How to become a digital influencer

Today, many individuals mint thousands a month by blogging or even by being active on a popular social media platform. Armed with laptops and even iPhones or Go Pro cameras, bloggers and social media celebs have earned the rather suave title of ‘digital influencers’. Some of these digital influencers have even managed to gain lifetime privilege contracts with top brands without the help of a fancy degree or even much work experience.

Companies work with digital influencers to increase or solidify their own brand presence and reach out to a wider socially active online audience. Today, more and more people seem to be jumping the digital influencer bandwagon. If you think you’ve got the talent to become a digital influencer as well but don’t know how to go about it, don’t worry. Here’s what you should do:

Image : shutterstock

Strategise your social media activities

We tend to assume that writing a few fancy posts and clicking a few pictures is all it takes to gain a good following for a blog. But make no mistakes; blogging is no cakewalk. Successful blogging requires a good amount of strategising. These questions should help you come up with a sound strategy:

• What do you plan to talk about?
• What would be your domain of expertise?
• What tone will you use?
• What kind of content will you post?
• What kind of content will attract audiences?
• What platform should you use to talk about your topics? A blog, a Facebook page or Instagram?
• Once your platform is figured out, how will you go about it?

Generate content that works

Half-baked content and random images don’t get any clicks or views. Try to look for locations, backgrounds, fonts and shades that are eye-catching while you take pictures or post graphics. Look at how content is being written on popular blogs. Once you do this, try understanding why it works, what the optimum length of a post is and what kind of hyperlinks are used.

In case you are going to be vlogger on YouTube, see how your favourite influencer manages his/her channel. Anything average will get you ignored as there is no dearth of content on the internet now.

Business collaboration and features

Your best chance to get noticed in the social media community is to get connected with brands and work with them. Approach brands and offer content for free. This can get you some collaborators while the brands you work with can gain attention from your followers. It’s a win-win situation!

Also, look for influential bloggers and see if you could write feature posts on each other’s blogs. You might also come across curated content accounts that share good images for no charge at all. Ask these accounts to do a feature for you. This can help you reach millions of users in a snap!

Keep it real

Your content will guide you to success. Create wacky, unique and original content that makes you stand out. But, make sure your opinions do not hurt any groups and keep political statements subtle. Your audience follows you and reads your blog because they care about your perspective. So keep it neutral and clean.

Needless to say, be sure to avoid copying content from any other influencer. Individuals read content across the internet on a daily basis, and it’s very likely that at least some of them can identify plagiarism. Once you get caught, you lose your credibility. It’s an open and connected world, so make good use of it.

Hopefully, these tips and tricks should help you. Do you have any additional pointers? Don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)