In today’s busy digital marketplace, online retailers are seeking ways to stand out from competitors. Content marketing, when thoughtfully planned and executed skillfully, is the way internet marketers today define their brands and distinguish them from others.

This focus on quality, engaging digital content has given rise to online personalities called influencers.

These people have accounts with followers on one or more social media channels. Influencers do just what their name implies—influence public opinion and guide trends.

Marketers have discovered their ability to hold sway over their followers makes them valuable marketing commodities. If you want to jump on the influencer bandwagon, here are ways to increase your return on investment with influencer-sponsored posts. 

Blogs

Blogs have come a long way from their first appearance in the 1990s as personal diaries of sorts published online.

Entrepreneurs have found that blogs make great promotional tools. Blog marketing is the process of reaching your brand’s target audience with your company blog.

Today most businesses publish their blogs as part of their websites. This makes managing blogs easy for business owners and finding and accessing them simple for visitors.

Blending Blogs and Influencers

While many influencers have jazzy accounts on social media, they also work well with blogs. For influencer pairings to help your business, you must choose your partners carefully.

Influencers’ interests and values must be closely aligned with your brand and specialized niche. When influencers share your brand with their followers, you already have an interested audience hearing your message.

An excellent way to add influencers to your blog is to run a question-and-answer post with an influencer. You and the influencer can publicize it. Another way to work with influencers using blogs is through guest posting.

When you have developed a relationship with an influencer, you can request to send them a post you have written to publish on their website. While creating blog posts takes time and work, it costs little or nothing. In turn, you build brand awareness.

Branded Content

With such a crowded marketplace, your message must be focused to be heard. Additionally, consumers have grown scornful of generic advertising that only tries to sell something.

Enter branded content. Branded content helps you establish a personalized online presence for your brand.

  • It is valuable for users. People today want to be uplifted, educated, entertained. Effective branded content does this.
  • It focuses on the values of your brand. Branded content gives voice to your brand’s intangible qualities, and it shows consumers how your brand can make their lives better.
  • It generates interest in your brand. This type of content is aimed at getting consumers to talk about your brand and share your content.

Branded content is not pushed into the face of consumers but instead invites them to share it organically.

This may sound counterintuitive, but when people relate to your brand on an emotional level, this response could lead to increased sales and, more importantly, brand loyalty, a considerable ROI.

Influencer marketing is an integral part of creating this type of content. Influencers can create original material focused on your brand. By sharing your message in sponsored content on their channels and sites, influencers open the door to a valuable resource of potential customers.

AdWords

Google AdWords works with thousands of influencers to actively help companies create content that boosts awareness and leads to sales. Depending on your circumstances, this could be an excellent way to boost your ROI with minimal investment.

Likewise, AdSense is another way to boost awareness and possibly income. Influencers can include your messages on their sites.

Social Media

Not surprisingly, social media marketing is a huge part of the world of influencers. Social media is where influencers spend time and connect directly with their audiences.

Facebook advertising puts your brand name before a vast audience, but influencers can target your message to their followers using their own voices.

In this way, their followers can begin to imagine themselves using your products. They, in turn, may share your message with others. Social media channels offer you valuable ROI, often at little or no cost to you.

Success Through Influencers

Marketers today have discovered that influencers are a unique marketing asset. Their creative styles make them ideal voices for putting your brand in front of their followers.

The digital world offers numerous channels for working with influencers. The axiom today seems to be work smarter, not harder. Influencers help you do that.