As an influencer, your goal is to get the best metrics possible, while also being reliable and interesting for brands. You also want your audience to become a kind of tribe, with you as their leader (think Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters or Taylor’s Swifties). So, how do you achieve this?
First of all, you must know WHO you are talking to. And who WANTS to listen to you, consume your content, read your texts, like your photos, follow your recommendations, 😍 your pictures, interact with your stories, comment on your posts, share your videos….
Let's start with two must haves:
- Find your niche
- Define your buyer persona
Alright, so…
What Actually Is a Niche
A niche is something you are good at, anything that your audience finds interesting and they might say also indicates that it's YOU. For some influencers, it might be visual content from their travels like Simplycyn or Ourtasteoflife, someone's profile might mainly be about raw vegan food as for example, FullyRawKristina, bodybuilding and easy cooking for men as FitmanCook, or expat women in business, zerowaste and self growth as MimiIkonn.
Your niche might also be in the way you communicate. Do you have a dry sense of humor laden with sarcasm or are you the bright bubbly beam of inspiration people look forward to seeing and hearing every day? Are you into videos? Stories? Blogging? You can do both, just like TheDadDiaries. Find out what will make your profile distinguishable as well as unique... and then stick to it!
You could poll your friends and ask what parts of your personality or hobbies stand out to them or make you unique.
When you have your niche, you need to find out who it is you want to receive your content, as well as who wants to receive it. It means a niche influences your persona and vice versa.
What Is a Buyer Persona
Imagine them as a representation of the demographic where you can find your ideal follower. Creating personas also helps you understand your audience and deliver the best information and content to your followers. You must cater to your audience. Knowing your audience will not only determine what you share, but how and when you share it.
If they like to spend a lot of time READING on Instagram, you should WRITE long posts, if they like to see YOUR FACE, take SELFIES.
You need to answer these questions: Who is your ideal FOLLOWER? What are their needs, what do they want, how and when do they like to consume content? What do they find interesting, disturbing or rude? To answer these questions, it's extremely helpful to create the personas.
The personas are developed based on a combination of audience behavior and your understanding of their motivations, actions and challenges. In the process of creating these personas, you’ll gain insights into how your audience thinks and behaves, as well as discover what they desire. Then you can adapt your content creation and distribution so it will be the most efficient and effective it can be. But don't forget to optimize and test.
If you are about to start your own brand or business via your profile, you can find out the ideal price - the money your audience is most likely to pay for your product. Also, you can find out what features and extensions your product or service should have.
Why should you care about personas? Well, if you know who you are talking to, your post is likely to bring you better results. You probably don’t speak the same way to your best friend as you do your grandma or your 10 year old nephew. So define your personas and communicate accordingly. A persona represents a specific group of people who, based on certain factors, are more likely to complete the action (click, follow, share, comment, buy…) and that is what you want, right?
So How Do You Define Your Personas
Find out what is the thing people like best! Check every single post. There will be better and worse ones regarding the engagement rate. Try to decode what the most engaging pattern is and stick to it. It might be colors, content, text, whatever. Be a detective for some time and try to figure it out!
Then, analyze who interacts and engages with your profile. You need to know why people follow you as well as who the follower is. Check their profiles. Of course they won't all be the same. Try to divide the audience into 2-5 groups according to patterns they share.
It might be regarding the demography, interests, hashtags they use or are most likely to engage with, or a location they were pinned in. The pattern also might be a follower you have in common. Do they follow some other accounts that are similar? You could be a competitor of someone else! Use them as inspiration or for motivation. Squeeze as much as you can out of it.
You can use the personas to create better content – tips in the following article – as well as to target certain groups of people! If you want to take your profile to the next level and you are considering paid ads, personas are the key. The essential of success is a well targeted ad. Start with the personas now and you can just pick the fruit later.
Remember, all of this takes a bit of time, patience and practice. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a following on social media. 💪
