{"id":21182,"date":"2018-06-25T07:22:18","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T11:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diymarketers.com\/?p=21182"},"modified":"2018-06-25T07:22:18","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T11:22:18","slug":"how-to-do-influencer-marketing-on-a-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diymarketers.com\/how-to-do-influencer-marketing-on-a-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Do Influencer Marketing on a Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re looking for how to do influencer marketing on a budget, you’re going to want to keep reading. Because influencer marketing is something every business can do, no matter how small.\u00a0 The first thing you have to do is decide to explore the strategy.<\/p>\n

The next step is to realize that influencer marketing is something that takes time. #BizapaloozaChat guest, Michaela Underdahl is the social media muscle behind the successful Nimble Social CRM platform.\u00a0 Founder and CEO. Jon Ferrara developed and marketed Nimble to build business relationships.\u00a0 It only made sense to market the platform using its purpose and capabilities in helping people connect and work together.<\/p>\n

I wanted to get the “boots-on-the-ground” perspective and insights about how to do influencer marketing from the ground up. Thankfully, Michaela, who has taken over this process and codified it for Nimble was happy to share her experience.\u00a0 And today, she’s going to share it with you.<\/p>\n

You’ll want to watch the video for full details, but here is the short skippy:<\/p>\n

Research and Get Familiar With Your Space<\/h2>\n

The first step is to get familiar with the companies, experts, people and conversations in your space.\u00a0 That takes two things (luckily, both are relatively free) –time and listening.<\/p>\n

Underdahl recommends starting your process by setting up a simple spreadsheet where you can add companies, influencer names, and information, keywords, etc.\u00a0 Think of the spreadsheet as your sandbox.<\/p>\n

Start gathering names, keywords, and hashtags that influencers would use in their conversations.<\/h2>\n

Think of influencer marketing as the equivalent of walking into a party or a networking event where you’re simply mingling around and listening to groups of conversations where you can potentially drop in.<\/p>\n

Start with Google, then move over to free or nearly free platforms like HootSuite<\/a> and Brand24<\/a> where you can enter those industry names and keywords. Another great resource is BuzzSumo<\/a>. Out of these three, the most popular is HootSuite (almost every expert in the business will tell you to use that one).\u00a0 The two I use most often are BuzzSumo and Brand24.\u00a0 Both of these are paid services, but here’s my sneaky tip — each offers a free trial and a monthly plan.\u00a0 So schedule your research time and give yourself a solid month to pull this section together.\u00a0 That is money well spent.\u00a0 Let me tell you WHY I recommend you invest in these two tools.<\/p>\n

[box] Make a list of all the tools you want to use, get yourself ready to work and then take advantage of the free trial and if you need it, only sign up for a month.\u00a0 This way you get all the benefits of a high-end paid tool without the monthly expense.[\/box]<\/p>\n

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How to use BuzzSumo to find influencers for your small business:<\/h4>\n

\"how<\/p>\n

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First go over to the “Most Shared” tab and you’ll see a search box.\u00a0 Inside the search box, you can enter the brainstormed list you created from your industry.\u00a0 This list can contain simple industry words such as “small business, social listening, accounting, restaurants, real estate, etc.<\/p>\n

[perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]As a shortcut, have some questions ready and reach out to the journalist and ask who some of their favorite resources are.[\/perfectpullquote]<\/p>\n

You want to start with relatively general words, just to get a flavor for what the most popular content is.\u00a0 You’ll notice in this example, I’ve used the term “influencer marketing tips” and then I selected the time frame of the last year and finally I added another filter (which is a new feature) called “only B2B publishers”.\u00a0 This gives me the most shared content from my target audience on a topic I’m interested in.<\/p>\n

The other key piece of information that I’m going to use is the author’s name and the publication.\u00a0 Journalists do a ton of research and are often familiar with a lot of the experts in their field.\u00a0 For every article that gets printed, thousands of words and resources end up on the “editing floor”.<\/p>\n

You can also use BuzzSumo to find influencers and blogs on your topic or keyword.<\/p>\n

\"how<\/p>\n

Simply click on the influencers tab and enter your keyword or topic phrase in the search bar.\u00a0 Again, I stayed with “influencer marketing tips”.\u00a0 In the right-hand sidebar, select the types of influencers you want.\u00a0 You’ll notice that I selected Bloggers and “regular people” rather than companies.\u00a0 This is because I would be looking for people to follow and connect with who talk about that topic.<\/p>\n

In our interview, Michaela Underdahl mentioned that choosing and engaging with influencers isn’t just about the number of followers they have.\u00a0 You want to consider other attributes as well.\u00a0 BuzzSumo pulls out some of those attributes; page and domain authority<\/a> (this is a score from 1-100 that tells you how likely the site is to rank on search engines.) in other words, influencers with higher authority sites are a great resource for content.\u00a0 BuzzSumo will also tell you how many Twitter followers someone has, but what’s more important is their “reply ratio” — that tells you that the influencer is actually responding and talking with their community.\u00a0 Another interesting number is the average retweet measure.\u00a0 This tells you how often their content is shared.<\/p>\n

Michaela recommends that you know exactly what you want from your influencers, and BuzzSumo will not only help you find influencers, you can use this tool to help you decide exactly HOW they can help you.<\/p>\n

How to use Brand24 to find conversations for your influencer marketing<\/h4>\n

Yes, HootSuite is free and it’s a very powerful social listening tool.\u00a0 But if you’re on a mission to jump into key conversations, Brand24 is a wonderful social listening tool.\u00a0 Let me give you a brief overview of how to use this tool.<\/p>\n