Many brands eagerly seek relationships with social media influencers. They want the influencers to recommend their products to their huge numbers of followers who, at least hopefully, respect the influencers’ product approvals. Some brands pay celebrities and others with large followings substantial amounts for a single tweet or Instagram post. Other brands emphasize organic, or non-advertising, strategies; they offer product samples, content to share, special tours and other perks in an effort to encourage influencers to mention their brand.
However, influencer marketing on social media suffers a significant flaw. The lifespan of social media content is extremely short. Even if posts in a Tweeter or Facebook feed still technically exist, as a practical matter, few people look back in time in a feed.
The Problem with Influencers on Social Media
“The lifespan of your content in their social stream can be measured in minutes. If it does give you a traffic boost, it will be over before the day is done,” writes Andy Crestodina at Orbit Media.
Attaining SEO benefits, calls for finding influencers who create content that contains links. If they link to your company, they can increase your web search results and domain authority. One important note: Paying people for links violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. It’s a form of link spam and is both unethical and risky.
Crestodina cites seven types of influencers who create web content other than social media posts:
- Bloggers and blog editors
- Journalists and columnists
- Authors
- Podcasters
- Webinar producers
- Event producers
- Academic researchers.
Finding Influences who Can Boost Your SEO
Locating the right influencers is the first step to improving your SEO. According to a Fashion and Beautiful Monitor survey, 73 percent of marketers say identifying the right influencer is the hardest part of influencer marketing. That could be because 84 percent identify influencers manually. A social media monitoring and measurement tool can uncover the best influencers by:
- Identifying who shares news and other content on your topics on social media, websites and blogs.
- Revealing who advocates for your competitors and your overall industry.
- Identifying influencers with sizeable number of followers and healthy engagement rates within your niche.
- Analyzing the influencer’s audience to find if it matches your target audience.
Influencers could be journalists or bloggers, but they could also be partners, employees or simply people with a passionate interest in your area. They don’t necessarily need enormous numbers of followers. Research shows that micro-influencers tend to have more engaged followers and fewer fraudulent and inactive accounts.
The Power of Mixing SEO and Influencer Marketing
It’s important to check the influencer’s domain authority, as well as audience demographics and engagement, advises Marcela De Vivo at Search Engine Watch.
“Despite influencer marketing’s trending nature, many marketers, SEOs, and brands are still coming up short. Don’t fail to utilize the true power of a well-cultivated influencer campaign,” De Vivo urges.
Marketing Land columnist Benjamin Spiegel, CEO of MMI Agency, offers these tips to add the power of SEO to influencer marketing.
- Include keyword research and recommendations in your influencer brief. Influencers typically are not search experts. Let them know keyword terms that improve their search results and traffic.
- Besides asking influencers to link to your brand’s page, ask them to link to other brand-owned assets, such as its YouTube channel or Amazon SKU.
- Recommend topics based on search trends. Give the influencer theme ideas that align with your products, category or seasonal trends to gain increased search volume.
- Audit the influencer’s spam score. Make sure your influencer’s blog or website does not have a high spam score. You can use tools like Moz or Ahrefs.
- Amplify the influencer’s best posts through your own social channels. If possible, boost it with paid media.
- Rethink the way you select influencers. Seek influencers who rank well for your specific keywords. “When you are choosing your influencer, don’t just use the list from your selection tool or agency; start with search first,” Spiegel recommends.
Bottom Line: Although influencer marketing has become a well-established PR and marketing strategy, many brands don’t pursue its potentially substantial SEO benefits. The right influencers can help improve a brand’s domain authority and search results, leading to more website traffic and conversions.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
