Social Apps are often seen as a welcoming sector, with little place for modern ‘trends’ like social media influencers. But perhaps it’s time to look again.
What are Instagram Trends?
Reels help to portray tutorials and step-by-step presentations for services or products in your domains, you can certainly create informative Instagram Reels content for the audience. You could place various behind-the-scenes and know about videos to highlight what your business is doing.
One other trend you need to know about is Mass Unfollow. The new Instagram unfollow trend is quickly taking over, and apps such as Spamguard App reviewed by Earthweb are your helping hand when you want to clean your inactive followers, or followers who don’t follow you back.
When you think of Instagram, you may think about fashion, food and travel, not professional services. Instagram Influencers, including people you may never have heard of. There’s no one on the list for law, accountancy or healthcare, does that mean influencers in these industries don’t exist? Of course not!
One definition of an influencer is someone who has:
- The power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience.
- Instagram followers in a distinct niche, with whom he or she actively engages. The size of the following depends on the size of his/her topic of the niche.
- When put like that, doubtless you can think of a number of people who are your industry’s influencers – though possibly not on Instagram!
Whoever and wherever your influencers are, with the right Instagram media marketing strategy businesses could help build their credibility and promote trade to a new audience. Indeed, around half of consumers said they had bought a product or service after seeing it used or promoted by an influencer in the past two years, according to one study.
What is Influencer Marketing?
One source defines this as “a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers – individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche”. This perceived expertise increases trust and social proof for your brand’s potential audience.
The important words to remember are – expertise, niche and trust.
Who talks about your subject and has an audience?
Are they thought leaders you follow on LinkedIn? Knowledge providers who are known as the ‘go to’ experts for accurate, relevant, authentic and timely advice? Respected peers who share industry updates on their preferred platform, be it Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube?
Do you want to become an influencer, or do you want to use an influencer to promote your business? Most influencers get paid in money or tangible ‘stuff’ such as free clothes or tickets for events. For professional services, who do not sell a product, you may consider trading in content instead.
For example, an industry-specific training provider with an online subscription-based model will always need new and innovative content. In turn, a professional services firm with a niche within that industry may already be producing videos, podcasts and news articles from their in-house team for their target audience. A collaborative arrangement could be reached between the two resulting in the firm creating exclusive content for the training provider: the content then reaches a potentially new audience through the training provider, who see it as valuable and trusted, and the industry-leading training provider (influencer), in turn, retains and grows their customer base by delivering more valuable content – a ‘win-win’ for both companies.
Takeaways!
You can improve your training by simply, making it succinct and relevant to the target audience, being unafraid to engage with relevant wider social themes and making sure you’re innovative in your delivery.
Yes, you have regulatory and legal requirements to fulfil through your compliance training and communications, but that doesn’t mean you should neglect the needs of the future of your workforce. This young, digital first and socially engaged audience, desire an ethical organisational culture where the values espoused in your code of conduct are authentically lived day in day out.
Does the Connection Fit with your Brand?
If your aim is to demonstrate expertise and build trust in a niche area, it is important to consider each influencer relationship and ensure that it is consistent with your own brand and message. If you are sharing content, opinions and industry updates, be prepared to spend some time keeping up to date with research and news in your niche, as well as continuously engaging with your audience.
Cal Partners is an award-winning digital marketing agency who can help identify key influencers in your industry or opportunities to grow your reach in your niche. Contact us for a free initial discussion.
Why not combine your PowerPoint presentation with tools like Mentimeter that not leverage your .ppt skills but couple this with audience interactivity thanks to features like live polling, Q&A and quizzes. Best of all, the data you glean from running this session can be used to steer training conversations in future as well as offering behavioural insights. I have used Mentimeter to run numerous sessions for new joiners to the company, it works well adding an element of theatre, healthy competition and stimulating healthy debate.
When creating training, it is important to remember that low budget need not necessarily equate with low engagement. Taking the time to understand your audience and updating your style of training to match can offer surprising results. I recommend searching for digital tools and taking inspiration from different modes of delivery, including live video which is certainly the medium most likely to resonate with the younger generation. With the advent of high quality cameras on smart phones, you will be surprised at what is possible with some imagination and free editing sites like Clipchamp or Canva.
If your compliance training or wider ethics strategy neglects touching on societal issues, that are at the heart of everyday life, then I fear you may be missing a trick. This should be part of an authentic effort to understand these issues, and to explore how compliance tools like whistle-blowing, non-retaliation policies and codes of conduct can be used to form a framework of good.
Millennials and Gen-Z are part of the most diverse generation in the history of the post-industrial workforce. They come from more diverse gender, racial, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, and if your training is generic or off-the shelf, designed in a 90s office environment, complete with badly fitting suits or one-dimensional characters, it will only serve to induce eye rolls. For example don’t be afraid to use training around whistleblowing, to promote the role of allyship in promoting a culture where employees are encouraged to stand up for others, and to demystify the end to end speak up process.