Growing Your Brand As An Influencer

With social media careers becoming a real thing in the digital age, making use of online influencers has become a trend with marketers worldwide who are looking to cash in on the reach of these social media powerhouses.

Being a social media influencer has great perks but making sure that your partnerships benefit your personal brand will bear more fruit in the long run.

As an influencer, your credibility and expertise within a certain industry are often used to help big brands expand their online reach through exposure to your followers and hence the influence you have.

Having this kind of clout on social media will have all kinds of companies approaching you to promote their brands on your platforms but what should you consider before accepting these offers?

Fashion model, music producer and all-round creative Gina Mwoombola, better known as Gina Jeanz, says she opts to work with brands which align with her personal tastes.

“I try to align myself with brands that I actually believe in. It’s easy to just want to get free press drops but have absolutely no intention of pushing the product. I personally have declined to work with specific brands because they don’t speak to my personality or aesthetic, it’s nothing personal.”

She adds that an influencer should be ready to stand firm in their decision to decline any partnership in order to remain genuine and authentic to their followers. “At the end of the day, it’s about being honest with yourself and those who follow you for inspiration,” she says.

As an influencer, you’re not only selling a marketing platform through your online popularity but you are also continously carving out an online footprint for your own brand. It’s for this reason that you should be careful who you align your brand with.

“You could sign a contract to do influencer work today and somewhere down the line the brand suffers negative PR. It’s unfortunate and really out of your control. We can’t predict the future, but we can be cautious about who we work with,” she said.

“My advice would be to always do your research and make sure you align yourself with a brand because you actually want to build a good relationship with them,” says Mwoombola.

Public relations expert Ilke Platt-Akwenye agrees that thorough research is an ideal way for influencers to know exactly who they are partnering up with.

“Influencers should research the partnership and do homework on that specific brand’s credibility. They should believe in the product or service. Even for influencers, public relations and marketing campaigns are only as good as what the customer says it is,” she says.

At the same time, ensuring that you meet your end of any agreements you enter into is also very crucial to protecting your brand.

“Your brand and its ability to show your worth speaks volumes. Some influencers have received bad reviews after an endorsement was not forthcoming to the best interests of both parties. Influencers should realise that clients spend money on endorsements and also need a return on their investment. If you are not able to honour your agreement, that can set an influencer up for losses on other endorsements,” says Platt-Akwenye.

Losing your unique brand identity can occur when people associate you more with a brand you’ve partnered with than your own. To counter this, Platt-Akwenye advises developing a mutually beneficial agreement when partnering with other brands.

“If an influencer already knows their worth, what they stand for and the brand they still want to uphold after the partnership, they should ensure that the best interest of their brand should be heard and respected. Their brand should not dissolve into another brand but still be unique and complement the endorsement.”

She stressed that not all opportunities should be taken, especially given the fact that some partnerships will be risky. “Influencers should select their partnerships wisely and not jump at any offer for the sake of the endorsement amount or value. You should have a PR team on your side to be on stand by for any PR risk to your brand if the product you’ve endorsed goes through a crisis.”

Being an influencer is not all glamour, though. Much goes into creating a position for yourself in this booming market that’s said to be worth US$1 billion and continues to grow.

• Establish who you are and what your brand is about. This is very important because it’s easy for people to define that for you and that just creates unnecessary stress when it comes to engaging with your audience.

• List your strengths and interests and cancel out things that you know you can’t commit to. For example, if your bio states that you do fitness, travel, fashion, beauty, style, vlogging etc and you do only one of these, you’re in for a world of hurt. Start off with what you can handle and focus on creating quality work. You’ll attract the right audience when they can clearly see what you’re about.

• Creating content is a lot of work, especially if you’re doing it on your own. Brands love quality and they would rather align themselves with someone who pays attention to details because that’s what helps to push the product. Numbers don’t mean anything if the work is average. You can have 2 000 followers and create beautiful content and still get brands to work with you.

• Do your research as much as you can in your field of interest. For example, fashion is constantly changing and it’s important to stay up to date. Save and invest in yourself and your equipment while you work with what you have.

• Be extremely picky about how much of your personal life you put out there. Social media isn’t forgiving with scandals. Protect your brand and your personal life as much as possible.

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