Why Your Brand Needs to Leverage Influencers to Reach Social Shoppers

Social shopping allows consumers to make purchases as they scroll their feeds. Through interactive posts, consumers can view a product in their feed and, within a few clicks, buy it. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest offer specialized tools to create a seamless transition from discovering a product in-feed to checking out. While brands can advertise their products via social, research shows influencers provide authentic promotions that increase awareness, engagement, and sales. Simply put, influencers help brands capitalize on social feeds to gain results. 

Why influencers are ideal for inspiring social shopping

Influencers are perfectly positioned to help brands socially sell their products because these digital creators can:

Impact purchase decisions

At their core, influencers can “influence” their audience. By sharing their passion through consistent, high-quality posts, influencers build trust with their audience, which means followers listen to their product recommendations. 

Talk to followers as a friend

When brands promote their own products, consumers see it as a sales pitch. When an influencer promotes a brand’s product, consumers see it as a recommendation from a friend. It’s word-of-mouth advertising in a digital form. 

Leverage interactive posts

Influencers, by nature, are tech-savvy. They stay on top of trends, experiment with different content, and research social features as they’re released. How does that help brands? When you tap an influencer to create a shoppable post, he or she will know how to make it happen. 

Tips to reach social shoppers via main feeds 

If you’d like to collab with influencers to promote products within consumer’s main social feeds, consider these helpful tips:

Activate influencers as an extension of your brand

Your brand should remain the authority. Your brand’s social channels should focus on educating customers through a variety of content types. 

Influencers provide support. They offer more personalized promotions that resonate with customers. Ask influencers to share their personal experience, show your product in use, or explain how your product aids in their daily life. 

Don’t be swayed by follower count alone

Influencer selection is an essential part of any campaign. You need influencers who align with your target audience, have experience in your niche, and share your values. 

As you search for the perfect influencers to promote your products, you might be tempted to judge an influencer by his or her follower count. Yes, influencers with larger audiences can cast a wider net of interest, but nano and micro-influencers tend to have higher engagement rates. 

Consider using an influencer marketing platform with a robust database of influencers, advanced filters to narrow your search, and insightful creator profiles that provide KPIs like engagement rates. 

Let influencers do their thing

Your brand’s image and reputation are important, so it’s natural to feel uneasy about asking someone outside your company walls to promote the brand without explicit direction. 

Brands should give the creator an influencer brief that outlines the company’s mission, product, campaign goals, content deliverables, and deadlines, but this is where your guidance ends. 

Influencer-generated content performs best when the influencers are given creative freedom. Your brand should ask to review the content before publishing, but trust in the process. 

Understand the process of shoppable posts from influencers

Influencers can create and share shoppable posts on behalf of a brand, but there is a process to it. The process varies by platform, but most platforms give brands the power to add influencers to their social channel as partners, which grants them the ability to create shoppable posts. 

Once permission is granted, influencers can “tag” products and allow consumers to shop right from the brand’s store within the social platform. 

Deploy short-form and long-form content with purpose

When you work with an influencer, which content type is best? While there is a certain level of experimentation, you can follow a rule of thumb: 

Use short-form to tease a product and long-form video to demonstrate it. 

Short-form content is in demand. Shrinking attention spans and active scrolling habits mean short videos are an effective way to reach customers. That said, long-form videos have their place, too. Consumers conduct product research on social media, so providing a how-to video, demo, or testimonial has a place in the sales funnel.  

Use both forms in your marketing strategy and use metrics to guide how and when you use them. 

If your brand is eager to collaborate with influencers, but needs guidance, IZEA can help. Reach out to our Managed Services team to chat about working with influencers to reach social shoppers.