebrities but from niche influencers - this is not too costly and more effective. Other benefits are that the audience seems to be more loyal towards such accounts; the competition is lower, while the ROI is higher.

Niche influencers are bloggers dealing within a narrowly specified area, such as agriculture or house decoration for instance, unlike larger influencers who may take up and publish something new each day. This means that for brands, seeking access to a particular segment of audience, the former are preferable.

Let’s assume an influencer’s content is focused on agriculture alone. In this case, you may be sure that their audience of followers will be truly interested in advertising containing links to this very topic, e,g, gardening tools or some organic product.

Therefore, in case brands work with niche influencers, they can get straight to an interested and motivated audience rather than have a much wider yet unspecified outreach. Smaller influencers may have fewer followers, which also means they are cheaper to work with.

Influencers with a smaller pool of followers have more ways to promote their blogs and win more trust from the audience, which, in the end, means more ways to enhance the followers’ engagement and manage the entire community. This is the kind of cooperation that is perfect in view of boosting the brand loyalty, engagement, and content creation. If you are trying to increase the brand awareness and enhancing the outreach is your top priority, then influencers who are more popular and not focused on a specific niche could be your best choice.

Why do brands like micro-influencers?

Cooperation with popular influencers (500 K+ followers) means a huge advertising budget yet never guarantees high sales. Now, micro-influencers are emerging as a new promotion platform on Instagram - most of the brands plooed by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) said they prefer working with influencers falling within the category of those whose army of followers comes up to 25,000 - 100,000 persons.

They enjoy their followers’ trust

Niche influencers can win trust much more easily. This, in turn, boosts engagement and adds to the brand awareness: unlike promotion by celebrities, micro-influencers posts work like word-of-mouth.

Markerly, which has examined around 2 million of influencers with at least 1,000 followers on Instagram, found reverse proportion between the number of followers and the engagement level: the more people follow an account, the lower share of these very people do anything related to the posts. This, above all, is due to the diverse nature of the audience that major influencers have: there may be millions of those following an Instagram celebrity’s life yet only 5% of them take any interest in hockey, so a special post focusing on some new skates is not likely to cause any stir. Niche influencers, on the contrary, create some theme-focused or even expert content while gathering around an audience with clearly cut interest and demand. If we take the same hockey example, this means that an amateur athlete’s post featuring a new type of ice skates may spark much more of interest, this finally resulting in some follower purchasing the product based on “that Instagram guy recommendation”.

Algorithms like them

Now, to resist cheating and junk content, the app has started tracking not the number of followers only but their activity, too. Larger Instagram-bloggers are losing their audiences while niche influencers, on the contrary, are more and more often to be seen in the recommendations, finally getting noticed by major advertisers.

This does not cost much

Having a post with a micro-influencer is times less than with a celebrity. By the way, not all niche content creators want money - they may agree to offer their services in exchange for another service or a product. Besides, often times they accept an advertising offer only if they or their followers appear to be truly interested in a particular product.

Safe for brands

If you have an Instagram celebrity promoting your product, and then this celebrity gets involved in some sort of a scandal,then your brand may suffer the consequences. Major brands have already developed strategy for such cases - they revoke endorsements while doing it the most public manner. As far as smaller-scale influencers are concerned, they are popular among a narrow group of followers only, with no crowds of tabloid reporters shadowing them, thus no big scandals can be expected here. The brand in this case may bear certain image risk only if it is within the context of the conflict itself.

How to work with niche influencers

Now that we know how to find influencers within a certain field, let’s see how we can work with them. When dealing with niche influencers, you have two options available:

Barter trade (a straight swap, in other words)

Working with influencers on barter terms is a nice way to get decent influencer marketing with no huge budget, actually - all it will take is offering influencers a few of your products so they can test them. When offering the product, you could ask the influencer to go through somebody’s experience with the product, or release a new one in social media. However, while barter is a good way to collaborate with influencers with no much investment, it does have certain drawbacks. First, the influencer may never need your product or service. Besides, chances are he or she will not like what you are offering, and once their followers feel some fake through such a review, the consequences may be bad for your brand.

