Today everyone talks about (or would like to be) influencers. But what is behind this term? In truth, an influencer is anyone who is able to influence the opinions of others, in one way or another.
Some consider them smart people who have found a quick and easy way to make money.
In reality, the world that revolves around an influencer is very vast and anything but simple. But how does an influencer make money?
In this article we will see who they are, what types exist, how much they earn and how to become an influencer.
Index
- Influencers: meaning
- How to become an influencer in 7 steps
- 1. Choose your niche
- 2. Identify your audience
- 3. Choose the most suitable channels
- 4. Create content and schedule publication
- 5. Try to increase your followers
- 6. Contact companies
- 7. Create relationships
- Each category has its own niche influencer
- Influencers: what types exist?
- How to become an influencer? Choosing the most suitable channel
- How much does an influencer earn?
- Conclusions
Influencers: meaning
In practice, an influencer is a figure who is particularly expert in a certain sector, or in any case considered successful by people, who therefore has a significant following on social media. Thanks to this, they are able to influence the opinions and behavior of others, including by proposing (or selling) branded and ecommerce products and services.
What does an influencer do?
An influencer is to all intents and purposes an entrepreneur of himself: what he sells is his social profile, the product is his image.
When starting a business, one of the best strategies is to focus on a niche market and try to position yourself with your brand for that particular audience.
The strategy of influencers is the same: they specialize in a sector and do personal branding, until they become the point of reference for their audience in that particular niche.
To do this, they publish content online, whether it's on social media or on a website, the important thing is that it's interesting and valuable content and that it has the power to influence the masses.
The most common example is that of Chiara Ferragni who in 2017 was declared the world's top fashion influencer by Forbes.
But you don't need to have millions of followers to be considered an influencer, on the contrary. As we shall see, much smaller numbers suffice. Furthermore, fashion is only one of the many sectors where this profession can expand, we will also see what they are later on. Now let's find out how to become an influencer in 7 steps.
How to become an influencer in 7 steps
As we said at the beginning, the influencer is often mistakenly considered as a person who works little or nothing and earns a lot. In reality, it is simply a matter of creating and selling a product that is different from the usual, as we have said: yourself. Precisely for this reason it is a profession that is not for everyone and requires a lot of passion and perseverance.
It is a long journey with uncertain results, but here are the most important steps to take to become an influencer:
- choose your niche;
- identify your audience;
- choose the most suitable channels;
- create content and schedule publication;
- increase your followers;
- get in touch with companies;
- build relationships.
Let's go and see, point by point, all the steps to do.
1. Choose your niche
The profession of influencer can be very vast and can embrace different sectors. From fashion to technology, travel to food, you'll be spoiled for choice.
The most important thing is that the chosen niche is really passionate.
The web is full of influencers or aspiring influencers and users, especially the younger ones, are continuously exposed to their content and have reached a certain level of experience in judging an influencer. It doesn't take them long to understand if there's no passion behind a profile.
National: before choosing the niche, it is better to ask yourself this question: what are my passions, what interests me enough to talk about them every day for the next X years?
2. Identify your audience
After reflecting on yourself and your tastes, now it's up to your audience.
The first question to ask concerns the nature of one's following. Who are (or will be) the followers of the profile? What are their interests and tastes? What is their gender, what age are they? These seem trivial questions, but it is important to know who is on the other side in order to learn how to manage communication in different ways and to produce different types of content based on the target niche of users.
For example, if a travel influencer is considering creating interesting content for family travelers with children, it is important to know the audience well. It would make no sense to create content of this kind if among the followers there are mostly digital nomads. Of course, even the digital nomad niche can have a family, but in this case it is convenient to shift attention to information relating to places to travel by finding a community, where there are coworking spaces, etc.
3. Choose the most suitable channels
For example, if you're thinking about how to become an influencer in the ladies' clothing niche, perhaps TikTok isn't the most suitable social network, at least to start with.
A fundamental step is to examine all the characteristics of each social network and choose the one that best suits the type of content and potential followers.
National: It's best not to sign up for multiple platforms at the same time. Choose the main one and focus on that, adapting the contents. All the others will come later.
4. Create content and schedule publication
How do you become a true influencer, whose content is followed by hundreds or thousands of people? To embark on this career, the watchword is quality. The quality of the content is essential to build a loyal fan base.
Followers must find each content related to the niche to which they belong interesting and useful and must be able to count on the continuity and regularity in the publication of the contents.
