How To Be an Influencer | A Complete Guide

one of the quickest growing careers right now is being an influencer and that sounds insane that it's actually a career that there are actually people out there making a lot of money being an influencer providing followers with links and things like that but it's for real and I have been doing a lot of research recently on this influencer marketing phenomenon and how to get started in it so in today's video I'm gonna give you five tips so that if you want to become an influencer and you want to start in this world of being in influencer marketing and have brands coming to you this is the video for you let's go what's up party people my name is Jessica Stansberry and I am so pumped that you are here if you are brand new here then you're in the right place if you want to learn about business strategy personal development and get all the tools you need to live a life you love hit subscribe below because that is what my channel is all about before I jump into all the tips and tricks on how to be an influencer I have created a really comprehensive influencer marketing guide this is going to help you figure out what you should be doing why you should be doing it how to grow on certain platforms what platform is right for you and how to start reaching out to brands what to charge them how to like produce the content for them all the things so if you are looking to get started as an influencer who can be paid to tell people about things then definitely download this guide you can download it completely for free at Jessica Stansbury com forward slash influencer I'll put the link below in the description as well but that's Jessica Stansbury com forward slash influencer will get you this really really in-depth influencer marketing guide and get you started off on the right foot now like I say this influencer marketing world is kinda new and even though it's been around for several years it's still one of those things that people are confused about that people are trying to get into but they don't quite understand or that brands even are just now understanding the power of its specially small brands so I'm so pumped to give you a couple of tips today to really drive you forward if you're like you know what I think I could be an influencer I think I could have brands come in to me you know I mean I think you can do just saying so before I really get into the tips on how to be an influencer or how to become an influencer I want to give a little like asterisk here and that is that you have to be dedicated if you want to do this as a career these people you're seeing being able to share their genes they bought and share you know the home-improvement project they're doing at their house or partner with places like Home Depot or Walmart these people have really like dug their heels in and gotten good at what it takes to be in influencers so this is not for the faint of heart also I want you to know that you're gonna make very little money at the beginning but it all the work you're doing will help you make more along the way so if you're looking at you know oh I want to be an Instagram influencer it's not like you start your account and then you're an influencer tomorrow but the work that you do will lend itself well to having the money and the funds coming in later on throughout the process okay so if you're ready to be an influencer here are the five things you need to know number one you need to pick a niche here's what I need you to know it's really easy to think like oh I just want to be a mom influencer I just want to be a lifestyle influencer I just want to be a home decor influencer I just want to be a skateboarding influencer or I want to you know really just talk about home schooling right like it's easy for us to think that we don't want to niche ourselves down because we're afraid that that will cause not enough people to come into our atmosphere but here is key you need to niche down really strategically at first and then you can broaden out I follow tons and tons of influencers like I say I've been researching this for a while but also I love it I think it's a really cool way for me to be able to get the the products that I might want to purchase just kind of in my face and then also support people who are running their own small business by buying through their links and that kind of thing and as I've been following these people I can literally see the shift happen when you know they were hardcore this niche and now they're starting to bring in a couple of other things and it works just fine because there's cross in their niches and they overlap in a way that works so don't think you have to always say completely niche down but niche down to something that is a little less broad than motherhood maybe you are going to be a minimalist motherhood influencer maybe you're going to be a toddler motherhood influencer maybe you're going to be a homeschooling motherhood influencer but nonetheless you need to kind of add another word in front of motherhood to make it a little more Mich same thing if you're gonna be a fashion influencer are you going to be casual style are you gonna be like really fancy are you going to really buy all your stuff from Walmart like whatever it is you are going to see the most bang for your buck if you will niche niche niche niche niche down if you're in home decor are you a farmhouse home decor person are you someone who does a lot of DIY projects are you the influencer account where you do everything on a budget are you the influencer account where you can afford to just go buy whatever you want right so you need to niche down in a way where you're attracting the people that you should be attracting and eventually you can broaden out but trust me when I tell you that it is a hundred percent the case that if you are wanting to be an influencer that you need to niche down okay the second thing you need to do is kind of related to the first thing and that is to pick a platform so instead of all the platforms I want you to pick one platform that's how this is related to niching instead of being really broad we want to narrow it down so maybe that means that at first you're just on Instagram you don't even have a blog not my favorite strategy but you know it could the case and I've seen plenty of people do it so maybe you are just on Facebook maybe you are just a blogger and then and I'm saying just as in like specifically not just as in it's a small thing to do let's reiterate that but maybe you're a blogger and you have Instagram as your social platform but either way you need to niche down on some platform maybe you're a youtuber and that's how you gain all of your followers and that's how you gain your audience but you need to niche down on a platform and dominate that platform before you start broadening out to other platforms now I don't necessarily see blogging as a social platform I think it is something that all influencers really need because we need to be able to search for your content and that kind of thing but just know that if that feels too overwhelming to you you can absolutely start on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube or wherever you think you can really dominate the platform and to really make that decision you have to see where you like to hang out but also where your ideal client hashtag number one here where they like to hang out where those niche people really like to hang out maybe you love Facebook but your niche is really on Instagram if you're a home decor account and you need to share pretty pictures you're probably gonna want to be on Instagram so just know that you need to put yourself in a box of I am serving this niche on this platform again we can broaden out as we go I promise it works that way okay third thing and I kind of hit on this a little bit when I was saying that the people who are really successful at this the people who are you're seeing if you go look up fashion hashtags or home-decor hashtags or skateboarding hashtags or whatever influencers you're looking for the people who have millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers have done this thing okay and that is to treat it like a business I think a