lthough Instagram is currently the top platform for influencer marketing, success can be found by finding unique ways to promote your brand or business on other social media platforms as well. Influencer marketing on Facebook is a way to avoid the crowds and get real results with your influencer campaigns.

There are more than 2.5 billion active monthly users on Facebook. A 2018 survey by CPC Strategy also shows that 70% of these users were likely to hear about new products, services, and events through Facebook compared to anywhere else. In a 2018 survey by IZEA, 48% said that Facebook impacted their purchasing decisions.

Finding Influencers and Groups on Facebook

The easiest ways to find influencers on Facebook is to search for pages by keyword, use a discovery tool (like Carro) to find influencers that may be popular across several platforms, or to use keywords to search posts that may be posted by influencers.

Facebook influencers don’t look the same as Instagram influencers. On Instagram, an influencer appears as a profile with a large following. On Facebook, audiences cluster around Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups. Pages create content for like-minded communities, and Groups allow communities to chat and share around a common interest.

Because Facebook influencers are centered around popular pages and groups, it is not always obvious who is the leader of this audience. A Facebook Page may center around the interest, rather than the person running the page. A Facebook Group may involve several leaders who share within the group’s feed. In this way, influencers may be more behind-the-scenes than on other platforms, but they are still creating content that gets noticed on the platform.    

It’s this content that will help you get buzz for your brand, so next we’ll look at some different options that Facebook influencers offer for their influencer collaborations.

Facebook’s Brand Collabs Manager

Facebook released its own version of an influencer database with its Brand Collabs Manager. Influencers can apply to be considered and have to meet a certain criteria for follower count and engagement rate. From there, brands can find influencers to work with and Facebook will help pair them together so that influencers can tag their brand partners.

While a nifty tool if you’re trying to find influencers, these influencers are typically over-saturated with offers and brand partnerships. Brands also need to be careful in selecting influencers, since influencers will need to learn about each brand in order to align their messaging.

Verdict: The Facebook Brand Collabs Manager is worth exploring, but remember to still check off all the boxes for your campaigns with each influencer. Just because they are listed, doesn’t mean they can get results for your business.

Organic Posts from Influencers

Organic posts on Facebook are a great way to see how much clout an influencer has and the results that they can get with their audience. An organic post is one that is posted without spending any money to boost or promote the content.

An influencer with a loyal, engaged audience on Facebook can help to drive traffic to their organic posts by sharing it on other social media platforms, and this can extend reach. However, it should be noted that Facebook organic posts are typically only seen by about 1-10% of the influencer’s audience. If you are trying to gain widespread reach with your influencer’s organic posts, you should consider whitelisting the influencer so that you can pay to promote this content to the rest of their audience.

Videos

Videos are one of the best ways to grab attention on Facebook. They are easy ways to capture views in the feed and provide more information to the consumer than a typical, single image post.

Videos can also be repurposed easily on other platforms, like YouTube, extending the reach of your influencer’s content. There are several options for sharing video on Facebook: Facebook Live broadcasts, Facebook Stories, and organic video posts.

Facebook Live

Facebook Live is a chance for you to present a live video with your influencer partners. In addition to being a video option, it also sends a notification to the followers active on Facebook that a live broadcast has begun. This is just one more way to drive traffic to your brand’s message.

Facebook Live offers a more authentic experience with your brand than edited video. Members of your audience will have increased trust, and will get to see a behind-the-scenes, unfiltered look at your brand. Influencer partners with charisma and public speaking skills will be the best options for this type of broadcast.

“Facebook Live has proved to be an effective way to attract a Facebook audience. So if you would like to engage your audience through Facebook influencers, request your influencers to go Live. Through Facebook Live, influencers can share their experience along with your brand or product. They may broadcast themselves using your product or trying it out for the first time. They may broadcast a Live video of their experience visiting your store or maybe an event that you’ve hosted. There are endless opportunities to use Facebook live in your Facebook influencer marketing campaign.”

~ Boni Satani, Digital Marketing Manager at Zestard Technologies

Facebook Stories

Facebook Stories offers a bite-sized way to reach your audience. Facebook Stories works similarly to Instagram Stories, so Instagram influencers may be able to transfer their skills to this format on Facebook.

Facebook Stories are also a way to provide timely updates to your audience. Facebook Stories live outside the feed and they autoplay, so you’ll be able to reach your audience and drive them to the content on your influencer’s or your brand’s profile.

