Social media today in 2022 is emerging fast and will continue to over the next several years. All platforms of social media have grown immensely and have given lots of people full-time careers as Influencers using their social media platform to express talent or promote brands. But not all influencer engagements with brands are the same. Let’s explore the differences between simply providing guest content or “take over” posts that influencers will do as a collaboration with a brand, and promoting branded content.
Why is incorporating guest important?
Having a guest that will be appearing on an influencers platform is a risk but it’s also something that can be very beneficial. I first say that it’s a risk because there’s lots of controversy over many different creators and what they may create. So it’s very important that people who are going to invite guests have the same niche or have followings that support new content. These creators may want to have things in common that they can then collaborate on or help to give a new perspective. On the other hand it will be beneficial because it is one of the most widely used digital marketing practices in order to:
- To build your brand.
- To gain more of an audience.
- To get higher engagement.
Guest posts can work in several ways – individual creators can collaborate or a creator can be a guest on a brand’s social accounts.
Guest posts will serve as an alternative to typical advertisements that you may see. Although this is a rather new way of advertising, it’s definitely more beneficial to the creators. They make their content more interesting by having other influencers of the same niche or potentially ones of different types, helping them to create new content that will grow their analytics. A lot of people like to see a different perspective. It’s often that people follow specific individuals and give them their loyalty which can also transfer to the guest. People trust certain influencers and their opinions so this again is a great way to extend marketing behaviors.
Having a guest post on an influencer’s social media is something that you can plan to increase your business reach or improve your brand trust. It’s important that these are tactics that you use as an influencer to grow. Doing so is strategic and most of the time they are paid content creators but it isn’t unlikely for a guest to appear as a friend and not a paid endorsement as the influencer community is something that has become very collaborative and helpful to one another.
INSTAGRAM’S OUTTAKE – BRANDED CONTENT
There are millions of brands out there that may range from a slight new following to a popular large following. All of these brands are important and deserve recognition. This is why brands will reach out to popular influences or growing influencers to promote their brand. I want to highlight one specific platform that seems to be a great advocate for this: Instagram. People surveyed a strong association with Instagram following influencers and celebrities at 71%. This shows that Instagram is one of the more popular places for branded contact. Instagram itself also has many features that enable creators to help sell your products in a more accessible way. There are tools such as “see” or “buy” that make it easy for customers to explore. Another feature on Instagram is the paid partnership content tag. This shows that the brands are working together through feed, stories, reels, or a live in order to promote their products. It ensures better transparency of the paid collaboration and makes the brand easily recognizable.
Before being able to complete any of this it is important to make sure you get approval from the brand and start the posting process. The steps are as follows,
- Approve and manage Instagram influencer partnership requests
- Choose an Instagram brand content post to promote
- Create an Instagram branded content ad to promote your influencers post
All steps are important in the process. To begin with step one this is preparing you to work with brands and give you options for whom you may be able to work with. As far as Instagram is concerned your influencer partner must be a registered creator on Instagram in order to access the same request. Following, the second step, you want to set up brand collaboration managers in order to see what might best fit what you were trying to work with. It will help Instagram influencers have similar audiences to you and show insights for Instagram branded content posts. In step three it’s about defining the campaign goal that you want to achieve. Working with the brand and influencer you want to determine the metrics involved in achieving your goals and then continue on with the posting process.
To conclude, there are many things people do in order to market but incorporating other people whether it be brands or other influencers can always be something that is a tactical marketing strategy. It’s important to pay attention to what your audience wants. Trying different things as well can help you to grow as an influencer. There are benefits to each guest and branded postings as an influencer and I think they are both important in the overall experience an influencer is trying to give or portray.
Teaching Social Media 