How to Set Up an Influencer Marketing Strategy

With the growing reach and influence of bloggers and online journalists, it's a smart marketing move to try and get your business mentioned by these online rockstars. This strategy of getting theses bloggers and journalists to talk about your business is called Influencer Marketing. This practice once belonged to the Public Relations sphere of responsibility, but more and more of it is falling into the hands of the internet marketers.

I have a unique perspective by being both an internet marketing professional and an influential blogger. This allows me to see how other companies reach out to influencers trying to get their products and services mentioned. I can tell you that some companies do an excellent job of communicating and forming a relationship with the influencer while others are cold-calling/spamming with bland press releases. I don't think I have to tell you which way will give you success with an influencer marketing campaign.

If you're reading this blog post, chances are that you're ready to begin your influencer status, but you're not quite sure how to get started. The best way is to sit down and formulate a sound outreach strategy that is based on authentic engagement. Once you know that relationship building is going to be your foundation, other details will be ready to tackle.

Those other details always start by defining your target customer or audience and working backwards to figure out who these people engage with and trust online. Next, use an influencer discovery tool to identify the right influencers and extract insights that help you decide who to reach out to and how to get them involved in your brand stories. The final step is to always include measurements and refining based on analytics, and you'll want to track your messages reach and ROI.

For a visual look at how to put together an effective influencer marketing campaign, Tracker teamed up with LEWIS PR to create a beautiful and informative infographic that gives you a 5-Step Action Plan for influencer marketing.

An Influencer Marketing Framework by Traackr & LEWIS PR

Now that you have a clear idea about how influencer marketing works, it's time to put these tips to use and begin building relationships with the niche influencers that are right for your company. Remember that relationship building online is like being at a cocktail party only your communicating via email, tweets, Facebook or other social networks. Would you run up to someone at the party and list off all of the reasons why you're cool then tell them to tell others? I hope not. Building brand-influencer trust takes time, but once you have it you'll have a powerful ally ready to help share your message with thousands, maybe even millions. Influencer marketing is just one spoke in the internet marketing wheel. To learn more about internet marketing tips, please download our free Inbound Marketing ebook.