Influencer marketing is one, if not the most important, way to grow an audience for your content. Influencers ignoring outreach equals a waste of time. However, when they pay attention to your efforts it equals:
- Getting an influential voice in your community to point people towards your content means vastly increasing the number of people who see your work.
- Crucially, it also means that the right people will see it, and that you’ll enjoy an increase in potential customers visiting your site.
- Influencers also help to build up the discussion surrounding your content in the wider community and help you to gain legitimacy and authority throughout your field.
Good influencers come in all shapes and sizes, and will differ depending on what the dynamics within your community are like.
- Some of the best influencers will be prolific bloggers who constantly curate and aggregate content for a relevant audience
- Others will be creators with a proven track record for spotting and taking advantage of trends within your industry.
Reaching out to these influencers to alert them to your content can be a simple process, but its effects on your content marketing strategy’s success will be far-reaching when done right.
What’s the Problem?
When you’ve used the right outreach method, influencers will be thrilled to hear from you.
- Influencer marketing is often a symbiotic relationship. Influencers constantly want content to share with their audience, and by sharing your content – assuming it’s of a high enough quality – you’re doing them a favor.
- At the same time, you benefit by making sure your content gets seen by the right audience.
Of course, in reality, not every influencer is going to share your content or even respond to your messages.
So what are you doing wrong? Why don’t influencers seem to care about your obviously fantastic content?
Let’s assume that you’ve taken my advice from throughout this blog and built up an effective content marketing strategy.
- You’ve created solid, engaging content that meets the needs of your audience.
- Even so, you might still find it difficult to connect with influencers and take advantage of their reach.
If this is the case, it’s probably because you’re using the wrong approach to contacting your influencers – your content isn’t getting in front of them in a meaningful way.
- There are plenty of reasons why this might be happening.
- Thankfully, there are also plenty of ways to overcome these challenges.
Here are seven reasons why influencers might not be paying attention to your correspondence, as well as what you can do to fix your problems:
1. Your outreach isn’t personal enough
If influencer marketing is really as effective as people say it is, you should probably reach out to as many influencers as possible, right?
- After all, the more people who post links to your content, the further it’ll travel.
Be careful taking this attitude, though. In an eagerness to get the attention of as many influencers as possible, you could wind up alienating all of them.
The temptation when contacting influencers is to create a template which can be applied to as many people as possible.
- This makes it quicker to reach out to people, meaning you can cover more ground.
- If you’re not saying something personal and unique to each influencer, though, they’ll be able to spot a cookie-cutter message.
If it’s easy and quick to send out a message, it’s equally easy to ignore it.
Instead, Try…
Take the time to connect with each influencer personally.
- Mention what content of theirs you enjoy, and why you appreciate their contribution to your industry’s community.
- Offer up a piece of content for them to look on that fits their personal branding, and explain why you think it’s perfect for them.
Taking this approach means that influencers will know you’re not just treating them as a tick-box on the way to growing your brand, and may be more open to creating a dialogue that can be used to exchange genuine correspondence.
2. You’re not selling your content right
If influencers are rejecting or ignoring your content when you share it with them, don’t take it personally.
- There’s a lot of content online, and it’s easy for your work to get swallowed up in a wave of similar materials.
- Your influencers might not even get the chance to look through your content properly because they’re dealing with so many other distractions, all at the same time.
It’s a common problem for creators who try reaching out to influencers, assuming that their stellar work will speak for itself.
Unfortunately, this is almost never the case. You need to give influencers a solid, inescapable reason to click on your content and give it more than five seconds of their time.
Instead, Try…
To make sure that influencers give your content time, make sure that your correspondence is as bold and appealing as possible.
- Don’t write lengthy emails with long paragraphs that take a lot of time and effort to read.
- Also, don’t force influencers to guess why your content matters. Make it clear why the resources you’re sharing will benefit the influencer’s community of followers.
The key is to be as plainly descriptive as possible: what is it that makes your content unique, and how will this help people?
When you can provide influencers with a two sentence pitch for your content, you’ll be in a better position to list out the benefits of your materials, and influencers will respond positively.
3. You’re looking for influencers in the wrong places
In the rush to get as many notable people as possible talking about your work, it’s easy to get carried away and start sending out messages to a variety of influencers who don’t necessarily have a lot of interest in your subject matter.
- This is bad for everyone. You end up wasting influencers’ time, and your own time as well.
If an influencer can’t see an immediate, direct connection to an area of interest when they look at your content, they’re going to dismiss it.
