5 Steps to Becoming an Influencer in Your Business Field

It is no secret that influencer marketing has the value and power to earn just about any company superstardom in no time at all. Similarly, everyone is aware that the world’s most popular influencers are right now raking enormous sums of money, for simply recommending the services and products of the brands they’re working with.

On one side, you have businesses which are desperate to work with successful and established influencers. On the other side, you have influencers with the power to drive public opinion through positive or negative publicity. 

So you can argue that the Holy Grail will be for the company itself to become an influencer in its field. After all, who could be better to promote whatever it is you sell than you yourself?

Unsurprisingly, becoming an established influencer is not an easy job. It is far from impossible, but it is quite the undertaking. In most cases, influencers do what they do as their full-time job – not just a fun side project. Therefore, managing a business and being a successful influencer can be viewed as the ultimate balancing act.

Nonetheless, if you consider you have what it takes to be an influencer in your field, here are five steps how to get started:

1. Build knowledge

Nearly 90% of the working hours of an influencer are spent carrying out research. If you want to be an influencer in your field, you will first need to develop comprehensive understanding of said niche. Additionally, you will need to be close to the cutting edge of the field so that you can accurately tell what is coming next. If there is even a single person out there who understands the industry better than you, you will struggle to establish yourself as a key authority.

2. Make your voice and face known

Even with all inside knowledge in the world, you can’t just burst onto the scene and expect to become an instant authority. Instead, you will need to spend time becoming an essential part of the community, making your voice heard and offering people the opportunity to get to know you. Create and publish high-quality content on a regular basis, while gradually building both your business identity and your audience.

3. Network like crazy

Always keep in mind that no influencer has ever succeeded by living in a vacuum. Instead, established influencers network like crazy and try to surround themselves with individuals who could help them achieve their goals. Especially in the early stages, you are going to need all the help you could get.

4. Dedicate your time to the cause

Don’t even consider approaching your influencer efforts as a side venture or something to do when time permits. Just as is the case with any other occupation, you will need to set aside some time in your schedule every day to dedicate to the cause.

5. Have clear goals in mind

Last up, along with a strategy in terms of how precisely you want to progress, you will also need to determine your main objectives and goals. It is crucial to consider carefully why you have decided to do this in the first place and when you will consider the whole venture successful. Like any other business idea, you will need a set of KPIs to be able to measure your performance and progress along the way.

Growing Your Business

Have you invested a lot in getting your business off the ground but now feel as though it’s reached a plateau? 

Launching a business successfully is hard enough in this day and age but achieving growth once you’ve done this is something else altogether.

If you want to take your business to the next stage there are plenty of strategies you can use to achieve this. The ones you choose will depend upon what kind of company you are and exactly what kind of expansion you are going for. 

Here are some areas you might want to consider:

Form An Alliance: Setting up a partnership with a similar kind of business, or one that complements your own, can be a very effective method of expansion. To give an example on a small scale: if you’re running a wedding planning business why not form an alliance with a catering company? Yes, you may have to shell out some of your own money initially to make it happen, but in the long-term the synergies between your companies should increase your prospects immeasurably.

Expand Online: If you don’t already have an online presence, you’re automatically missing out on a huge opportunity for growth. You need a well-designed website with clear descriptions of your products and services. So many people these days would rather buy online but they will expect to be able to do so quickly and easily, so you should make sure that the check-out system you use is highly efficient. To ensure your website has good visibility, hire an online marketing expert to implement an SEO strategy and teach you about other effective strategies – such as email marketing – to make the most of your online presence.

Open Another Site: If you have one shop or office and it simply isn’t meeting your needs anymore, it may be time to expand elsewhere. This could be to extend to another area of the country, or simply to give you further space to take on new clients or stock more product lines. Yes, physical expansion is always a risk but at some point you will have to take a leap of this kind if you want to take your business to the next level. Just make sure you have a strong, experienced management team in place to run it, that you have created a solid business plan and that you have done your homework in terms of consumer and economic trends.

Diversification: If you have taken your existing product or service offering as far as it can go, it may be time to look at selling complementary products or services. As a growth strategy, this is a fairly safe bet as you are simply building on your existing success and client base. It allows you to have several streams of income to increase sales and profit margins, and well as potentially dealing with seasonal slumps.