How to make money as a digital influencer

Brazil is the country where content creators exert the greatest influence on consumers, according to the Statista portal. About 45% of people said they’ve already purchased products promoted by them. The country even started to recognize the activity of “digital influencer” as a profession, duly registered in the Brazilian Classification of Occupations (CBO) under nº 2.534-10.

According to Marcelo Balerone, commercial and new business director at Squad Social Lab, a MarTech pioneer in Influencer Marketing, a survey released at the end of 2020 showed that there are more than 50 million influencers worldwide, with annual revenues of more than $100 billion.

“That’s just thinking about platforms like Instagram and YouTube. In Brazil, according to Nielsen, there are around 500,000 people,” he reports.

What are the characteristics of an influencer?

For Balerone, a professional influencer has some common characteristics, such as creativity, credibility, authenticity, responsibility, constancy and a lot of empathy in dealing with the public. He believes that it is possible to become an influencer in any area, but it is necessary to go through some steps for this to actually happen.

“I always say that a person who wants to start creating content must necessarily find a niche and identify with a persona, but that persona is himself as an influencer. It’s no use forcing something or imitating someone, there is no ‘cake recipe’. The second step is to produce relevant, authorial, authentic content. There is no copy, but following trends is part of it”, he suggests.

He also states that anyone who wants to become an influencer needs to master the channels in which they will act, have recurring content produced, interact with their followers and understand their pain.

“His career works like a sales funnel with his followers, in which everything happens concurrently. Those who follow you for a longer time can already be influenced towards a sale, since those who started following you now still need to go through the funnel stages. So the professional influencer needs to have different types of content for the different ‘life’ stages of their followers”, he advises.

Know how to choose your audience

Furthermore, according to the director of Squad Social Lab, the right audience for each influencer is their natural audience. That is, a lower social class influencer, who likes cosmetics and lives in a remote region, is unlikely to influence, at first, the higher social class audience, who is interested in the financial market and lives in large cities. .

“The tip here, therefore, is to understand and define the persona, focus on what you are good at and look for people who have such related needs. This is fatally your right audience”, he says.

The expert reinforces that, as in any other market, there are people who do very well in the area, but the vast majority fail to achieve success.

“There are several tips and, as in every profession, there are sacrifices that must be made. I really believe in planning, solving ‘pains’, commitment and resilience, creativity, authenticity, constancy of posts and empathy with the public”, he concludes.