Influencer text messaging – the key to follower engagement.
Social media influencers and thought leaders have been growing sectors during the past few years, in quite an interesting manner. A considerably large number of followers and interesting / informative / educative content characterize these two categories. They are present in most of the social media platforms including Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube.
Most of us being social media users of at least one platform, we are pretty much aware of this picture that I am talking about.
Anyways, it is not about influencers, celebrities or thought leaders that I am gonna talk about in this post. Well, as the title of this post may have already suggested, the discussion today is on quite a new area that you might not have thought about before.
Let me first give you the general idea. Then, we can talk more 🙂
Business Text Messaging
We have been the receivers of text messages by all kinds of businesses that we have been customers of, over the years, right? This is true to you both before and after becoming influencers. I mean, everyone loves to see offers and promotional codes in their inbox, don’t we? It just tempts us to buy any stuff that we may have been postponing due to its high cost. For the business, these regular text messaging campaigns mean, most of the time, engaging and purchasing customers. So, the businesses ensure to create a loyal customer base around themselves constantly through text marketing.
Influencer Text Messaging
You just read! Influencer text messaging. Haven’t thought of it before?
Being an influencer, celebrity, or thought leader, text messaging is a most effective strategy that you can use to establish a set of most loyal followers that engage with you as a brand, even beyond your social media platforms. This means, the social media users who are simply your follower base limited to those platforms right now, will turn into your followers wherever you take them, via a simple SMS.
Sounds new and promising? Keep reading!
Why Build an SMS Subscriber List? Why Do Influencer Text Messaging?
Turn social media followers into loyal followers
Either via online forms or by asking followers to text a keyword to your dedicated mobile number, you can initiate your SMS list. When you do this, you have an even more loyal follower base beyond social media platforms. Moreover, they are followers who opted to receive texts from you. They know what they signed up for; they did so because they need to hear from you. This means that you can expect them to be as engaging as you need them to be.
Build an engaging follower base around you
Social media posts depend on constantly changing algorithms to reach followers. There is a higher chance for many of your followers to not see them, at least on time. Moreover, there could be people who are not regular social media users. Compared to that, you can reach out to them better using a single text message that is guaranteed to reach every single person, as soon as it is sent. If you are using a well equipped SMS tool, you can also track the SMS delivery rate. You can include the link to your podcast, YouTube video, or any other post, in the SMS. What’s more, you can even ask them to share the link with their peers for better reach.
At the same time, unlike social media messaging, texting is not limited and hectic. You could miss many private messages sent via social media, even important collaborations and partnerships. You can avoid this hassle by using SMS as the main communication tool.
Drive sales in your brick-and-mortar storefront or online store
We receive promotional texts from businesses with discount codes and online shopping links. You can use your SMS subscriber base for the same, to increase sales in your brick-and-mortar stores or online shopping site. Moreover, you can offer special coupons to them and attract more people to your SMS list.
Attract brand partnerships influencer text messaging
Influencer marketing is a trending marketing strategy that many businesses are using to promote their services and products. As a result, most influencers receive partnership deals from brands. But, have you always wanted to stand out among other influencers? To offer MORE as an influencer when accepting partnership offers?
How about a loyal and active followers-turned-users base to which you can send the brand promotion campaign? Well, yes, there are the social media campaign results but they are mainly metrics such as views, clicks, likes, and shares. It is not possible to see a real conversion through these metrics; they fall short when it comes to understanding the campaign success rate. However, with SMS campaigns, you can promise better results as you can show analytics of the campaigns such as the number of SMS delivered, opened, links clicked etc. using an all-in-one SMS tool. To make things even better for you, you can get special discount coupons to the subscriber base and in turn increase your text messaging subscriber base at the same time. This will attract many DTC (Direct-To-Consumer) brands that need to reach consumers directly.
Offer SMS campaigns for targeted groups
This is another benefit you will get through building your own SMS subscriber base. If you are an influencer who specializes in a specific area, say finance, travelling, law etc., organizations and individuals who offer these specific services will reach out to run campaigns. As I mentioned previously, too, you always have the analytics and reports to prove the success of your SMS campaigns.
Increase your followers in different social media platforms
All the above mentioned will, in the end, result in attracting more followers to your social media platforms. It is obvious, right? Who would not want to follow you when you have got this much to offer? Moreover, this also means that you will get more engagement for your social media channel content in the long run.
Building the Influencer Text Messaging Numbers List
To create this segment of loyal followers, the initial effort you need to make is to collect your social media followers’ texting mobile numbers. Obviously, you need to collect these mobile phone numbers with their consent. How do you do that?
