thecandlesaremadeofsoywaxanddon’t
containevena hintofpetroleum.
Alternatively, you might have seen the rise
in the power of influencers online and you
want to become an influencer in a specific
industry. In this case, you need to become the
face of your entire digital presence. Choose
the industry that you want to represent and
get ready to move to step two.
The payoff for making the decision to be
specific about what you’re going to focus on,
and the audience that you’re going to speak
to, is that it helps you to build your brand
presence faster and with consistency.2
Positioning
In the world of social media everyone is
fighting to be seen and heard, to cut through
the noise and stand out.
The answer to this is positioning, which is
all about cultivating and enhancing the point
of difference in you (or your company), not
just your product.
People tend to skip the positioning step and
go straight into advertising and marketing,
which is not the best way to do things if you
want to create a fast and lasting impact.
Advertising guru David Ogilvy famously
said “positioning should be decided before the
advertising is created”, which is exactly why
step two comes before deciding what platforms
to use or creating any type of advertising
material (which we’ll discuss in step three).
You can become known as an influencer
with a relatively small audience– it’s what you
do with that audience and how you commu-
nicate with it that counts.
If you want to be known as an influencer in
the travel industry, for example, what makes
you different from the other influencers in that
area? Are you funny? Well travelled? Down
to earth or the opposite of that? Perhaps you
are completely new to travel and this can be
an excellent point of difference.
Alternately, if you want to promote a prod-
uct in the travel industry, what makes that
product unique? You need to inspire, moti-
vate and educate your audience in a range of
different ways online, and there are a couple
of steps to that.Thefirstthingto dowhileyou’rebuildingyour
positioningis to ownyourspacein theniche.
This means embracing your inner confidence
and being ready to share your knowledge freely
and creatively with your audience.
Take on the stance that you are the expert
and that what you have to say matters. This is
about developing inner confidence and certainty
before you start growing your positioning.
The second thing to do to use position-
ing as a tool to create influence and impact
quickly is to start sharing these opinions and
thoughts in your area of expertise online – this
is commonly known as thought leadership.
Developing yourself as a thought leader
helps you to create influence quickly and
bolsters your positioning because it’s based
on a solid foundation – you.
Positioning is crucial to speedy influence
building as it creates a point of difference and
the space for you to cut through the noise
online. Once you have this in place, it’s time
to start sharing it online.(^3)
Platforms
You don’t need to be on every social
media platform to make money and build
influence, particularly if you’re time poor.
Best practice is to use your website as the
first digital platform that you populate with
content. You’ll use Facebook because it has
the largest, most targetable audience of all
the social media platforms and then choose
either Instagram or LinkedIn as the next
platform to utilise depending on where your
audience spends the most time.
Embracing 3Pillars.Digital to bolster your
presence is an efficient and effective use of your
time rather than trying to be on every platform.
If you decided to go down the product
route, once you have the product sourced or
in production you can then start promoting
it by putting up posts, photos and videos.
This is particularly effective on Facebook
and Instagram, given the high proportion of
visual media that is posted every day. This
works on everything from swimsuits to can-
dles to pottery. Make sure you have a mix of
stylised photos featuring your product as well
as some images that show it in situ with people.
Under the influence
Win a copy
Money has five copies of
Visible (Vivid Publishing,
RRP $29.95) by Nicola Moras
to give away. For your chance
to win a copy, tell us in 25
words or less your top tip for making
money online. Enter online at moneymag.
com.au/win or send your entry to Money
magazine, Level 7, 55 Clarence Street,
Sydney NSW 2000. Entries open
April 29, 2019 and close on June 5, 2019.Hint: Be on both of these platforms and
always add pictures. Customers are six times
more likely to purchase a product if the page
includes pictures from social media.
If this is about you becoming an influencer
in your industry of choice (also known as
micro-influencers), then it’s critical to have
photos of you living and breathing your phi-
losophy in that area, and articles or text posts
where you share your opinions and experiences.
When you have step three implemented,
you’ll find that with steady consistency your
audience will build. More people will notice
you and you will start being seen and heard,
which leads to success.
While your audience and profile are growing,
you can start to make money for what you’re
doing, and that can be as little as $50 to post
and talk about someone else’s product, or a
20% commission for recommending someone
else’s product, or even earning thousands of
dollars if you’re promoting your own product
or service for sale.
Be sure to make it clear in your posts where
and how your audience can purchase from
you (this is known as your call to action) and
you’re on your way to making money using
social media. MNicola Moras is a social media specialist,
sought-after speaker and author of Visible:
Learn to leverage the online world with no
bullshit, so you stop struggling and start
getting a return on your investment.