Influencer marketing has become one of the most effective strategies for business owners and digital marketers. And as the industry continues to grow, more and more brands are now starting to realize the potential of using it specifically for their content marketing strategy to boost their brand awareness, increase sales, and many more. If you’re looking to tread the same path, but you’re not sure how to get started, then you’ve come to the right place.

In order to integrate influencer marketing into your campaigns, you’ll need to make use of several software tools that match your specific needs. In this article, we narrow down your choices to the best and most essential tools for influencer marketing, and we also take a closer look at the definition of influencer marketing, and its importance in today’s digitally connected world.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a social media marketing strategy that involves collaborating with a popular influencer who has a significant and dedicated following, and expertise in a particular niche market. In this marketing strategy, the influencer agrees to partner with you to help grow your brand, drive its content for the purpose of stirring up interest among your target audience, and gaining brand recognition. 

Today, influencer marketing is becoming the most effective form of a content marketing strategy, because, unlike webinars, ebooks, or whitepapers, it is able to bring the desired human element into your brand. It also works well for most marketers because of the mass influence and high levels of trust that influencers have gained from their followers, and so their suggestions act as a kind of social influence, or evidence of a brand’s potential.

Influencer Marketing Vs. Content Marketing

There’s a close relation between influencer marketing and content marketing, with the former being an integral aspect of the latter. However, the main difference is that influencer marketing is mostly about drawing content, and finding the best way to spread it further. While content marketing is about creating content that can resonate with your target audience, and make a meaningful impression on their minds.

With that said, they both work together, rather than separately, and are like two sides of the same thing. You can include influencer marketing into your content marketing campaigns to reach your audience more effectively, raise your brand awareness, quickly build trust, and provide the best value for your audience. Remember, even if you’re able to come up with eye-catching content, you still need to find the right channel to disseminate it.

Why Influencer Marketing Is Worth Your Time and Effort?

Image source: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Many brands are now starting to invest more of their time and resources in creating successful influencer-driven content marketing campaigns, because of the many benefits that they offer. In order to understand why influencer marketing is becoming more popular, let’s take a closer look at what it can do for your business or brand:

• Improve your content marketing strategy
• Reach your target audience more effectively
• Establish credibility in your niche market
• Create social conversations around your brand
• Gain and improve brand awareness
• Build trust faster
• Improve your search engine rankings
• Drive traffic to your business
• Increase conversions, leads, and sales
• Provide value to your audience

In addition to the benefits, let’s also take a look at some of the actual experiences of today’s brands. According to Forbes, influencer marketing has been growing faster than digital ads since 2017, with emphasis placed on leveraging the reach of an existing influencer or industry leader’s following to foster growth for business.

• 27.5% of brands found pain campaign to be the most effective collaboration type
• 10.9% of brands measured success by looking at unique impressions
• 13.2% of brands measured success by looking at total reach
• 89% of marketers indicated that ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels

• Over ⅔ of marketers intend to spend the most on Instagram
• Instagram is the most important social media channel for influencer marketing, followed by YouTube and Facebook

Businesses are making $5.20 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing

Now that you know what influencer marketing is, and the tremendous benefits it offers for brands and marketers, let’s dive right into the best and most essential influencer marketing tools on the market.

7 Essential Tools For Influencer-Driven Content Marketing Campaigns

When it comes to creating successful influencer-driven content marketing campaigns, you have at your disposal numerous software tools to choose from. Most of them allow you to do very useful things, like finding the best influencer to promote your brand, creating and running outreach campaigns, and managing your social media networks, among many other features.

Here are seven of the best and most essential influencer marketing tools you’ll find on the market, so you can succeed on the path.

#1. BuzzSumo

The very first thing you want to do to create a successful influencer-driven content marketing campaign is to find and choose the perfect influencer who can promote your brand, products, or services. The best and fastest way to do this is to use BuzzSumo.

BuzzSumo is a powerful influencer marketing tool that can help you find writers, bloggers, and creators who have gained enough traction in your target niche, and draw up a shortlist of them all. You can use the tool to zoom in on the influencers who have gathered the most shares, links, and likes, locate them with any language, or enter a domain to discover the most successful among them.

