Business

How To Contact Social Media Influencers Online?

How to Contact Social Media Influencers online?

Introduction

Given the popularity of influencer marketing in India, more and more brands are now moving towards collaboration with social media influencers online for their business promotion. However, not all brands manage to crack the right deal with the influencers they want.  While one may think money is the only factor for a successful collaboration, then, we being in the industry for years believe that there are other important factors too that influencers consider when you talk about collaborating with them. If your business wants to be ahead of the game and ensure that you manage to crack the collaboration deal before your competitors, then here are a few tips to consider on how you should approach and contact a social media influencer online. The influencer marketing outreach process involves finding the right social media influencers in India and contacting them to work with you. It is important for you to nail the outreach strategy and convince them in one go if you plan to collaborate with specific influencers in India. The outreach should be clear specific, professional, and definitely something that sparks interest in the influencer to work with you. So here are a few steps for you to consider in this process of influencer marketing outreach.

 

Steps to Contact Social Media Influencers

 

Step 1 Define the Campaign Goals

The first step before contacting any influencer is to first define your brand's campaign goals. Based on the objective of what your business plans to achieve can you move forward with your search for a digital influencer in India.  Your marketing campaign goals could be anything from creating brand awareness to boosting sales or expanding your business. Without defining the marketing campaign goals, it is difficult to determine the type of influencers you should collaborate with for your project. You will need to connect with an influencer who can understand your goals and help you achieve them through the campaign. Understanding your goals will help them deliver a strong brand message to your potential audience with their sponsored posts.

Step 2 Search for Relevant Influencers

Research is the key to finding the right influencer. Before you reach out to an influencer you need to do thorough research to understand the kind of influencer you will need onboard. This would include determining the type of campaign you want to run (shout-out posts, videos, blogs, etc), budget for the campaign, and type of influencer you wish to hire. All of this is important for reaching out to relevant influencers for your business. Ideally, it’s best to partner with influencers from your industry or niche. This way they will have the connection with the audience you wish to target and also know what it takes to grab the attention of your audience. Besides they will be involved in the promotion of products or services that they are already interested in and have good knowledge about. This way connecting with relevant influencers will increase your chances of running a successful campaign and good ROI. Moreover connecting with relevant influencers and their followers your brand will be in a better position to resonate with the audience through the digital influencer. If in case you wish to partner up with an influencer who is not from your niche then you may have to convince them for being a part of this campaign and how they can possibly contribute. This can be challenging and often influencers may not be willing to take the risk of such collaborations.

Step 3: Engage with Influencers on Social Media

Once you have shortlisted digital influencers in India you must proceed to connect with them online by following them and engaging with them on social media platforms. After 2-3 weeks of engagement and observation, you can begin by reaching out to them. So if you have been engaging with them they may most probably remember you and connect with you immediately. This can ease the process of reaching out to the influencers you want to collaborate with. 

Step 4: Select the Right Medium to Reach Out

Reaching out to Influencers may not always be easy. You may have to find out the right medium to reach out to them. While there are several ways to approach them, the most common methods include the Instagram direct message, Facebook messenger LinkedIn messaging, or emails.  Social media platforms for messaging your influencer are a casual, informal way to reach out to influencers. Such communication should be short, concise, and precise. These messages are most likely to be read by influencers on mobile phones and so a short and crisp pitch will make it easier for influencers to go through and revert. On the other hand, emails are a formal way of communication wherein you will have the liberty to introduce your brand and share information about your business with some collateral attached along with the mail for their reference. However, here you have to think of a smart and catchy subject line to stand out in the clutter of emails. Get creative with your pitch so it sparks interest and curiosity in the influencer 

Step 5 Send a Good Pitch

Popular social media Influencers in India, on a daily basis, receive dozens of collaboration offers. So, your brand pitch should stand out in that clutter for the influencer to take interest in your brand. Your pitch should be clear, precise, and personalized, while also drafted in a way that grabs their attention and makes an impactful first impression. Avoid using generic mail or message templates and make it more personalized greeting the influencer with their name, explaining why their content resonates with you, and introducing your brand in a way that they believe the collaboration will be a great fit for them. That said we also suggest you keep the message brief and clear ensuring that it does not get too boring for them. Last but not least do not forget to add the call-to-action button for making it easy for them to reach out to you.

 

Step 6: Sending Follow up

In case you do not receive any revert from your first mail or message from the influencer, you can probably send another gentle reminder within the next 4-5 days. While recommend not to bombard multiple follow-up messages on daily basis, but sending the first follow-up mail in a gap of 3-4 days is essential and crucial. This is because there is always a possibility of the influencer not having seen your messages because of their full inbox or because the influencer does not follow you on Instagram, and so they may need to first accept the DM request to see your messages. The follow-up messages should be kept short, but they should be of value to influencers in India in a way they are convinced to work with you.

 

Conclusion

Brands need to carefully plan out their process of adopting the influencer marketing strategy in terms of doing their bit of research on the marketing strategy, finding the right influencer, fixing budgets for the same, and approaching and shortlisting the best influencer for your brand. All of this is crucial to ensure your marketing campaign is a success. Follow the above-mentioned steps and you will definitely be on the right track.