By: Chris Piehler and Mandi Andrejka
In a world where so much of our communication happens online or via social media, working with influencers can be one of the best ways for your edtech company to spread the word about your product and help build brand awareness among an engaged audience of end users. Whether your company has worked with dozens of influencers before or you’re looking to get started, here are answers to some frequently asked questions (FAQs).
What is an influencer?
In general, an influencer is someone who has built a following, usually through social media, about a specific topic or industry. Influencers can be anyone from paid brand ambassadors to someone who works within the industry.
In the edtech industry, influencers are usually current or former educator. In many cases, edtech influencers get their start writing a blog or posting on Twitter and grow a following based on their voice and personality. While it is possible for someone to purchase followers on social media, most influencers in the edtech market grew their following through people being genuinely interested in and relating to their experiences.
How do I measure an influencer’s, well, influence?
At first glance, it can be relatively simple to tell whether or not an influencer has a strong pull in the industry—all you have to do is check the number of followers, likes, or subscribers their pages have. For a simple judgment, the more followers an influencer has, the better. But there can be more to an influencer’s reach than just their numbers.
If you’re researching a particular influencer, take some time to look through their posts and see what kinds of responses the posts receive. How many likes or shares does each individual post get? Does the influencer take the time to reply to reader comments? Seeing interaction like this can signify that the influencer takes the time to actively engage their readers rather than simply blasting out content that readers will just scroll past. That active engagement can create a stronger relationship between the influencer and readers, hopefully leading to more trust from the reader when the influencer suggests a new product or company.
Which platforms are the best for influencers?
Most edtech influencers use their own blogs to post content, and then they share those posts through social media channels, email blasts, and/or newsletters. The main social media channels for the edtech industry are Facebook and Twitter, although Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest are popular as well. LinkedIn is also an option, but it’s not as commonly used by teachers. LinkedIn tends to be a better option for B2B marketing.
How do you find influencers to work with?
Sometimes it seems like influencers just appear on Twitter one day like magic. It can be especially tough to know where to start looking if you’re new to the edtech industry. You can certainly comb through social media for users and pages with strong numbers, but that takes time and might not always be the most fruitful approach. Tools such as Cision (which is keyed specifically to Twitter), can provide databases with information about influencers.
Another common approach is to build relationships with influencers through networking. If you’re attending an edtech conference or webinar, watch for the key speakers and try to establish a connection. Ask for referrals from sales reps or other industry partnerships. And remember that some of your own customers may be willing to share about their experiences with your product for free.
What impact do influencers actually have?
It’s a good question—one that has become easier to answer as organizations have begun to track and research the impact of their marketing efforts more. Much of the payoff that comes from working with influencers could be considered intangible—it’s more brand awareness than conversions of users purchasing your product. While page views, email open rates, or account signups from a specific influencer are certainly possible to track nowadays, many still wonder what sort of affect social media influencers might actually have. For some, it can seem understandably risky to invest money in a project that could end with a post no one reads, let alone responds to.
But data shows that influencer marketing was the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition method as of 2017, and the average earned media value per $1 spent on influencer marketing was $7.65. Buzz from word-of-mouth has been shown to generate more than double the sales of paid advertising—and customers who come from social media marketing are estimated to have a 37% higher retention rate than customers who come from traditional advertising.
Regardless of your organization’s size, product, or stage of development, finding and leveraging influencers is an effective marketing strategy that’s supported not just by growing popularity but by hard data.
In our next post, we’ll continue our influencer series by exploring teachers’ role as influencers and how they can be a valuable asset to edtech companies in your quest to get your product out there. Even though teachers are typically not purchasers, their power as champions of their favorite tech tools is key to developing the groundswell necessary for sales.
Thanks for sharing!