On top of that, you can also use the platform to come up with great content ideas by browsing topics, forums and trends, or perform content research, by running through the “world’s largest index of social engagement data,” and gain deeper insights into industry updates, as well as your competitors.

#2. BuzzStream

Another great way to find the right influencer in your niche, but with more useful collaborative features, is to use BuzzStream. Not only can this influencer marketing tool help you research your opportunities, and quickly create qualified lists of relevant influencers, but it can also help you run effective outreach campaigns, and collaborate more effectively with your contacts.

Additionally, BuzzStream can also help you manage your relationships, monitor your projects with your team, and keep track of the status of your campaigns. You can monitor what your team is currently working on, and set notifications when your contacts respond to your outreach.

#3. AgoraPulse

If you’re looking for an influencer marketing tool that not only lets you manage all of your social media networks in one place, but also helps you create content, and monitor and benchmark your performance effectively, then AgoraPulse is your top choice.

AgoraPulse is a social media management software that allows you to reach your target prospects, create genuine relationships, and drive engagement. It is designed to make it easier for you to craft your content, publish it on multiple social media channels, and increase your sales.

#4. FameBit

FameBit is an online marketing platform that enables you to post offers to advertise your products or services on specific social media channels, and content creators can sign in to accept your offer and negotiate your prices.

The platform is one of the best influencer tools of 2020, and has incredible features to help you carry out successful influencer-driven content marketing campaigns. The tool can enable you to get in touch with programmers, writers, and digital distributors, easily find paid sponsorships, and set your budget.

If you’re searching for YouTube influencers to promote your brand, then FameBit should be one of your top choices. Recently, the platform was rebranded as YouTube BrandConnect, and will stay available to YouTube influencers that have more than 25,000 followers.

#5. NinjaOutreach

NinjaOutreach is a powerful influencer marketing and blogging outreach software tool that allows you to find the best social media influencers, from Instagram or Twitter, in your niche. You can use the tool to create influencer marketing campaigns by filtering through numerous profiles to find the perfect match.

Moreover, you can also manage all of your marketing and outreach campaigns, organize your leads, and monitor your conversations, history, and even check email addresses to make sure no outreach is wasted. NinjaOutreach is without a doubt the right tool for marketing agencies, marketers, and small businesses.

#6. PitchBox

PitchBox is an influencer outreach and link building software tool that allows you to streamline your outreach campaigns, and find the best influencers and bloggers in your niche in a very short amount of time, by using keyword search, and multiple profiles.

On top of that, PitchBox also lets you personalize your emails, send them out, and create automated follow-ups. If you’re in the business of digital marketing, or you work with an in-house marketing team for a large brand, then PitchBox is the right influencer marketing tool for you.

#7. UpFluence

If you’re in search of a smart influencer marketing tool that can do most of the things you need to create successful campaigns, then UpFluence is your best bet. This influencer marketing platform allows you to look for and pick the best influencer for your brand, initiate contact at scale, and track your performance.

With UpFluence, you can use Live Capture to determine your organic influencers, bring your current users on-board as ambassadors, or choose from more than 3 million influencers. What’s more, you can also optimize your selection process with AI, compare influencer profiles to one another, analyze your engagement rate, and import your existing lists of influencers, so you can make your integration process much smoother.

Final Words

As a business owner or marketer, now is the perfect time for you to recognize the importance of influencer marketing, take advantage of it to promote your brand, and create the online buzz you need to flourish in today’s digitally connected world. By using influencer marketing in your content marketing strategy, you’ll be able to reach your target audience effectively, establish credibility in the market, quickly build trust, strengthen your brand’s awareness, and increase conversions, and sales.

Author bio: Aaron Chichioco is the chief content officer (CCO) and one of the web designers of Design Doxa. Aside from his expertise on web/mobile design and development, he also has years of experience in digital marketing, branding, customer service, eCommerce and business management as well. For more information about Aaron, visit http://designdoxa.com/about-us/.