Online forms are a simple and better way to do this. I say ‘better’, because forms let you collect more than just the mobile number, including other valuable information that could be of use to you in targeting and communicating with your followers via SMS.
The above image is a sample form that you can use to get more relevant information while learning the mobile phone numbers at the same time. Why am I emphasizing on this set of ‘extra’ information collected through the form? Keep reading!
Selecting the Right SMS Tool for Influencer Text Messaging
Choosing the right SMS tool needs much research as its available options will decide several characteristics of your SMS campaigns. So, before choosing an SMS tool, plan what your SMS should look like and what options you will need in creating the SMS campaigns.
Here’s a few that you might need to consider.
Personalization
Since you are taking your already loyal follower base further closer to you via texting, your SMS should make them feel that way. For that, your SMS tool should let you include each follower’s name to the SMS, automatically.
Customization
Depending on each follower, some details of the SMS will change. For example, if you’re sending the campaign about promotions in your physical stores in different location, the location mentioned in the SMS will change according to each follower. It is not likely that you will have the time to find which follower / mobile number comes from which location. Such details need to be added to the SMS content automatically, within seconds.
URL shortening
If you are planning on sending online links via your texts, this is something you need to consider. URLs are considerably long, and can take up the character limit of an SMS. So, the SMS tool you are using should have an option to shorten your URLs.
Scheduling
It will be easier if you are able to schedule your text campaigns to be sent out at a later time. This option will come in handy if you run on tight schedules.
Two Way Messaging
Your loyal follower base that will be part of your SMS list will have queries that may be different from your ordinary followers. Moreover, there is a high chance that you might miss messages that the loyal followers will send to your social media profiles. So, it would be ideal if the SMS tool has the two-way messaging option.
Using a Virtual Number or Sender ID
You can use a virtual number unique to you and dedicated to text your SMS list. On the other hand, if you are interested, you can also use a sender ID aka a unique name instead of a mobile number under which you can send texts. Check if your SMS service offers these two options.
Unlimited Recipients
Since your follower base is huge, the number of texts that you will need to send weekly or monthly would also be large. So, the ideal SMS tool will offer you the facility to text an unlimited number of people.
If you are interested in an all-in-one messaging platform that offers all the above mentioned features and MORE, check out the ShoutOUT SMS tool!
Factors to Consider in Influencer Text Messaging Campaigns
The success rate of your text campaign depends on several factors:
Campaign frequency
Too much or too little is not gonna do. However, this will depend on the type of campaign, too. For example, you might give options for daily, weekly, or monthly options to your users to receive texts.
Proper timing
When I say proper timing, it means that you should not be sending out SMS campaigns at midnight. In fact, you can use the same webform used to get the mobile number to learn when your followers prefer receiving texts. Give them some time slot options. Anyways, when I say proper timing, I also mean to send out birthday wishes to your most loyal followers. Send out any discount codes on their birthdays. Make your presence in their inboxes among other businesses during special occasions and festive seasons. To make the process much easier, schedule your texts with a mass texting service tool.
Right targeting
This is another reason why I emphasized on the additional information collection via the webform. Rather than shooting any campaigns in the dark, you can directly ask your followers what type of texts they want to receive. You can give them options such as promotions, updates, tips etc. Moreover, it is even easier to target the right way since you are an influencer in a specific area. For example, consider yourself an influencer in fitness. Some options you can give them could include daily fitness tips, discount codes to meal planning subscription, sign up promotions for gym memberships etc.
Engaging content
A text message is a powerful piece of content that can deliver engagement and monetary profit, if you use it right. Since you know that you are targeting right, make the best out of it by making sure that the content you text them is informative, engaging, and preferably has a CTA (Call to Action), for example, an online link to exclusive content. Let’s take the same example that I mentioned in the previous paragraph. If your campaign is daily fitness tips, make it as informative as possible within the short piece of text. At the end of the message, add the link of a YouTube video of yours that will be relevant to the fitness tip.
Text messaging is a wonderful strategy if you as influencers use it right. SMS did not take long to conquer most business areas in the world. With the social media influencer category having been rising fast over the past few years, people are only months away from seeing text messages from their favorite influencers in their message inbox. Here we are, showing you the path to become one of the first social media influencers successful at it. You are only one step away. Start engaging your followers, click to get the all-in-one ShoutOUT Messaging tool for a fraction of the cost.
Leave a Comment