Partner program

This is an interest-based program where you offer influencers a certain share of the sales they secure. You, actually, will cooperate with influencers and let them earn depending on how much sales they ensure. Brands typically offer a commission ranging within 30% to 80%, this commission linked to factors like the influencer’s environmental soundness and popularity. Once you decide to take this way, be ready to adjust the marketing stuff - be they messages in blogs, images or discount codes that influencers are to be share with their followers.

Promo posts

Sponsored posts are one of the most common way of working with nice influencers. The model implies paying influencers for releasing a post featuring your brand or product. For this, you will have to negotiate with the respective influencer and develop a content plan that you both would approve. As for payment, you can agree to pay for a single post or for a series of posts and stories. These minor details may vary from campaign to campaign. To avoid any dispute, it is better to go through all the minutest details and have everything written before the influencers takes the entire task on or releases the content. You could also write a summary of any recommendations and expected outcomes you may have.

5 Proven Ways to Build Your Brand

Nowadays, a personal brand is something that anyone can have - a personal brand, actually, is something that a certain community associates with a particular person. The elements making up this brand could include the following:

 

appearance;

 

competencies;

 

reputation and beliefs;

 

values;

 

professional expertise.

This shows that a personal brand is made up by the aspects that come to mind whenever others try to think about some particular person.

A personal brand on Instagram helps have certain influence on others and win their trust. This is a criterion that may propel you to become a true authority, manage a whole army of followers and even change their views.

Creating a personal brand should rely on your personality traits, while it is crucial that the image people see on Instagram should match the true features to be observed in that very person in real life. People around are quick to detect any fake and lack of sincerity, and once it is the case, your reputation will be jeopardized.

 

Develop a strategy

Sounds complicated but your strategy, actually, is nothing but the goal you set and the steps you are to take to arrive at the said goal. This is what you create for yourself, and there are no uniform rules on how to design it.

Take your notebook and write an answer to this one question: Why do I want to build my personal brand on Instagram? e.g., to become a popular influencer in my town = Goal: to become famous in place X.

Next, write down what you will have to do to reach the goal. You will some specified goal here. If, for instance, you want to post some pics of yourself on holiday, and then you open your notebook and read the goal (open up as an expert), you will realize that it will not bring you closer to the goal. Having a strategy means a clear view of where you are moving.

 

Pack your profile

Profile package is having it complete - from the avatar to the bio. The profile BIO is a little part in the top area of your account where you can tell a bit about yourself and your profile.

While working on the bio, try to answer these questions:

 

Who am I?

 

What sort of person am I?

 

What do I do?

 

What is so special about me?

 

Why would they start following me?

 

Decide on the account moods

Your account, just your personal brand, is to convey your mood and attitude. How you can do that? Use colors and shades. Even before someone reads the messages accompanying the posts, they will see the visual part of the feed, which will definitely add to the opinion shaped about you, your values and your personality.

Tone of voice - the unique tone yo use to communicate with the audience.

Now, could you please compare these two addresses:

"Hi, dear ones. I got some really good news for you…";

"Afternoon. Today I would like to tell you….".

These two are completely different. In the first case, there is a positive attitude obvious, along with openness and friendliness. The second address might be delivered by someone who wants to go straight to business with nothing more to say.

The tone can attract the right audience, while revealing what kind of person you are and how people could interact with you. People around get used to one common tone you use, and they will always expect it. If you speak one day using the first of the addresses above and then the next day you opt for the other one, how would people ever know your true attitude?

 

Prepare your releases

You are going to convey your personal brand through content - images, videos, and texts accompanying the posts. Arrange a personal photoshoot and have images reflecting your true self.

Your photos should reveal the image you want to present.