lot of times influencers start in the same way that business owners start especially if they're women we all we kind of get started because we wanted to either have an outlet while we stay home with our kids or we wanted to have you know some kind of personal thing even if we don't have kids or we want to quit our job and that just seems like a cool place to start right I've always been intrigued by blogging and content creation but I never treated it like a business until four or five years ago and that's really when it started growing the people I see getting the these massive deals and making boo coos of money are the people who are treating their accounts their influence their thing like a business not the people who are just kind of you know posting here and there doing a little here and there you know doing everything kind of half-cocked if you will but these are the people who are really going full force this is my business I am here this is my career this is what I'm doing and this is how I'm gonna do it and dominate it and that way you can approach it with a plan and a strategy - and it doesn't feel like just this passive thing that might or might not work because if you're treating it like a passive thing that might or might not work it's not gonna work hashtag truth bomb okay so once you have found your niche found your platform told yourself that you're treating this puppy like a business and you are ready and raring to go you need to start growing your account or your reach now I'm not telling you actually I don't believe it at all I don't think you have to have a massive massive following to make money as an influencer actually I know you don't I have worked with influencers on several different different capacities whether that was with a company I consult with here locally or myself or someone has reached out to me as an influencer but I've worked on in this world on several different capacities and if you have a really engaged following and you are an amazing account people are going to spend money with you even if you're a smaller account it's not all about the numbers yes a lot of it's about the numbers I can't help that and I can't fix that but if you will start growing your reach and this is where having a niche and having one platform really comes in handy because you're going to go like you're doubling down on that niche in that platform and you're gonna grow way quicker than someone who's trying to spread their you know their love everywhere else essentially you need to grow that reach you need to be doing the things to grow the reach on the platform in the niche that you have picked so if you're on Instagram that might be posting and getting on a good posting schedule and using the right hashtags and doing collaborations and giveaways and whatever else it could be if you're on YouTube doing collaborations tagging your videos correctly paying attention to trends and doing videos that will take off in the algorithm if you're on Facebook maybe that is trying to create memes that are shareable or doing the things that need to be done to really grow on these accounts okay so fourth thing you really need to do first you need to pick your niche second you need to pick your platform third you need to go all in and treat this like a business fourth you need to try and start growing your reach and then once you see kind of the magic behind growing your reach and you understand what is duplicatable and replicatable it's easy to continue to grow and yes features by bigger bloggers help and features by big companies help and being featured on a hashtag account helps but just know that if you will do the work you will grow okay so grow that audience and then the fifth thing you need to do to actually be an influencer and that's to make money so once you have kind of gotten everything established and you feel like you're at a good point whatever that looks like again I don't think there's a magic number here I have seen people with work with brands on a very you know small caliber who have less than a thousand followers on Instagram I have seen people work with sponsorships and brands on YouTube with less than a thousand subscribers I've seen people wait until they have 10,000 I've seen people have 5,000 and still get deals someone I know on Instagram recently shared that she got her first 12,000 dollar deal with only three thousand people on Instagram so don't think that there's this magic number cuz there's not what really is the magic is you knowing that you have harbored the people that this brand is trying to get in front of and that they will listen to you because your job as an influencer is to influence people if you're an influencer then people are kind of looking to you to tell them what to do tell them what to buy tell them how to do the thing tell them what products to use I have never positioned myself as an influencer and I still every single day on YouTube and on Instagram get messages that are like hey hat what hair products do you use or what blush do you use or what camera do you use or where did you get those blue light blocking glasses I am constantly being asked for things that I use because I am in some way influencing the people on the other side of the camera right so know that your job is to influence people and if you can Harbor a good amount of people that believe in you and are influenced by you then you are an influencer okay and that could be that could be a hundred people that could be two people it really could if those two people will be diehard loyal fans of yours you can be an influencer with a very small following and then continue to grow it to scale okay so the fifth thing what I'm talking about here is really starting to reach out to brands knowing you know you have that good audience you have what it takes to reach out to a brand and now that may mean when you're getting started you're not reaching out to Home Depot you're reaching out to your local hardware store who also has an online shop that you can go buy all your products there share it on Instagram and have people buy from them online right or maybe you are a fashion designer and not a fashion designer fashion influencer and you know you don't have a ton of following so reaching out to someone like Madewell to do a deal with you is probably not gonna happen go to your local boutique owners or find a smaller boutique on Instagram who would love to have someone telling people about their clothes because you have to do the work to tell them how awesome you are and how amazing the results are gonna be so just know that you can start reaching out to brands early and you should that's kind of the final piece of the puzzle you've got the niche you've got the platform you've got the work ethic you have got you've started growing the influence and growing their reach and now you actually need to start making money with so if you're looking to be an influencer I hope this was really really helpful and I actually have created a guide for you all about kind of getting started in this influencer world it's all about influencer marketing what you really need to do how to the basic strategies on how to grow on the different platforms and then how to kind of start reaching out to brands what that rate looks like how much you're supposed to be charging all of that done a comprehensive guide for you that you can have completely for free all you have to do is go to Jessica Stansbury comm forward slash influencer and you can download that for free now until next time go grab that guide go ahead and hit subscribe so you don't miss any other videos from me and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below that way I can fill more videos for you if this is an industry you're really looking to dive deeper into bye y'all

Channel: Jessica Stansberry

Views: 6,542

Keywords: Video marketing tips, video marketing, YouTube Tips, how to be an influencer, how to be an influencer 2019, how to be an influencer 2020, influencer marketing, influencer marketing strategy, influencer marketing strategy 2019, affiliate marketing, influencers explained, how to be an instagram influencer

Id: C8KLcll2T54

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019