I recently learnt an important lesson in Influencer Marketing that I’d like to share with you; you can apply this to your startup’s digital marketing strategy.
Yesterday morning, I read an article on Forbes titled ‘Marc Andreessen’s Best Advice: Build Your Passion Before Your Startup’. I got to a part of the article that I liked a lot, so I decided to screenshot it and share it with my Twitter followers.
Now, I had the option of just tweeting ‘Read this awesome advice from Marc Andreessen’ or tweeting with both Marc and Forbes’s Twitter handles. I chose the latter. At the time, I didn’t think much of what I did. I just went with that because it seemed cooler. After that, I went about my daily activities, forgetting I had even tweeted something like that. Not one person retweeted the screenshot or responded to it.
Later at night, around 8:50pm, Marc Andreessen (pictured above) himself retweeted the tweet. When I saw the notification, I almost went nuts. One, because I considered it an honour for him to retweet my tweet. Two, because I knew my mentions were about to go gaga!
https://twitter.com/DavidIAdeleke/status/730857735798063107
And they did. I spent the rest of the night receiving notifications from retweets, likes, replies and tweet quotes. It was fun, for me. But more importantly, it helped me realize, firsthand, what a simple unsolicited retweet or commendation from an influential person can do to your content or digital marketing efforts.
The lesson in Influencer Marketing
This is the simple truth: your content will go further if it is liked and shared by someone that is influential online.
Mind you, that tweet wasn’t alone; there was an accompanying tweet beneath it. Maybe Marc didn’t see the second tweet, so it didn’t receive as much attention as the first one.
Here are the two tweets:
https://twitter.com/DavidIAdeleke/status/730719455056138241
https://twitter.com/DavidIAdeleke/status/730720741528834048
Now, look at the figures for both of them. Look at the difference that an influential person can make on a piece of content:
Influencers can do great things to your digital marketing. You don’t have to pay them to get them involved. Just share content that they might like and can re-share with their large audience; content that will make them look good. This is a major key in Influencer Marketing.
