With today’s ever changing market trends, learning how to market your brand on social media effectively has been known to show significant results in fostering your brand’s growth.

One that is most talked about today that drives more traffic and promotes organic growth is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy that makes use of industry leaders to promote your brand. From lifestyle bloggers, vloggers and celebrities- these popular social media personalities give an added boost to brands through targeted exposure and instantly connects them to their influencer’s audience as well. Influencer marketing works because it improves a brand’s organic reach and helps drive more conversion.

The success of influencer marketing in 2016 has led to companies increasing their marketing budgets and continuously coming up with new campaigns to drive their marketing efforts.

Here are four key influencer marketing trends to watch.

1. The use of more social media influencers.

Many of today’s smart consumers are weary of painfully obvious in-your-face advertising. On popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, so many Millennials can smell an advertising pitch from a mile away. Perhaps this is why influencers like lifestyle, travel or fitness bloggers are so effective at marketing brands to their audience because they are well-loved, respected and are known to be authentically themselves. Most of these influencers choose the brands they market and often do not promote brands that they haven’t tried themselves. Although many celebrities are also effective at influencer marketing, they often lack the same relatability that consumers look for in finding brands that work for them.

2. The growth of micro-influencers.

With so many brands to choose from, much of today’s consumers will always prefer brand testimonials from real people rather than popular celebrity brand promotions. A recent shift in this marketing strategy involves using brand partners with a smaller number of followers in social media. These micro-influencers often stand out in a particular niche and although do not have millions of followers like celebrities, have a very engaged and loyal audience. Rather than the obviously sponsored ads, they use authentic and visual posts or reviews about brands they think are worth giving a try or products that they use themselves. In the field of influencer marketing, the emergence of micro-influencers is something to watch out for as they have been known to give brands more engagement regarding comments, likes, and shares which can drastically improve a brand’s organic reach. With a more targeted audience to cater to, brands looking to reach a specific niche market can do well with the use of micro-influencers in their campaign.

3. Longer contract terms.

Finding the right influencer to promote your brand is just half the battle. For the best chance of success at getting positive results, brands need to painstakingly choose from thousands of top influencers in the market today. This means learning about these influencers through research and understanding their audience. Brands need to be able to find the right influencer whose followers fit the brand’s target audience. Once this has been identified, the next step is for brands to ask themselves if they can work with this influencer for the long term.

The emergence of thousands of brands in the market today means businesses need to make the smart choice and consider offering influencers with long term deals. This is to ensure an effective influencer can partner with your brand for the long run which may help the brand save further. The market is ripe for brands to partner with and we’ve seen popular social media influencers jump from one brand to another. To establish trust among your audience, working with a long term brand partner who is well-respected and efficient at driving the results you want may be the better choice.

4. Authentic and organic reach.

For many social media marketing campaigns today, many brands continue to aim for more likes as though that is the defining point of success. But looking at successful campaigns in the past that have brought on the most results in driving long-term conversion and better brand exposure, the best measure of success is in being able to establish a real connection with your target market through organic reach. This matters because your organic followers can relate to your brand and trust you enough to stay on for the long haul. Investing in being able to gain organic followers through your brand partners can help save on future costs as these consumers may stay with you even after the campaign period has ended. Brands can invest on influencers who drive the best results and can be compensated based on these results rather than the content they share. Like most of the today’s marketing efforts, not all content may resonate with the influencer’s audience right away, and so it is important for brands to keep track of the number of followers and user engagement that these posts can generate and use that as the basis for compensation.

Even if many marketing strategies continue to emerge today, it is clear to see that influencer marketing will continue to drive most brand campaigns in the coming years. Brands that have yet to make full use of this method need to seriously consider how much they can lose out on. Almost all the top brands we know, today have made use of some form of influencer to reach their target customers and gain new ones. Brands continue to flock to social media and use it as a means to interact with their customers because social media marketing works and even more so when your brand has found the right influencer to promote sponsored content. Influencer marketing gives brands the opportunity to send out a message to potential customers and attract a new audience in a way that may not be possible through traditional methods of advertising. Not being able to catch up to this trend and use it to boost more business for your brand will be a mistake as influencer marketing is set to dominate online marketing campaigns for many more years to come.

Today’s guest post for the startup page was written by:
Charlotte McCleary is a message-centric brand strategist who works with the marketing teams of start-ups and young companies to streamline their market positioning and message. When not crafting blue prints for marketers she is a key note speaker and personal branding coach. Twitter