It’s up to you to pick the right influencers for the job.
Instead, Try…
Find the people who are in the best position to help your content travel to your target audience – not just the largest audience possible.
- Sometimes, this can mean foregoing the big name influencers in favor of smaller, more niche sources of traffic.
Look at the content in your industry that receives the most traffic and buzz.
Then, look at what outlets are promoting that content, and use those to determine who the really effective influencers are in your community.
As you find the right influencers for your content, you’ll enjoy a far greater reach among your core audience.
4. Your requests require a lot of work from influencers
Everybody in the modern world lives a busy life.
The influencers you’re trying to contact are no exception:
- They’ve got a lot to do to keep their audience happy.
- Any extra effort that they have to expend needs to be carefully balanced to avoid wasting time.
For this reason, if you’re asking your influencers to copy the text of your article, post it onto their site, write a commentary or analysis of it, link to your website and your various social media profiles, and then pump out links to your content through their various channels, you’re asking for too much.
- Even if influencers want to help you, they often won’t have the time to spare.
If your requests from influencers are too much work, it’s easier to ignore you than it is to deal with your demands.
Instead, Try…
The trick is to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible for your influencers.
- Ask for retweets or link reposts as opposed to full commentaries on your content.
- Consider drafting up pre-written analyses for your influencers to use to help make it easier for them to quickly respond to your content.
Basically, make things easy for your influencers so that it’s not taking too much time out of their day to help you, and they’ll respond gratefully.
5. You’re not using the right channels
In the modern era of internet connectivity, there are a lot of ways to get in touch with people.
If you find, though, that you’re not getting any response from a particular influencer, it might be that you’ve used the wrong channel of communication.
- While email is the typical route for business communication, often influencers get inundated with so many emails that they end up missing things or simply don’t check their inbox very often.
- Similarly, while social media is great for communication, it can often be difficult to talk over a lot of the background chatter from other users.
A lot of the time, if your target influencer isn’t responding to you, you might need to try a different way of getting hold of them.
Instead, Try…
Most influencers who are used to getting communication from fans and other professionals in their field have an established channel through which they like correspondence to come, so that they can respond to it.
- This will often be listed on their websites as the business contact details.
- For news outlets and media channels, there’s often even an option for site visitors to point them towards content that they might be interested in seeing.
Wherever possible, it’s best to use these preferred methods of talking to an influencer.
That way, to know that your content is going to the right place to be actually seen, so that it won’t accidentally be overlooked.
6. You don’t seem interesting enough
It’s easy to think of influencer marketing as just another tool in your arsenal as a content marketer.
- You post your content online, you post on social media about it, and then you let the influencers know that it’s there.
The thing is, though, influencers can spot when you’re just using them for their connections throughout the industry.
If your communication is too dry and to-the-point, there’s no reason for people to care about what you’re saying.
- They’ll dismiss your content as being nothing more than business spam which comes with the level of fame they’ve achieved.
Being too dry in your messages can mean missing out, not just on an opportunity to push your content further, but also on the chance to develop solid contacts that help your reputation to grow.
Instead, Try…
The best thing that you can do when talking with influencers is look to develop a genuine relationship.
- Make friends with influencers, bond over enjoyment of similar content, and talk about things other than just your content.
Give influencers something to connect with, and share your human side – doing so will help you to develop friendships which will open more doors in the future.
7. Your outreach is confusing
With all the requirements on their time, influencers don’t have the luxury of being able to comb through your messages to figure out what you need them to do.
- If you simply show them your content, they won’t necessarily realize that you’re hoping for them to share it with their audience.
It’s often the case that an influencer will misunderstand what content creators are looking for from them, especially if, as we’ve already talked about, you’re looking for them to do a lot of stuff.
Instead, Try…
Reaching out to influencers is not unlike creating any other type of content.
- Above all, you need to provide a solid call to action to inspire influencers to do something.
- This call to action should be simple, direct, and should point to a deliberate action that your influencers should take.
When giving influencers specific tasks to accomplish, you shouldn’t be pushy or rude. But by being direct, you can help increase the likelihood that they’ll act on your request.
I really do believe that influencer marketing is one of the most effective ways to get your content out to a bigger and more targeted audience.
- Using the existing audience that an influencer will have means pointing your work directly at a pre-approved group of potential customers.
As you work to make your correspondence with influencers more targeted, friendly and personal, you’ll notice a definite increase in the number of influencers who get on board with your content.
What techniques do you use for talking to influencers? How has influencer marketing helped your content marketing efforts? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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