In this article we look at generating passive income by becoming a social media influencer
Most of you know what Social media is (Instagram, FAcebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat etc) but you may not know what an influencer is. A social media influencer is someone who has an extremely large following on a social media site – these can be millions of followers. Having this amount of followers makes the influencer valuable to businesses who have products ans services they want promoted.
An example of influencers on Social media are the Kardashians, the article listed on https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/social-media-influencers-influential-2018/ also gives more examples that you can study.
You are not solely dependant on selling products from businesses, you can just as easily promote your own website which may have products oo a service. It could be an ebook that you have written, a course or simply a blog with tips and advice that just displays generic adverts.
There is a myth with being a social media influencer in that it’s simply playing about on the platform, in fact it can take a lot of time and effort. You need to spend quite a lot of time managing and running your social media profiles on a daily basis. This could be outsourced to virtual assistants – most large social media profiles for companies are run by 3rd parties.
You should keep an eye on the platform’s news, in particular for any up coming changes which may be new features or changes to the terms and conditions. Also keep an eye on the popularity of the platform, todays Instagram can be tomorrows Myspace.
You should set alerts for topics and keywords in your niche. As an influencer, your followers expect you to be up to date about the latest news in your niche. You can use Google Alerts to track the latest news and updates in your niche.
Social Influencer tips
Focus on a niche – you must be a master in a specific topic or niche. Do not try and do it all, it will not work.
You should engage with your fans and followers as often as you can. You should try to reply to as many comments and messages as you can.
Concentrate on the most popular platforms – These at the moment are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter
Create a LinkedIn account – this is another very good site to connect with businesses and partners
Do not start tellin a pack of lies or exaggerating – its is very easy to spot liars and bullsh*tters on social media and in turn your reputation can quickly disappear
Reach out and engage with other social media influencers. Popular influencers do this frequently and there is usually a significant boost in their subscribers and fans when they collaborate.
Run a contest or some sort of giveaway. This a very powerful way of engaging with your established fans and can also be an excellent way of attracting even more fans.
Social Media Influencer Myths
As stated there are a few myths about being an influencer, lets look at these
It’s an easy job – nope, it takes time to build a large enough following.
All platforms can be monetized – no again as stated earlier this works best on certain platforms
Its a very low cost job to do – again a no, you will need to spend a reasonable amount of money creating content and running ads on various platforms
Businesses will come to you – if you are a huge media personalityt then this may happen but more than likely you have to contact the businesses directly and sell yourself to them
Followers are the key measure – again this is not true. You could have 1 million followers but only 1% are engaged whereas you could have 100000 followers and 10% were engaged. This would be exactly the same amount of engaged followers. So follower numbers are not necessarily the most import measurement.
Summary
The income is passive, get paid money to promote products but there is a lot of time required to become a social influencer which arguably counters this and you may need to spend money as well – so its not a one way process.