That doesn't mean you need to post every day. It depends on the type of influencer you intend to become, the market niche and the circumstances.
If you intend to become an influencer who deals with current affairs, it is likely that the frequency of publication will have to be higher than that of an influencer who works in the children's clothing niche.
But how to ensure continuity and quality of content? The secret lies in the planning, which is why it is important to organize yourself with an editorial plan, so as not to leave anything to chance. There are many free productivity apps, any examples? Google Calendar, Trello, Notion, others are Later, PostPickr, or a classic Excel spreadsheet.
National: there is no fixed rule but in general once a day will be fine. The important thing is that the publication is constant, regular and always of high quality, we don't want to bore our audience.
5. Try to increase your followers
The number of followers is certainly important. As we will see later, it defines the type of influencer you belong to and above all allows you to increase your turnover. But content production shouldn't be tied to the number of followers.
In short, don't be discouraged. If the number of followers doesn't grow, posting low-quality content, hastily, with lower or irregular frequency, will only make the situation worse and there is the risk of losing even the users you have managed to conquer up to that point .
More important then to have few followers but with a very high engagement rate, which signals a large audience participation. This is the secret of nano influencers, for example, as we will see shortly.
Therefore, when content is created and then published, it must also be done from this point of view and take advantage of all the means available to increase followers. Here are some:
6. Contact companies
When a profile has many thousands or millions of followers, it is the brands themselves who turn to the influencer to act as a testimonial for their products.
But for those who are just starting out, this is the phase in which we introduce ourselves to companies. It will not be necessary to have hundreds of thousands of followers but it is clear that you cannot address Nike with a few hundred fans. Better to start small, with a small or medium-sized company that accepts influencers with a limited following, and then try to grow slowly.
National: Honesty and genuineness reward. When you propose a product, don't forget that on the other side there are people who look at you or read your posts. If you don't like the product, if you are in doubt about its quality, forget it. Above all, don't advertise products you've never really tried. Lend yourself to the game, after all this is also part of the job.
7. Create relationships
That the world of influencers is behind a screen is not entirely true.
Activities carried out even in offline life contribute to growth. So, when you have reached a certain follower base, try contacting other influencers and building relationships with them. Participating in face-to-face meetings and events related to your niche will be a good opportunity to meet new people, whether they are new followers or possible collaborations. The important thing is to network.
National: showing the human side is very important. Sometimes famous people are perceived as something unreal but, if you respond to your followers, if you show up at these events, if you show yourself available, you will offer them your human side and earn their trust even more.
These are, briefly, the steps to take to become an influencer, but obviously you can't have everything overnight. It's a long journey and you need a good dose of perseverance not to give up even when it seems like you're not growing.
Perseverance, therefore, and continue to study to improve more and more and to always offer interesting content: these are the ingredients to become an influencer. Sooner or later all efforts will be rewarded.
Each category has its own niche influencer
But how to become an influencer for a certain category? Are there any special precautions? Below, a brief consideration for the most common profiles.
How to become a product influencer
It is one of the most common cases. The influencer promotes products or services of a specific brand or company or sells them directly.
In the second case, however, he does affiliate marketing, in practice he establishes an affiliation relationship with the brand and earns for each sale made. Sales take place through a link where followers can purchase a product or service at a discount.
How to become a book influencer
Reading, reading, reading. Yes, still today, despite the rhythms of our days and technology leaving us little time to read, reading is still a topic that interests many people.
Indeed perhaps for this very reason. People don't have much time to get lost in bookstores or libraries and might be interested in who has already read that book and reviews it for them.
Word of mouth, advice, in the field of reading have always worked. That of the book influencer is therefore the modern and digitized version of the classic word of mouth.
How to become a fashion influencer
As we said initially, passion and interest in the sector in which you want to try your hand are everything. Especially in a sector as difficult as fashion where there is a lot of competition.
The only way to try to break through is to be as original as possible, to differentiate yourself in any way.
How to become a food influencer
Also this sector, like that of fashion, is highly inflated. It's not enough to take a picture of a nice plate of pasta at a restaurant to become a food influencer.
Here too there is a lot of competition and to be able to emerge you need to focus on originality. Alternatively, you can try to establish yourself in a smaller niche, for example by addressing those interested in organic and sustainable cuisine. One typology that has been talked about lately is that of influencer food organizers, which allow you to organize meals meticulously, saving time and avoiding waste.
