Steps to becoming a successful influencer

In the world we live in today, internet and social media is widely in use as a means of sharing information, communicating, sharing entertainment and educational posts. This information is published by influencers, and these influencers are entitled to so many rights that a social media user doesn't have.

They are more like celebrities in the virtual or online world, some take it as a part-time work, while for some, it is their full time work. It takes hard work to become something, however becoming a social media influencer requires a step by step guideline.

Are you aspiring to make it big as an influencer? In this article, I am going to reveal the steps to go through on your journey as a successful influencer.

Let's dive in!

What is Social media?

There is one place you can rely on. Well, social media is a platform that links people from different parts of the world. It is a place where diverse people with different opinions interact together.

Social media is a system of communication that allows its users to interact, publish and learn from each other with the use of the Internet.

Basically, social media is now the number one place to learn new things from. Social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Twitter, and lots more are widely in use today, and these channels have the capacity of holding more than 10 billion users.

Who is an influencer?

An influencer, also known as social media influencer, are users who engage other users on social media to affect or influence the followers decision. An influencer can either affect a user's decision positively or negatively.

Before one can be called an influencer, you need to be able to draw other user's attention to your page or contents. To achieve this, your content has to be useful, loveable, unique or attractive.

An influencer is popularly known to have the power to engage the audience or build up a close relationship to their followers.

Influencers offer different content irrespective of their niche. Some influencers post 'how-to' videos, TikTok dances and entertainment, edutainment, celebrity news or vlog, etc.

Despite your aspiration of becoming an influencer, there are few things you need to know before becoming an influencer.

• You can become a successful influencer without being a celebrity.

Building up your career as an influencer can be possible and successful even without you being a public figure. Although an influencer may have up to a thousand or millions of followers, they may not be considered as 'celebrities' in the real world.

• Irrespective of your success, there are still some distinctions in the industry.

Despite your efforts, there are still some distinctions like macro influencer, micro influencer and nano influencer. These distinctions have slowly found their way into the Industry to different the sizes of audience or subscribers an influencer has.

Macro influencers have an average of 500k to 1 million subscribers, Micro influencers have about 10,000 to 50,000 subscribers, while nano influencers have 10,000 and below.

• Verification and Authentication.

This is the real deal to becoming a successful influencer. It is when the social media channel authenticates that you are real, and that your contents are useful and safe for other users to view and engage with.

Steps to becoming an influencer.

1. Build up your mindset and goal.

Having a career goal, or a set goal should be your number one step to becoming an influencer. Most importantly, you should adopt the mindset that it is a business that will need to grow and generate income for you.

2. Identify your niche.

Knowing your niche is highly important to become an influencer, because your niche is based on the type of content you want to share on social media. You should also know the demographics and psychographics of the audience’s you want to draw to your page.

To know your niche, you need to know;

• The kind of content you have passion to create.
• The kind of people drawn to that particular content.
• How important the content is to other users.
• The influencers that have made it in this category.

3. Know your audience.

As soon as you have identified your niche, you need to know the audience attracted to your content, so that you can engage with them and satisfy their interest.

4. Set up your content strategy.

It is very important as an influencer to have a scheduled time for your post, and also know the kind of post you published in a day. This process helps your followers to get used to you and know when to check your page.

You can also set a daily routine of the content you post per day. For example, Monday could be about edutainment, Tuesday about your daily routine, Wednesday could be storytime, Thursday could be "How-to" videos, Friday could be a Livestream about random things, and Saturday could be entertainment.

This way, you would be able to keep track of your audience.

5. Select your channels.

There are diverse channels to choose from, but as a start, it is advisable to get used to or get known on one platform, before gaining access to another platform. The kind of channel you choose as a starter should be determined on the kind of content you choose to create.

• YouTube influencers are known for creating how-to videos, tutorials, promoting brands, etc.
• Tiktok influencers are known for entertainment, dance, pranks, fitness, etc.
• Instagram influencers are known for fashion, beauty, travel food & drinks.

6. Collaborate with other brands and influencers.

You need to exceed your boundaries and work with other successful influencers in the industry. You can also try using some of their success methods, it may be of great help to you too.

Also, as soon as your online presence is set up, brands may try reaching out to you for collaboration, or to help them promote their products on their page. This is the strategy to generate huge income as an influencer, because you will be given the chance to influence people's decision to get the product you are promoting.

7. Interact with your audience.

You can set a scheduled time to go live, so that you can have a one on one virtual session with your followers. Most channels makes it possible for your audience to send you a virtual gift on your live session. These gifts can also be exchanged for money.

Wrapping up

Becoming successful determines your consistency and hard work towards what you want to achieve. You need to post regularly to increase your audience availability on your page.

Note: It may take a while to see results on your content efforts; keep trying anyway, and be consistent. Don't give up on the goal you started with, because you can still achieve it if you try harder.

Also, give in your best on every content you make public, then your audience will know whether you are worth the follow or not.