Social media influencers are experts who use their expertise, either individually or as a team, to establish themselves as experts and build a following for their particular expertise.

Unlike other influencers, an influencer doesn't need to 'work' in any particular industry to become an expert. An influencer can be a student, professional, mum, travel blogger, entrepreneur, artist or just someone with a skill or knowledge that they're proud to share with the world.

An influencer is someone who sees an opportunity in someone else's experience to help them with a problem or to give a more complete insight into a certain topic.

How do I become an influencer?

One of the simplest ways to establish yourself as an influencer is by opening up your platform to others.

There are many other ways to set yourself up as an influencer, whether it's blogging, Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook, but the one that seems to work best is to have the knowledge and expertise to offer something of value and build a loyal following in return.

What is the value of social media?

Whilst social media has given us access to the most wonderful experiences, most of us have very little to show for our time spent online. When I speak to students who have taken advantage of social media as a way to make money, most have either landed a job in the industry they are interested in or received much-needed practice in gaining self-confidence.

So, why should you think about using social media as an opportunity to build a following, instead of just using it as a free way to share stories and pictures with family and friends?

How to build a following

Show them how to do it!

Most influencers have received their first clients from their own social media accounts, through commenting on a specific problem, giving advice or using their own experiences to speak about the topic.

You're the expert, you know the answer and you want people to get to the root of the issue. Don't give a generic answer on a social media platform.

Offer real, practical solutions and add value to the conversation. The more that you provide value, the more interest you will create in what you are sharing.

The more interest you create, the more followers you will get.

When you're blogging, tweet and post to your social media accounts with a purpose. Know why you're posting and what you're going to say before you post anything.

Keep them coming back for more!

As an influencer, the more consistent you are, the better your readership will become.

While you have time, focus on updating your social media regularly, at least twice a week if you can. If you're a budding social media star, be sure to write a well-written and informative blog post once a week too.

Don't be afraid to promote your content

It's easy to get caught up in the trap of making sure you have a picture of your new purse or a professional shot of your new home for your social media, but that doesn't mean that you need to create content just to advertise it. Give your readers something valuable to read that will add value to their lives and make them want to come back to see what else you have to share.

If you don't have anything interesting to write, then make sure that the captions to your pictures, videos or blog posts reflect the content. Make sure you add links or sound bites to your posts to get your readers to go to your website where you can elaborate on the topic.

Always think about the future

Once you've amassed a following, and you have lots of interests and passions that you want to share with your followers, you're going to need to make sure that the people who follow you are making money off of you. That means a social media affiliate program that will allow you to build a following, whilst you make money off their actions.

One way of creating a future-proof community of followers is to share new things. Not all of your followers will be interested in the latest phone you have bought, but it's always a good idea to share new products and make sure that you're sharing something new.

You can do this by following other influencers, adding hashtags to your posts, giving away gifts and attending networking events.

Paid social media marketing is a useful way to start to build a following and ultimately build a successful social media marketing campaign. Social media influencers are an easy way to build your audience, establish yourself as an authority and make a good bit of money.

How much do influencers influence?

In our study, we collected a dataset of about 50 million influencers. We analyzed it to find out if their influence is specific to a brand, it was if they influence the entire brand.

To put it simply, if a brand's entire reach is affected by an influencer, then they are an influencer. If an influencer only influences a particular brand, they are an influencer.

Once we determined that an influencer could influence a brand as a brand and not only the brand as a whole, we defined influencer as the influence of a brand on the influencer.

We found that influencer does have some impact on how a brand is viewed and their results may be positive, but there are drawbacks. This influence was found to be usually only to a brand or product.

The more followers a brand has on social media, the more influence the brand had.

What's more, influence is more transactional than it is impactful. A brand could have a lot of influence on a person's brand but not be impacting the user's behavior at all.

Does an influencer bring revenue to a brand?

Influencers bring value and can add credibility to a brand but is it true that they bring revenue to a brand?

Influencer programs are a huge part of business strategy now. These programs tend to focus on two sides of the relationship.

The first being the influencers and their social media influence and the second is the role of the influencer and what that means for the brand.

The influencer has an opportunity to benefit from their influence and then the brand can benefit from the trusted relationship they established with an influencer.