Everyone knows that a good recommendation can get you far, however, in order to see how this works, we need to look at the very nature of the term. When someone is recommending you, they are vouching for your value with their own. In other words, someone who doesn’t know a thing about you is required to evaluate your worth based on their previous experience with the person giving you the endorsement. The more credible, popular, beloved this person is, the greater the impact will their endorsement make.
This is exactly what happens in the influencer marketing, seeing as how not everyone’s word carries the same weight in the digital world. Still, are influencers there simply to give your business a simple popularity boost or do they have the power to impact your overall online visibility online by improving your SEO efforts? Let’s find out!
‘Paid’ Advertisements are Losing Trust
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that there has been a significant decline in trust in what has been perceived as ‘paid’ advertisement. We are mostly talking about paid media such as television, from which the modern audiences are highly disconnected from. On the other hand, a social media influencer is hardly perceived as a distant, unfamiliar or even hired figure. This is because even though these people have tens and hundreds of thousands of followers, it is much easier for us to perceive them as real people (similarly to individuals leaving testimonials on websites).
Think about it, an influencer puts their own image at stake by promoting a company they aren’t familiar or comfortable with. This kind of risk can often be confused with confidence, which is bound to resound strongly with the target audience. Not only does this result in an increase of interest but also in a massive boost in audience engagement. Needless to say, both of these things are looked kindly upon by search engine algorithm. This is just one of the examples of search engine optimization aims often used by renowned SEO experts.
Easier Way of Providing Fresh Content
In order to be efficient, your content needs to satisfy two criterions. First, it has to be of high quality and second, it needs to great in quantity. While the first feature may seem more important, you need to keep pumping fresh content out there, day in and day out in order not to be forgotten. The problem is that even the most prolific members of your creative team may struggle to provide you with such content on a daily basis.
Through influencer marketing, you can easily start a competition that can crowdsource you such content. A reward in the form of a monetary incentive might make people try extra hard and show a keen interest in what you are doing. This will automatically solve your quantity issue but, if you think about it, your quality issue, as well. The sheer volume of new content you will start receiving will give you enough material to simply filter those few formats that meet your quality standards.
Finding the Right Influencers
Finally, you need to keep in mind that the very choice of influencers might play a huge role in giving your SEO efforts a boost. You see, if a famous person was to give you an endorsement, a lot of people would click on the link just in order to see what you are all about. Due to the fact that a vast majority of them weren’t interested in your services in the first place, they might simply abandon your page after satisfying their curiosity. Needless to say, this would result in a high bounce rate.
On the other hand, if you were to be endorsed by a niche authority, their audience might be same as yours, which would make them into qualified leads. Sure, not all of them would become your customers right away but even a potential customer or someone interested enough to further browse your website might be great for your SEO.
In conclusion
As you can see, influencer marketing has many layers of usefulness, not all of them being transparent or even noticeable right away. While they are not exactly a word-of-mouth recommendation, they are often the equivalent in the world of social media. Seeing how social media marketing is currently one of the leading forces of the digital marketing, this idea is not to be taken lightly.