How To Use Instagram & TikTok Influencers To Get Traffic To Your Store
Written by Deimantas Brandisauskas
Today we’re going to talk about influencer marketing, and how we can use it to generate targeted, high-converting traffic to your Shopify dropshipping store by spending a lot less money than with Facebook Ads. And, you know what, we’re not only going to cover Instagram, but also TikTok, which already took the world by storm and it has a ton of influencers to work with that can generate you some really highly-targeted traffic for your dropshipping business.
All in all, this is what we’re going to cover today and we’ll divide everything into 5 simple steps (or sub-categories) to get you started right after this live stream.
Let us mention the general idea on these two platforms and what it means for you, as a small-business owner who wants to run an influencer marketing campaign on either or both platforms.
Instagram is where you can upload longer videos or higher-quality photos. On TikTok, you’re very limited on your overall video length (up to 1 minute).
Having that in mind, on Instagram you can put a whole video tutorial on how to use the product, how it works, explain it, etc., but on TikTok, it’s best to just record a vertical video quickly showing its main features or a single feature.
Of course, the funnier it is the better. And the general audience of TikTok is really young people so you need to understand that while searching for a product that might be better suited for this platform, like interesting, never-seen-before gadgets. We’ll give you 5 examples of such products at the end of the stream!
How To Find Influencers On Instagram?
Finding influencers on Instagram is fairly easy - just use the “Search” field on Instagram to search for any pages or individual people, and search by the hashtag that might be related to your niche.
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You can also use that arrow button to get more suggestions on any pages/personalities who might be similar to what you’ve already found:
This is a really straightforward path to find influencers on Instagram.
Of course, there are tools that you might find easy to use if you want them to find influencers for you, like “GetCarro” or “Upfluence”, but if you’re just getting started, these apps might be a bit too expensive for you and the single best way to find influencers is just by searching for them.
Get familiar with your niche on what you're selling. Just spend the whole day just by being on Instagram and checking what you’ve to choose from and simply add any influencer you found in the Google Sheet!
How To Find Influencers On TikTok?
Finding influencers on TikTok is similar to Instagram - you just need to use their search field and find an influencer you like there.
The only difference is that there’ll be a lot of people to choose from as you will find regular folks pushing content on TikTok who might not be related to any niche at all. So for this, it’s even better - you just need to find content that you like from the influencer on TikTok and put their handle in your Google Spreadsheet.
Another way is to just try hashtags on TikTok as well. So you can search for terms that are related to your product niche (i.e. #dogs, #homework, etc.) and you will easily find lots of content already that TikTok gave to you:
Also, on TikTok you can easily find influencers not only based on certain keywords, but by city, country, or by location in general.
How To Determine A Good Influencer On Instagram?
We’ve been talking about this in the previous episodes on “Real Talk” with Matt, so let us share some great tips on how to determine a good influencer on Instagram!
When looking for an influencer, you want someone who is going to reach a wide audience. The benefits are that influencers tend to have more social proof due to their large followings. Follower count doesn’t directly affect the amount of people content can reach when the influencer posts, so having a lot of followers isn’t the best way to measure. What we want to do is look for the other metrics that Instagram measures:
- Likes
- Views (for video content)
- Comments
- Saves
- Shares
Of course, you won’t be able to see these other metrics because they are really only privy to the account holder, so that’s why it’s important when you reach out to ask to see this sort of thing when considering paying an influencer to post your content.
How To Determine A Good Influencer On TikTok?
With TikTok everything is a bit simpler than with Instagram.
On TikTok, your main criteria for a good influencer is their engagement rate. It’s really easy to determine this just by checking their followers count and how much views, comments, & “hearts” their content get.
For example if the influencer has millions of followers but only gets a few thousand views for almost all of his/her videos, it might not be a good sign.
It could be whether they bought followers or they only had 1 video in the past that went viral but they’re no longer generating viral videos anymore. So you want to find profiles that are constantly generating a lot of videos, they’re using most recent trends, and you can clearly see that they are getting a good amount of views on most of their videos.
How To Create Amazing Content For Instagram Influencers' Posts?
This is where your creativity will shine! You can simply order your product to your home and record some simple content with your phone camera and edit it with a tool like “iMovie” for MAC, or “Windows Movie Maker” on Windows. Or, you can simply download an app like “InShot” for free and edit videos on your phone! Easy!
Also, always make sure to create content on Vertical rather than Horizontal, either it’s a video or an image, either it’s for the feed or Stories, since Instagram will give you a lot more space for your content within the screen.
Or… You can simply send the product to your influencer and ask to create a content for you just by giving absolute creative freedom to them, as they might know best what works for their audience and what not.
There’re a ton of different ways to create content for Instagram, you can order products yourself or just try to find some content online. Of course, just make sure that you’re not stealing it from someone else as you could get into trouble!
How To Create Amazing Content For TikTok Influencers' Posts?
Now on TikTok it’s fairly similar to what we’ve talked about creating content for Instagram.
Nonetheless, this is where we might even give ourselves less headache and just give this task straight to your influencer.
With TikTok being so new, it may be tempting for brands to want to exercise too much creative control over what’s being published. Trust the creators who are native to the platform and who have established authenticity in their space. Refrain from taking away their creative spark and allow influencers to have input—this will also go a long way in developing a long-term influencer relationship.
A lot of times the content will need to be really fast, engaging and with a clear call to action which users can achieve by going to their influencer profile and clicking on the link in their bio.
How To Contact Influencers On Instagram And TikTok To Get Replies & Start Collaborating?
When you actually reach out to influencers, make sure that your message is professionally written and well edited. Showing a high level of communication in your first message will help show the influencer that you take their time seriously.
It can be good to be direct, you want to make it clear you’re looking to pay them for their accounts reach:
“Hey!
My name is Mel and I run an eCom store, and I was wondering if you would be interested in posting my product on your feed?
I have a budget that I’m working with so I’d appreciate if you could let me know how much you would charge me to have both a post of my product and a link to my store in your bio?
Thanks!”
It’s important to ask them to include a link in their bio as you can’t put a direct link in a post. The other option would be a story with a swipe up link.
Conclusion
Instagram and TikTok are absolutely wonderful platforms to generate free and consistentent traffic for your Shopify dropshipping store in 2021. You can either start and create your own content on these social media platforms, or reach-out to an influencer and ask them to use their audience to advertise your products.
Make sure to use this guide as a reference, bookmark it, and start generating traffic to your store today! No procrastination!