The benefits of influencers for brands are numerous. From increasing sales to providing valuable social proof, influencers offer an array of benefits for businesses large and small.
But influencers can also have a powerful effect over your website content too, improving it tenfold to help you meet your goals. Read on to discover four ways influencer content can improve your website.
Let them create stellar content for your blog
It’s easy to forget that influencers are, before anything else, content creators. Indeed, beyond anything else, it is their content that keeps their audience coming back time and again.
Consequently, if you’re collaborating with an influencer, it’s well worth having them create blogs, videos, and other forms of content for your onsite content strategy.
Discuss a specific goal with your influencer for their content. For instance, if you want to increase awareness of a new product launch, you could encourage your influencer to create a promotional teaser video featuring your new product.
Alternatively, if you wanted to showcase your environmental commitments, you could host a short video tour where your influencer runs through your ethical supply chain, sustainable packaging, and so on.
Your chosen influencer could even ‘takeover’ your content for a month, updating it regularly with fresh blogs and videos that encourage repeat website traffic. Turn it into an event in itself, with competitions and cross-channel takeovers (social, email, etc) to create a buzz around your business as a whole.
As well as boosting your branding and onsite content, this also enhances your SEO by increasing traffic to your website. This strategy should be your first port of call when looking to influencers to improve your website, so start here and start early.
Add an incentive for new visitors to stay onsite
When new visitors arrive at your website, they’re subconsciously looking for a reason to stay on your site. It might be an intriguing brand story, stellar products, engaging video, and so on.
But one element that really convinces visitors to stay on your website? Interesting content from influencers that your target audience knows and loves.
If someone arrives on your website, the presence of recognized influencer content will be more than enough to convince them to stay onsite.
Place your influencer content front and center on your website’s homepage. Alternatively, create a dedicated landing page that taps into the shared interest that your target audience has with your partnered influencer.
For instance, if one buyer persona is an ethically-minded consumer with an emphasis on sustainability and your influencer has a similar focus on environmentalism, create a paid social ad that references those elements and leads to a landing page featuring your influencer.
Enjoy valuable social proof from influencer content
In the same vein as the above, the presence of a social star’s content on your website not only encourages a visitor to stay onsite, but it provides valuable social proof that imbues the rest of your brand too.
While the mere presence of influencer content is enough to validate your brand, it’s also worth making the most of your collaboration to create some dedicated testimonials for your brand too.
Let your influencer lead this — if your social proof feels branded then it will also feel disingenuous. If your chosen influencer provides their own testimonial for your brand in their own distinct way, it feels sincere and genuine.
Embed video testimonials on your homepage so new visitors can see it instantly. Alternatively, create a landing page builder such as Carrd and create a dedicated page for visitors to arrive on from a paid or social ad that prominently features your chosen influencer.
Encourage influencers to act as content consultants
It might feel a little left-field, but influencers can do more than provide engaging content that draws in traffic. They can also provide advice on the style, tone of voice, format, and so on for your own website content too.
Take your About page, for instance. This is an important part of your branding, so it’s worth getting right. It’s what connects your audience with your brand on an intimate level, so it’s crucial to write it in a way that taps into your customers as individuals.
Influencers have a unique connection with their followers, and they know how to speak with them. That quality is worth mining for your About page.
Let influencers guide and shape your copy so that it better taps into your target audience’s interests and pain points. Encourage them to offer vocabulary advice, tips on points of reference, and so on.
Your About page is just the beginning. Your chosen influencer can inform the rest of your website’s content in the same way too.
Take your onsite live chat, for instance. Use a live chat app like Crisp that lets you customize your dialogue and encourage your influencer to write the chat script themselves. This adds a natural touch to your chatbot that allays any customer irritation if they’re complaining, and might even encourage them to wait longer for a response should it warrant.
In this way, you can create website content that genuinely connects with your target audience and appeals to them as individuals, not just customers.
If you haven’t collaborated with an influencer yet in 2020, now is the time to do so. Look beyond the usual partnerships and have your chosen influencer improve your website too. Follow the tips above and enjoy better, more engaging website content through influencer collaborations in 2020.