If your brand is not built around your job, then look for something that will make you stand out. Find your own signature feature; try a new image - a fancy hat or bright red lipstick, just any detail that will catch the eye. Don’t be shy, never hesitate to experiment. A brand is when you show you the way you are, the real one. Remember that you are one of a kind in this world - you are unique. You definitely have something that nobody else can have. All you got to do it find it!

A good photo is just half of your release, you will also need texts.

These are texts that can help you open up your personal brand:

 

Your life story;

 

Your story of wins and losses;

 

Issues you had to overcome;

 

Your personal opinion on various issues;

 

A story about your plans, dreams, goals and values;

 

Your personal life stance, attitude to work, the world and people.

If you try to present yourself as an expert, then you should add some expert content showing your professional sides - cases, professional comment, evaluation and recommendations.

 

Add your personality to the profile

The biggest mistake is to have a blog featuring anything but oneself. Your personal brand will never exist as such without your personality, so you will need:

 

Show yourself in stories;

 

Create videos where your voice can be heard, as well as some gestures can be seen;

 

Create a let-me-introduce-myself post;

 

Talk to the audience.

People buy from people, and this is a fact that can be never denied. And I myself, as a producer, do know how much easier it is to sell through a blog that features a personality. This is where the most loyal audience is to be found E, so this is where you can expect the most native sales, and everything is natural and smoother compared to a cold audience or some sort of a window-shop profile that is purely expert-type.

Let’s have a look at one example - Sarah Nicole Landry

Following weight loss, she had excess skin hanging, and it took a long way to accept her new body, after which she started sharing her own experience with others. Now she has 2 mln followers, and her personal brand has made her a famous influencer who is often interviewed and offered sponsorship for promotion.

Here come some tips for potential niche content creators seeking to promote their personal brands.

 

Use hashtags

Hashtags are keywords that help users find the content they want. One post may have up to 30 tags. This is one of the major free promotion ways. Tags, if selected properly, can enhance a post coverage by up to 90% and attract new followers at the same time. As for hashtags, you can find find them in your potential rival’s blogs or use any other sources that fit you best.

 

Create talking stories

This is a very important channel to communicate with the audience. As Instagram reports, 70% of users watch stories first and then come to see posts in the feed. Appear more in stories. This will get people used to your image, speech, and remember you finally. The best story format for a personal brand is a talking story where your face and your voice are well seen and heard, respectively. You can express your opinion on popular issues, share some stories from life, offer advice (including as an expert).

 

Stick to the earlier chosen single style

Texts for posts and stories are important for personal brand promotion but what people will see first is images and videos - the visual part of the feed.

 

That part should:

 

Reflect the personal brand;

 

Reveal one single style.

Appearing bold and brave will imply using rich dark tones and bright elements in your images. Those who are light and romantic personalities should rather prefer subtle and pastel shades for their photos.

Promoting your personal brand is closely linked to Instagram - the more people see your profile, the better for the brand. The algorithms work fine when it comes to promoting good content and moving it up to the recommendations. It is good to have your followers messaging you, commenting and discussing, so try to create engaging content that will never leave them indifferent but is likely to stir some movement or invite a response.

 

Try to respond to all comments and messages

When you get messages from thousands of users, this may be mission impossible. However, while you are still working to promote your blog, never leave those few messages you get unaddressed.

Thank people for their comments, answer questions, interact. This will bring you close to your audience and will have them following viewing you a virtual friend. Interacting with the audience is your key to a successful Instagram brand, which, in turn, has a direct link to successful niche influencer marketing.

 

Never overlook advertising options

Use promo offers to have a wider outreach. Open any of your posts and you will see the Promote button under it (available for business profiles only). By tapping on the button, you will be allowed choosing your age, sex, residence and the interests of users who are going to see your posts. We recommend you promote useful posts, which will attract the user so that they want to see your account.

Another option is to buy promotion from other influencers. You can try and find the right accounts by yourself or use a special service.

With Post Market, for instance, you can not only, launch a campaign with promotion from other opinion leaders but also choose the CPF-model, which means you will have to pay only for the followers you earn through the respective influencer. For more details, please see the website.