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Unlike what most people would have you think, becoming an influencer online doesn't have to be rocket science, nor should you have to wait for years to become one.
And the good news is, you don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars either.
With the right marketing strategies, persistence, and a little bit of luck, you''ll be on your way to being an influencer in your own industry.
Allow me to share with you these 5 marketing shortcuts that will help you fast-track your way into becoming an online influencer.
1) Be featured on expert round-ups.
Expert round-ups are posts where you feature several influencers in your industry, and have them share their advice on a specific topic.
A good example is how EBCallCenter featured 19 industry experts and asked about their best tip for customer service.
Pretty amazing, huh?
Now imagine this: What do you think would happen if you where featured together with the other industry experts? Wouldn't you start looking more like one?
Let's take it a step further... What do you think would happen if you're featured on SEVERAL expert round-ups? I mean, getting featured on one expert round-up is one thing, but getting featured on several is a whole different ball game.
What makes this strategy amazing is the fact that these experts take the time to share the round-up with their loyal followers. Since their followers usually number by the thousands, you'll surely have your fair share of publicity coming your way.
2) Guest post on authority websites.
In most cases, the webmasters of top tier websites only allow people with a decent level of clout to guest post on their websites.
Sadly, even if your article's quality is a cut above the rest, the chances are good that they still wouldn't consider your guest post request if all you have going for you is your article's quality.
How do you turn this around, you might ask?
Simple.
Give them a good enough reason to accept your guest post pitch. By "good enough reason", I'm talking about offering them a bribe of some sort; it could be free publicity through you using paid ads, free usage of your products (if you have any), or even straight-up paying them.
The key question that you need to answer when thinking about what kind of "bait" or "bribe" to give them is the, "what's in it for me?" question. The more concrete your answer is to this question, the higher the chances that they would accept your guest post pitch.
3) Be interviewed.
Getting interviewed by others isn't as difficult as you might think.
However, should you decide to use this strategy, you need to consider these 3 points:
- Be transparent. You can tell your prospects that you're looking for people who can interview you because you are looking to grow your visibility online. However, be sure not to focus on the things that you want (which is to be interviewed or to get more visibility), you need to emphasize on how they can benefit from interviewing you instead.
- Give them a good enough "hook" for interviewing you. There are several things that you can offer to your prospects; a) you can tell them that you'll refer them to your clients so they can get more customers, b.) you can pay them, or c) you can interview them back and promise that you'll promote the interview across all of your online channels (among others).
- When crafting your interview pitch, don't make it sound like you're begging for the interview. Position the pitch in such a way that they can greatly benefit from it, making it sound that it is also for their best interest that they consider your offer.
If you are oblivious about the kind of questions that you need to ask your prospects, then this guide should be of great help to you.
4) Interview other influencers.
Birds of the same feather flock together, right?
While the statement above isn't always true, in most cases, it actually is. That's because people who think alike and do things the same way tend to get drawn to each other because of their common interests.
That being said, the more people see you together with other influencers through you interviewing them, the more they'll think of you as one.
5) Publish your own e-book.
The thing with having an e-book to your name is that your reputation almost instantly shoots-up because you are an author.
Since authors are viewed as accredited experts, it helps propel your status into becoming an influencer despite how new you are in your industry.
At this point, all you need to do is make visible the fact that you are an author by mentioning your ebook in the "About" section of your social media profiles.
Of course, for this strategy to work, you need your ebooks' landing page to be so compelling that your visitors would actually buy. The more optimized your landing page is for conversion, the more convinced they will be that you are in fact an expert in your field.
If you are new to creating pages that are highly optimized for conversion, you can check out anyoptions' landing page to have a solid benchmark on how a well-crafted landing page looks like.
What's next?
Are there other tips that you feel should be added to the post? If you answered the question with a "yes", please take the time to share it in the comments section below.