Having a large number of followers doesn’t matter – real influence requires it

It’s not unusual to see a social media account with a million followers, admire their success, and think you have to do what they do. However, followers don’t at all times translate to “influence,” meaning that they’ve actually influenced their audience to take motion — the whole premise of an influencer.

When evaluating an account that is more popular than yours, consider whether it also meets the following criteria:

• Renown: Do viewers find them credible?
• Appeal: Is there a strategy to confirm what they said or confirm education/experience based on their statements?
• Industry standard:Do they meet expectations with rigorously chosen content?
• Proprietary: Is what they say/do different, is the way they convey it unique?
• Audience insights: Do they know the audience for their ads in terms of demographics – age, location, interests, etc.?

The value is in the evaluation, and the evaluation is based on understanding one vital thing: why someone is a fan/follower of yours. Once you answer that, it provides a greater input into what is really in front of you in terms of learn how to sell to them.

Call to Action (CTA) vs. Good Sales Strategy

Even though social media can provide direct insight into socioeconomic status, allowing us to know the affordability of services and products for consumers, that doesn’t mean that influencer promoting, i.e. promoting a product/service, will work. The way you sell to your audience is greater than just saying, “Let me send you something,” or “Click on the link.”

This is where many influencers lose sight, because 10% of the business is products and services, while 90% is the business itself — and many influencers have not mastered the skills of selling. They may sell themselves to get likes, comments, saves, and followers, but that doesn’t at all times translate into creating wealth. Yet many of them still get paid…for now.

Your step to motion is to point out how the problem was solved, helpful communication, and buyer personas across diverse demographics.

Monetization Madness

Influencers make money and there is little doubt about it, but many of them can only offer you (4) numbers:

• Followers: This is “retention,” or the number of people you managed to maintain as followers.
• Soft demographics: age and location of followers.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The number of individuals who were successfully convinced to click on your call to motion.
• Partial Conversion Rate: The number of individuals who clicked on your call to motion and made a purchase, but could only be recorded If the company uses an associates program and if the buyer hasn’t bypassed it.

We still don’t know about conversion rates: Consumers who made a purchase because of an influencer but bypassed the affiliate loop (i.e. made a purchase using an alternative metric), which now results in an untraceable origin of the transaction, and corporations not using affiliate links, with no traceability (suppliers of tangible goods not using affiliate links, restaurants, and other brick-and-mortar and service establishments).

How technology will close the loop and AI will introduce a recent metric

If an incentive is offered for using an affiliate link, it dramatically increases the likelihood that it can be used, and the #1 mechanism for adoption is cost reduction. If a consumer is told they are going to pay less up front or by building up loyalty points that they will save later, many will see the value.

In addition, through the use of an application/software/program, this technology will show businesses:

• Average expenses:The average amount of money spent by an influencer’s audience.
• Customer Lifetime Value:The average amount of money an influencer’s audience spends over time.
• Buyer Demographics: If tools were a prerequisite to asking questions to know the consumer, what were once just copycat insights are now shopper insights. These are the numbers to begin listening to!

AI tools can even give you the option to inform us how much money an influencer’s audience has designed to spend inside the influencer’s activity; the average amount of money spent by the influencer’s audience designed spend money on the company over the long run (expected customer lifetime value) and connections to financial trends, similar to the impact of the economy on the influencer’s audience and what exactly they spend their money on.

New Proposal: Influencer vs. Collaborator

Let’s look at these three scenarios:

1. High sales conversion rate with high projected average spend: An influencer with 10,000 followers showing a 3% sales conversion rate at a projected average spend of $150 = $45,000 in average collaboration revenue (10,000 x .03 = 300 customers x $150).
2. High sales conversion rate with low projected average spend: An influencer with 100,000 followers, 3% sales conversion rate, projected average spend of $10 = average collaborations of $30,000 (100,000 x 0.03 = 3,000 customers x $10).
3. Low sales conversion rate with high projected spend: An influencer with 100,000 followers, 0.2% sales conversion rate, projected average spend of $150 = average collaboration of $30,000 (100,000 x 0.002 = 200 customers x $150).

The data above shows us how an influencer with 10,000 followers may be more helpful than an influencer with 100,000 followers, simply on account of sales conversion and average projected spend. If an influencer can’t get their audience to spend money, and when they do, if they don’t spend enough money to make the business profitable, beyond qualitatively supporting their popularity, how can a business owner say they made a good monetary investment?

This recent metric really separates an influencer from a contributor who just happens to have a lot of followers. Your goal is to make sure you know your audience, learn how to best market to them, and recalibrate your technique to improve the numbers corporations will use to find out whether or not they’ll hire you.