Influencers, Celebrities, Thought Leaders — Are You Texting Your Followers?
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.
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.
Influencer Text Messaging
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. They are followers who opted to receive texts 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
Due to constantly changing algorithms, many of your followers might not see your posts, 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.
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
You can use your SMS subscriber base to increase sales in your brick-and-mortar stores or online shopping site by sharing location or online website link. Moreover, you can offer special coupons to them and attract more people to your SMS list.
Attract brand partnerships
Influencer marketing is a trending marketing strategy that many businesses are using to promote their services and products. How do you 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?
It is not possible to see a real conversion through these metrics such as views, clicks, likes, and shares; 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. This will attract many DTC (Direct-To-Consumer) brands that need to reach consumers directly.
Offer SMS campaigns for targeted groups
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. 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. Who would not want to follow you when you have got this much to offer?
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.
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.
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
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 have queries that may be different from your ordinary followers. Moreover, there is a high chance that you might miss messages sent on 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 or 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
You can give options for daily, weekly, or monthly options to your users to receive texts.
Proper timing
Use the same webform used to get the mobile number to learn when your followers prefer receiving texts. Give them some time slot options.
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
Directly ask your followers what type of texts they want to receive. You can give them options such as promotions, updates, tips 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.
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.