How to become a travel influencer
The travel influencers par excellence are those who get paid to travel, but in reality, to reach this level, it is necessary to have many trips and followers behind them. But then how to become a travel influencer?
A good solution could be to work while travelling, in this way it is possible to "support yourself" but continue to cultivate your dream of becoming a travel influencer. And when we talk about working while traveling we can't help but think of teleworking or all the other remote work formulas. If the company where you work allows it, why not take advantage of it?
Only when you have a good fan base can you think of contacting companies and brands in line with your profile that might be interested.
Influencers: what types exist?
We now come to the classification of the types of influencers, the most common is based on the number of followers:
- nano influencer 1.000 - 10.000;
- micro influencer 10.000 - 50.000;
- medium influencer 50.000 - 500.000;
- macro influencer 500.000 - 1 mln;
- mega influencer (celebrity) oltre 1 mln.
In reality there is not such a clear division, there are also those who prefer to reduce the categories to 3, merging nano and micro influencers on one side, and medium and macro influencers on the other.
These classifications are also very useful for answering questions like how many followers do you need to have to be an influencer? or how many followers do you need to have to start earning? Let's say that in general at least 1000 followers would be needed.
Nanoinfluencers
There are nano influencers who reach just under 5.000 followers but are very successful because they deal with very specific things, such as consultancy and strategy for websites and social media advertising.
Micro influence
It is the upper step compared to nano influencers and also in this case the degree of involvement of followers is very high. They often represent the only point of reference for that particular niche and the followers are often very active.
An example of a micro influencer could be someone who, with around 20.000 followers, represents the point of reference for lovers of a certain software of which he is an expert.
Medium influencer and Macro influencer
Medium and macro influencers are two very close categories and in some cases difficult to distinguish. The number of followers is very high and these are the categories to which the brands address the most.
Mega influencer
As you can see however, the world of influencers is varied and there is room for everyone, even the little ones (if they have a good idea to work on).
You have to start small aiming to gradually reach the next level, look at the profiles of established influencers and learn from them, take inspiration and try to be original and true to your identity.
How to become an influencer? Choosing the most suitable channel
As we have already said, each influencer chooses a certain channel and, as his audience grows, he also moves to other channels.
Let's see them all and make a consideration for each one.
Blog
It is also important to remember that whatever social network you choose, you are always a guest. In short, you have to abide by the landlord's rules. Having your own site, on the other hand, allows greater autonomy both for the publication of contents and for the structure of the latter.
Also in this case we are talking about a historical software. Among the many means of communication, video is the most appreciated by users. It is no coincidence that all social platforms are turning towards more visual communication.
Podcast
They generally deal with various topics but interviews are very common. We at resources4gaming have collected 6 Italian podcasts from which to learn how to do business.
Social network
We talked about them in abundance, they are the main tool for those who undertake this journey, the most important and direct means of communication that exists.
We could say that things have reversed compared to the past. Once a site or a blog was created and then social profiles were created. Today, in many cases, the social profile comes first and everything else comes after.
How much does an influencer earn?
Here we come to the most important aspect, how much does an influencer earn on average?
It's a legitimate question, both for those who have decided to become an influencer and want to understand how much they can earn, and for an entrepreneur who has decided to open an ecommerce and is thinking about influencers as a marketing strategy.
Of course, the answer to this question is it depends. As we have seen, there are many variables, it depends on the social network used and the reference niche. But above all, the most important data are the number of followers and the engagement rate, the level of public involvement, or how many reactions you can get with a post.
You can start from a minimum of a few Euros for each post up to earn thousands. For example, a post by Chiara Ferragni today can be worth up to 82.000 dollars.
Below we list the data obtained from a DeRev research on influencer compensation for each category and for the most important social networks.
Conclusions
In this article we have seen what it is and how to become an influencer, what are the tricks to use in choosing the niche, the social and the type of communication.
The online world has radically changed the idea of business and our lives. What was once seen as a game or a frivolous activity has now become a real profession.
Today influencers are able to build small empires and represent an indispensable element in a company's marketing strategy. Therefore, we must not underestimate them, indeed knowing what the underlying logic is is important both to become an influencer and to collaborate with them.
Notes on the author
Ilaria Cazziol
Curious and hyperactive by nature, she found the perfect challenge in the continuous changes of digital marketing. She is passionate about travel, writing and new technologies, which is probably why she has become a freelance content writer and a digital nomad.
