In this blog - The final of the 3-part series, we will discuss the last four of the eight steps to Build Your Tribe and Become An Influencer on Social Media.

Before you begin creating and posting content, it’s smart to develop an overall content strategy. Mapping out your content will help you know what to publish and when to publish it. It will also come in handy if you find yourself creatively blocked at any point. As you think about your content, consider your audience. Your goal is to deliver content that is valuable to your audience and allows you to show off your personality. Both of these elements are critically important.

If you don’t provide valuable content, people will have no reason to follow you. If you don’t show off your personality, you won’t stand out from other influencers who are sharing similar content. The combination of value and personality is what will help you rise to the top.

Creating High-Value Content

What makes a piece of content valuable? That depends entirely on what your audience wants.

Content is valuable to your audience if it:

• Helps them solve a problem
• Gives them valuable knowledge
• Evokes emotion in them
• Entertains them
• Makes their life better in some way

Obviously, all sorts of content can meet these requirements. Everything from a video tutorial to a beautiful photograph to a meme can be valuable to your audience. It just needs to add value to them in some way. Luckily, you don’t need to create all this yourself. The best influencers also share valuable content created by others. This can also get you noticed by the person who created the content, which can open up relational doors. One effective strategy for content is the 5-3-2 principle. For every 10 social media posts:

• 5 are by someone else
• 3 are valuable content you created
• 2 are about you

Using this strategy ensures that you don’t get overwhelmed with content creation, establishes your credibility, and helps your audience get to know you personally.

Finding Content Ideas

If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, there are a number of strategies you can use, such as

• Type a relevant phrase into Google and then look at the related searches at the bottom of the page. This will give you a sense of different things your audience is searching for that are related to the main topic you typed in.
• Answer the Public is another helpful tool for finding content ideas. You type a set of keywords and it spits out a large list of commonly asked questions related to the keyword.
• Quora can also be helpful for generating ideas. If you type in a keyword, it will show you related questions that people have posted on the site. If you click on the questions, you can also see all the answers that have been provided.

After mapping out your content strategy, you’re finally ready to start publishing. If you want your content to be seen by as many people as possible, it’s important to post consistently. When it comes to social media, most of the platforms tend to prefer accounts that are active. As a general rule, the best day to post is Wednesday and the most engagements happen between late morning and the middle of the afternoon. That being said, avoid getting too hung up on posting at the perfect time. You’ll have the most success if you post consistently throughout the week.

Using Social Media Schedulers

If you’re like most people, the thought of having to log in and post multiple times per week is probably a bit overwhelming. After all, you’ve got a lot going on. This is where social media scheduling tools can be very helpful. They allow you to schedule your posts in advance and then automatically publish them for you.

Some of the best social media schedulers are:

• Buffer
• Hootsuite
• CoSchedule
• Sprout Social

With these tools, you can create a posting schedule, fill your queue with posts, and then let them handle actually publishing them when the time comes.

Optimizing Your Posts

Optimize each of your posts for the channel on which it is being published. A video clip on Instagram looks different than a video clip on Facebook. Photos on Facebook look different than photos on Twitter. Ensure that each post looks great on the platform where it’s published. Your posts also need to be optimized for mobile devices. With the majority of people consuming content on mobile devices, you’ll want to ensure that your posts look great on a mobile, desktop, and tablets.

Depending on the platform you’re using, you also may want to optimize your posts with hashtags. Hashtags allow others to find posts related to specific subjects that they’re interested in. For example, if someone wants to find Instagram posts about vegan foods, they may search the hashtag #vegan. Using relevant hashtags on your posts can help you get discovered by people who wouldn’t otherwise know about you. If you’re not sure which hashtags to use, these tools can help:

• All Hashtag
• Ritetag
• Instavast Hashtag Generator
• #HashMe

The importance of engaging with your audience can’t be overstated. Engaging simply means interacting with your followers, such as responding to their comments, answering their questions, and more. Influencers who engage get traction faster than those who don’t. In fact, if you’re not willing to regularly engage your audience, you’ll most likely struggle to succeed in becoming an influencer.

Why is engagement so important?

Consider these reasons:

• Engagement allows you to build positive relationships with those in your audience. When you reply to comments, answer questions, and provide helpful resources, it causes your audience to trust you more. They can see that you’re a real person who actually cares about them.
  • If you don’t engage with your audience, you’ll seem cold, distant, and aloof. You’ll seem like a corporation rather than a human. People won’t feel like they know you and will be less interested in following you.
• Almost every social media platform boosts posts that have more engagement. When they see a post with lots of comments and likes, it’s a signal to them that the content is valuable and that more people should see it. The more engagement you have on your posts, the more people will see it.
• Comments on your posts give you more insight into how your audience thinks. You can hear what they want in their own words. You’ll understand more about what drives them and learn how you can better serve them.

Yes, it takes some time to respond to comments and have meaningful conversations, but it’s worth it. Your audience will see you as more authentic and you’ll get a nice boost from social media algorithms.

One of the biggest keys to succeeding as an influencer is regularly analyzing your results. You want to know what sort of content resonates most with your audience and gets the most interaction. On top of this, if you want to work with brands, it’s important to be able to provide them with concrete data about the content you produce. They will want to know the size of your audience and how much engagement your posts get. If you can’t give them this information, they won’t feel confident that they’ll get much ROI from working with you. Almost every platform offers analytics of some kind that you can use to evaluate your progress.

You’ll want to compile these types of data:

• If you’re a blogger, you’ll want to analyze how many people visit your site, which pages they visit most, how long they stay on your site, and more.
• If you’re a podcaster, take a close look at the number of downloads you’re getting per episode and which episodes get the most downloads.
• If YouTube is your platform of choice, dig deep into your overall subscriber growth, which videos get the most views, how long people watch each video, and similar statistics.
• On social media, analyze which posts get the most likes, comments, and reposts. Also, take a close look at the demographics of your followers.

As you evaluate your results, pay close attention to content that performs really well, as well as the comments left by your audience. This information shows you what matters most to your followers. If a blog post, video, podcast episode, or social media post performs really well, consider doubling down on that type of content. As you focus on producing more of the content that performs best, you’ll pick up momentum and your audience will grow faster.

It’s now easier than ever to become an influencer. You don’t have to be a famous celebrity. You don’t have to write a book or be a powerful politician. You just need to be willing to put in the work.

In this three-part series, we’ve covered a lot of different topics.

We’ve talked about:

• What an influencer is and the benefits of being an influencer
• Choosing your niche
• Defining your audience
• Picking your primary platform
• Spicing up your social media profiles
• Mapping out your content
• Publishing your content
• Engaging with your audience
• Analyzing your results

Becoming an influencer doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a lot of time and effort. You need to figure out your niche and get clarity on your audience, optimize your social media profiles and create a content map, publish great content, analyze the results, and then double down on what works best.

Consistency is the key to success.

If you get discouraged when you don’t see immediate results, you’ll be tempted to give up.

Don’t do it. In the end, it will be worth it.

You’ll develop authentic relationships with those in your audience.

Opportunities will arise that never would have before. You’ll establish your expertise and others will see you as a thought leader.

So do the work.

Put in the time.

Work hard to consistently deliver value to your audience. As a result, your following will grow.

Your tribe is waiting for you. Go find them!