Using Influencer Marketing for Growth-Hacking on Your Blog

Growth-hacking has become a popular buzz word on the web for obvious reasons. The idea behind growth hacking is to 'hack' or 'cheat' the normal growth period of any new blog and thereby get to the point where you are bringing in thousands of hits a day long before you generally would. Growing a blog is a matter of following a set system and as with any system, there are ways to 'game' the process.  There are shortcuts to be found.

A great example of this is 'influencer marketing'. This is one of the most powerful tools available to any blogger. influencer marketing can help you instantly communicate with a gigantic audience instead of feeling like you’re talking to an empty room for months.

What is Influencer Marketing?

So how does influencer marketing work? The simple idea here is that you overcome the limitation of not having a huge audience by using someone else’s huge audience. You either pay for it or find a free approach.

A simple way to do this is going through a 'solo ad'. Here, you pay someone to promote you to their mailing list, which could mean reaching thousands of followers. The only problem with this strategy is that you get what you pay for. Reaching a worthwhile audience may cost more than you have to spare.

Rather than speeding your fortune, you might do better to focus on other ways to work with influencers – for instance getting them to retweet your messages on Twitter. You may also collaborate with influential bloggers to publish your posts on their blogs, which is called guest blogging.

How to 'Hack' Influencer Marketing

And guess what? Influencer marketing can be hacked too! In other words, there are ways you can reach the big influencers faster if you know how to go about it.

One example of growth-hacking is to combine influencer marketing with real-world networking. In other words, if you can speak to an influencer in the real world, they will be far more likely to give you a shoutout. If you take a photo with them, you could even upload it to Instagram and tag you both in it.

Another tactic is to aim at the right level of influencer. Don't go straight for Richard Branson, for instance. Instead, you should start small and then work your way up. The ideal influencer to work with is someone who is at a similar level to you but just slightly ahead. That way, you’ll still have something to offer them in return.