Influencer marketing as one of the marketing trends to watch out for in 2018, according to Entrepreneur.com. Influencer marketing is incredibly popular on social media, as it is easy to track the influencer’s popularity through followers and post engagement. Top influencers, like celebrities, can get up to half a million dollars for one post. Nielsen found that 92 percent of people trusted an influencer more than a traditional advertisement or celebrity post.
What is an Influencer?
An influencer is someone who has an above-average amount of followers on their blog or social media channels. Influencers have a specific niche like food, or even more speck like pasta or ice-cream. Influencers are trend setters, and their opinions are weighted heavily. If the influencer likes your restaurant, hotel, or cafe, their followers will be itching to try it! Influencer’s followers are interested in the particular niche, making them a perfect target audience for companies. Micro-influencers have anywhere from 1,000 to 50,000 followers.
What is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing involves paying an influencer or giving them something for free, in exchange for a review or a social media post involving the product. This post is considered sponsored, and has the potential to be viewed by all of the influencer’s followers. If you choose the right influencer, you can reach new audiences in a more effective way than traditional social media marketing. A successful influencer post can cause a spike in followers too.
This post by Chrissy Teigan (with John Legend) may have been a sponsored post. It was posted before celebrities and other influencers had to disclose the post as an advertisement. The post had over 150,000 likes and comments. Chrissy may have just been helping a friend, but its more probable that she was offered a free meal and some cash for the post.
Influencer Marketing in Hospitality
The hospitality industry is a perfect industry for influencer marketing because it is very visual. Food is one of the biggest topics on Instagram, which is based on photographs rather than text like Twitter. Food blogging has taken off, and there are many different bloggers with varying followings on the scene. You can have a broad blogger who tries all of the foods in an area, or a highly specialized one who travels around the world looking for the “best of” a certain category. Hotels, stadiums, and auditoriums also photograph well and make for great social media posts. It’s easier for an influencer to take a picture with a plate of pasta or in pristine hotel room, than a vitamin or lotion. It also seems more natural because everyone eats and visits hotels, or auditoriums. It seems more genuine then the influencer taking a blatant picture of a product.
Find Micro-Influencers
The first step into influencer marketing is finding your micro-influencers. Kim Kardashian is likely not in your business’s marketing budget, especially for an independent restaurant or cafe. A micro-influencer will be a lot more affordable, and may have a following that’s specific to your restaurant’s specialty or location. You can find these micro-influencers by doing a Google search for the top bloggers in your specialty ex. “Food Bloggers in Orlando,” and read their blogs to see if they’re a good match. You can also search within the social media platforms. If you go on Instagram you can search “Food Bloggers Orlando” and a list of hashtags and accounts will pop up. If you find a relevant blogger, you may be able to find others based on the accounts they follow. Typically the blogging community is tight-knit and many bloggers follow one another.
How to Reach Out
You can reach out to a blogger typically on their blog, through a direct message on social media, or through the email listed in their “about section” on their social media page. Many influencers will say “for inquires please email ___@___.” Always check their social media pages and blog to see their engagement. Likes can be bought, so its better to check their influencer status by seeing if their posts get many likes, retweets, and comments to gage their legitimacy.
Payment
You will be able to negotiate a contract with the influencer if they are interested. If the influencer is still rising, you may be able to offer them a free meal, stay, etc in exchange for a positive review and post. If the influencer is more established, they may want payment on top of the free product.
Is It Worth it?
For the right influencer, absolutely! Your restaurant, bar, cafe, or hotel will be able to reach thousands of potential customers with one post. Influencers are seen as reputable and highly trusted, so the post is weighted more than a regular advertisement would be. Influencer marketing is the new social media marketing, and is only going to grow in 2018. You can jump aboard this trend before your competition catches on!