I have taken numerous courses about social media, and I probably scrolled through hundreds of Instagram templates, and I am just now figuring out on my own that there is a huge, distinct difference between Influencers and Brands. And misunderstanding this is negatively impacting me.
The steps I have been taught to take by very successful women were to
- Define your niche
- Define your audience
- Really define your audience – what is a bad day for them? What do they think about while masturbating? Maybe not that far but it feels like we are going that far.
- Sales Pitch – what problem do you solve? Put it in a story.
- Topics and Subtopics – use Google and Pinterest for ideas
- Swipe files of overused caption ideas
- Bulk the creative process. Bulk the content. Plan, create and schedule one month’s content in one day.
- Be in line with your blog as in theme, topics, and sales
- Don’t forget your CTA
- Ask questions to get engagement
- Be consistent
These are not wrong. But they do leave out one very important component: there are two very distinctive styles for marketing on social media.
Which one do you want to be?
Influencers
Influencers are people who post about themselves, their lifestyles, their food, their closets, their art. They sell products, if they sell products, by endorsing them. So instead of “Sale 50% off,” they post a photo of them wearing or using the product, or a video.
Influencers bank on their fame and popularity and/or the quality of relationship between them and their readers. Most, if not all, of their content is original. They do not usually use stock photos. They do not usually use templates. They do not usually have matching color schemes. They don’t normally push sales. They don’t normally have a CTA.
Given, most of those observations are of mega-influencers and macro-influencers. And I think that’s a big difference between them and micro-influencers.
They reach people by entertaining them. Teaching them. Inspiration and aspiration. A fashion model might post about her day, behind the scenes, finished work, the cover of the magazine they are on, and all of it gives us fashion ideas. A chef might show some recipes, but selfies grilling, selfies in the kitchen, pictures of food they prepared, pictures of the cookbook they got the recipe from. A makeup artist might show selfies of her makeup art. Rainbow eyes. Mermaid scales. Products she’s endorsing.
Brands
Brands are companies who are trying to sell stuff. They post Sale 50% off, and new line type of posts. They pay influencers to endorse their product.
They generally post things like their product, their product being used, updates on sales and new lines, promotional events, testimonials, customer social media content that mentions them in a positive light.
They use templates, have a color scheme, have a vibe. They have a CTA on almost every post.
They generally reach people by advertising, endorsements, and collaborations.
So Citizen Watches mainly posts photographs of watches, and people wearing their watches. Macy’s has photos of products they sell, and people using the products they sell. Both could offer tutorials, fun facts, ideas lists, gift guides, but they don’t.
Don’t get me wrong, a lot of brands do inform, but I think the more successful ones are ones where it makes sense to inform. Planoly’s entire product line is Instagram scheduler, so it makes sense that some of their Instagram posts are quick tips.
The Issue with Bloggers and Podcasters and Social Media…
So many of us wanted to work from home, start an online business or blog, and we don’t know where we fit in this for social media. Especially starting out.
In one sense, we are influencers. Experts on a topic or niche. But in another sense, we want to make money, and in doing that, we feel we have to brand.
Then we see successful women nailing their social media, and we want to learn how. They do give us amazing tips and insights, but the big picture is often left out.
So we end up doing branded social media posts, that highlight sales, talks about topics. We try to grow a following organically, maybe pay for an ad here and there, and then sell something to them. We create ‘funnels’ of some sort to collect emails, send emails, and sell something.
Some of us are told to try to approach people one on one to sell the thousand dollar product. Some of us are told to DM people in FB groups, have an automated DM for friends in Linked In, etc.
It starts to get spammy when people feel like the ONLY reason you’re talking to them is to sell something.
We are missing a very important component.
The most important component – The Influence
I think once you get a business situated, you have product available for sale, you beta tested the experience, you have testimonials… you then need to figure out the influence.
Are you the influence?
If so, then your social media does not need to be batched. You need to make social media your full time job. You could batch the few posts about products and sales like once a week for a couple months at a time, but you want your lifestyle posts to be as you live, your original photos, and updates about your life, and you want to provide something to the audience whether entertainment or inspiration. You want your face on everything. Instead of selling, model off your goods.
Are you the brand?
If so, then you need to find and pay influencers. You need shout outs. You need to be giving away your product to choice names. Nike did this best before social media existed. They found the popular people in towns and communities and gave them a free pair of shoes. Those people wearing the shoes is what got people buying shoes like Blake has. Then the celebrity endorsement by Michael Jordan helped a lot.
Are you both?
Then separate it out. Learning from not what highly successful people are teaching, but what they are actually doing, you may want a social media account for YOUR NAME – Your Niche. Then if you have a product you are selling as your own business, you want an account for that, and there, you are all CTA’s.
Jenna Kutcher is a great example of how she is both influencer and brand, and note, she keeps a separate Instagram for herself and her podcast. In fact, she has several instagram accounts for each of her several brands.
Brad Mondo is another great example. He has an Instagram account for himself with 2.1 million followers. Then he has 2 accounts (linked in his bio) for his brand XMondo – XMondo Hair (436K followers) and XMondo Color (129K followers). I mentioned the followers he has at the time of writing this because you can see a distinct difference in metrics here. It is common for brands to have a smaller number of followers than the influencer. That is why brands need an influencer, even if it’s yourself, to promote the product.
But the important thing is to gain influence, whether you do it yourself or pay someone else to. Without it, it’s a struggle.
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