One of the most buzzed about terms in PR and marketing right now is “Influencer Marketing.” It’s a term making it into job descriptions and titles of marketing and PR pros on LinkedIn, and it’s an important one for authors to understand.
Influencer Marketing is when brands reach out to potential customers by partnering with influencers. An influencer is anyone with a strong presence via any of the following:
- Blog
- YouTube
- Podcast
- Webinars
- Pro speaking
- Book sales
- Website traffic
- Email list
- Social media platform (a strong social media platform is essential to Influencer Marketing)
Basically, influencers help big brands by convincing their audiences to pay attention to said brand.
Why Influencer Marketing Should Matter to Authors
It’s no secret that most authors don’t make much money from books, which means you’ve got to find other ways to generate revenue around your book. Many authors accomplish this by selling products and services to their audience and/or via corporate sponsorship dollars.
Corporate sponsorships can bring lucrative deals for influencers. It’s not uncommon for companies to pay $1,000 to $1,500 to sponsor a single blog post, or $2,500 to $5,000 to sponsor a webinar or Twitter chat. Sponsorships can include all kinds of promotional activities, from video endorsements to sponsored emails, and contracts for authors can reach well into the 6-figure range.
Sponsorship agreements are similar to those that professional athletes and celebrities have with big companies like Nike, Aveeno and Chase bank. Celebrities are paid to endorse products and services by wearing the product, appearing in commercials or talking about the product publicly.
While celebrity contracts tend to land in the 7-figure range, the premise is the same. Celebrities are sponsored because of their influence, and as an author, you have the opportunity to build your influence.
How to Become an Influencer
If you’re interested in generating sponsorship dollars, then start by building your platform. Being an author already makes you an AUTHORity in your subject matter. The next step is to capture the interest of an audience. And the larger your audience, the more sponsors will pay attention.
The required size of your audience will depend on the size of the audience you serve. If you have a niche audience of women 55+ who are interested in skin care, your overall reach could be smaller than an influencer in a market that’s fairly competitive, like small business. For a small niche, an audience of 10,000 people could be impressive, but for a broader audience, you’ll probably need to reach 50,000+ in order to get the attention of sponsors.
Your Call to Action
If you’re an author who has grumbled about marketing and hasn’t yet put a lot of effort into building your platform, let this serve as some incentive for you to get to work! It takes time and commitment to build an audience, but the rewards are worth the effort. Soon that book of yours could be generating tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of influencer marketing.
You can learn more about building your platform through our blog and via membership in the Nonfiction Authors Association.
If you like this blog post, you’ll love our Corporate Sponsorships Course! Learn more about our courses for authors here.
