Social Media Essential to Influencer Marketing Success

Several factors have combined to make traditional advertising methods much less effective than they were even a decade ago. The first is the general distrust that millennials feel for traditional advertising; they do not like feeling as though they are being manipulated and believe traditional advertising attempts to do this. Another key factor is the rise of ad blockers. Twenty-five percent of Internet users today use some sort of ad blocker, according to a report by HashOff. This means that far less people are even seeing advertisements. With this in mind, marketers more than ever need to rely on using influencers, especially on social media, to connect with their consumer base.

People are using social media more than ever before. A vast majority (82 percent) of Americans report that they are on some form of social media for more than two hours every day. All of that screen time creates a perfect opportunity to connect with customers. This can be accomplished through targeted advertising and through the leveraging of market influencers.

Attracting new audience members to your content can often be very difficult. People want to have a reason to get their foot in the door and start consuming that content, which can often be an uphill battle. It can often be easier to instead partner with someone who has already curated a following through their content, and leverage that to reach customers.

These influencers also have a heavy focus on social media, with a vast majority of them delivering most of their content through Instagram. Instagram’s large picture format is perfect for content marketing, as users can rapidly scroll through a large list of images and stop when something catches their eye. When influencers feature a product in their posts, it can attract much more attention than traditional advertising methods.

At the end of the day, consumers are gravitating towards market influencers because they find them authentic and trustworthy, especially when compared to other forms of advertising. Marketers should work to partner with an influencer with shared values to help generate interest in their brand. Influencer marketing will allow brands to form realer relationships with their customers, and are thus the future of marketing.