Despite popular opinion, there is no one size fits all for Influencer Marketing. Every HR Influencer can create their own brand, set their own path, and work with brands as they please. With that said, sometimes, a micro Influencer may get offered a project that’s out of their wheelhouse. And, they jump at the opportunity to work with a vendor, even if the project isn’t in their repertoire.
Unfortunately, that causes problems for the entire industry. While brands should include micro Influencers in their Influencer Marketing strategy, it’s important for Influencers to stay true to themselves to avoid problems.
Here’s how to put your best foot forward.
How A Micro Influencer Can Become An Influencer
Know your mediums of expertise
Today, there are so many different kinds of Influencers. HR is so lucky to have so many great folks with so many different talents. Some are really good are writing blog posts or white papers. Others are awesome speaking on videos, webinars, or even in person. Some of our influencers focus on business and product strategy. While others focus on research and reports or analyst content.
Now, you don’t need to pigeon-hole yourself into just one of those areas. However, it’s important to know your strengths and limitations. For example, just because you have influence through a blog post or webinar doesn’t mean you know enough about product strategy or even sales strategy to influence in those areas.
If you are offered a project that isn’t in your area of expertise, it’s definitely okay and even highly respectable to say this isn’t my area but that topic is. In fact, Influencer Marketers love when Influencers pitch projects. It makes their jobs a lot easier!
Know your topics of expertise
In addition to understanding your medium of choice, understanding your topics of expertise is critical. As an HR Influencer, you don’t need to be an expert in all aspects of HR. If you’re an expert in recruiting, talk about that. But, you can even be more specialized than that. For example, if you want to talk almost exclusively about recruitment marketing or recruitment technology, that’s fine, too!
Additionally, the professional Influencers almost always have a Media Kit ready to go that lists topics they are ready to talk or write about. They often list a series of presentations they have ready to go. Once the vendor has the media kit, they can easily see what kinds of topics the speaker talks about regularly. See how easy the Influencer made it for the vendor?
Knowing your topics of focus, putting together your pitch, and having topics ready to go is critical.
Start keeping metrics
Let’s be honest here. Vendors don’t care about Influencers as people. They care about the results. They want leads, eyeballs, product improvements, sales strategies, to be positioned as “leaders” on a certain topic. The Influencers who get booked over and over again continue to get booked because they help the vendors reach at least one of these goals.
Sure, vendors look at followership… at first. But, when it comes time to writing a check, they want to know a lot more. Understanding who your audience is, what they believe in, why they buy, and how engaged your audience is is critical.
Keep track of your metrics and audience demographics so that you can have those answers ready to go in a pitch meeting. Some Influencers even like to put this information in their media kits!
The truth is, vendors often work with the same Influencers over and over again because it’s easy. As a micro Influencer, it can be extremely difficult to break into this field and get the opportunity to get sponsored in some way. And, when Influencers take on projects that aren’t in their wheelhouse, what happens is the company get’s hurt and then doesn’t want to work with any Influencers anymore.
By staying true to your authentic self, understanding your strengths and weaknesses, and putting together a great, value proposition, you can make breaking into this HR Influencer space a little easier.
If you have any questions, schedule a conversation today and connect with me on Twitter at @socialmicole.