“Using Videos for Telling Stories: Facebook Stories is a wonderful way for an influencer to tell a brand’s Story. They’re particularly effective if you include video content in your Story. One of the critical reasons for Facebook Story’s success is that they sit out of the main news feed at the top of a Facebook user’s page. This means that Facebook Stories don’t get as severely suffering from Facebook’s algorithm as regular content does.”

~ Boni Satani, Digital Marketing Manager at Zestard Technologies

Contests/Competitions

Contests and competitions are a great way to gain attention online and even generate UGC. Partnering with an influencer can help get the ball rolling and can help you promote these contests, giveaways, or competitions. Have the influencer post to their own Facebook, and you can post to your brands’ profile as well. You’ll gain buzz for your brand, while also offering a prize incentive to follow your brand.

“On Facebook particularly, we have seen great success in collaborating with groups and FB influencers to help promote and elevate competitions… The best examples have been where we have shared the competition post on our page first, then the partner page has reshared via theirs. This has meant that we could then interact, engage, and invite those who liked the post to follow our page and receive future updates.”

~Ben Foster, Marketing & Communications Manager at The Waldorf Hilton, London.

Cross-promotions

You don’t have to limit yourself to influencers posting about your brand. Instead, think outside the typical influencer marketing promotions and look for ways to partner that are mutually beneficial. If there are complementary brands who sell products related to your own, you can cross-promote.

This could be a giveaway that includes both brands’ products, or collaborating to create an event for your audiences. The trick is to find brands that don’t directly compete with your products, but also have a lot of overlap with your ideal customers.

If you have a large influencer who has a proven track record with your brand, then you can also consider cross-promoting in the form of co-branded products. These would be products that are created with the influencer and that the influencer endorses to their audience.

Boosted Posts from Influencers

Once you have a few pieces of content from influencers, you’ll want to double-down on successful content. If an influencer’s content is out-performing the rest, you can boost it with some of your ad budget to have it seen by more of that influencer’s audience.

There are two options here: whitelisting and dark posting. Whitelisting an influencer involves the influencer granting access to their profile so that you can create branded ads with their content, using their influencer persona to host the ads. Dark posting is anytime that an ad is created using an influencer’s content, without first posting to their feed or profile. You can download their images and create your own dark posts, or you can create dark posts using a whitelisted influencer who has already granted access to their profile for ad creation. These dark posts are ads that can target the influencer’s audience, your audience, or a combination of the two.

If organic reach on Facebook is anywhere between 1-10%, then boosting the posts from your influencers helps this content to be seen by the other 80-90% of their audience. This can drastically improve the results.

Partnering with Groups for Your Influencer Marketing on Facebook

Groups typically include communities of people united around a common interest. If you find groups that overlap with your target customer, then partnering with this group could be valuable for creating buzz.

Contact the group admins to see if they have options for advertising in their groups. If they are used to posting content within the group for their audience, then you should work with them just as you would influencers. If the admins of the group prefer to be moderators, then you can join the group yourself and get your promotional content approved before posting to the group.

Groups are also an opportunity to engage with like-minded potential customers. Joining the group will allow you to leave comments. While you shouldn’t spam the group, you can offer helpful information, link to your own blog posts, and refer people to pertinent websites. You can also rely on your influencer or affiliate partners to refer people back to your website as well.

Creating Your Own Branded Group

Facebook Groups are rapidly becoming the best way to reach an audience. Creating your own group can put you in the driver’s seat for group content and conversations. A group can be a way for customers to get their questions answered, prospective customers to learn more about your products, and community members to talk about the subjects they’re passionate about.

Creating your own branded group can be a way to connect with your customers in a casual setting. Whenever you add a new influencer partner, you should encourage them to join the group, so that they can interact with your community as well and provide valuable content. Pretty soon, you’ll have a buzzing group that builds loyalty around your brand.

“Using Facebook for marketing and partnering with multiple Facebook groups to share a brand highly effective if done correctly. The best ways to be an influencer on this technology platform is to provide a small skill for the groups, which you wish to share your business information with, that helps maintain order and interaction so all parties can benefit. For example, you can help keep content relevant for the group by reviewing posts and deleting the ones that are not appropriate, or help promote the group in other places to get more people involved. Keep promotional posts limited to two times a month so viewers do not feel overwhelmed and turned off by spam-like material.”

~Sarah Franklin, Co-Founder of Blue Tree AI

Influencer Marketing on Facebook: A New, Old Way to Get Attention for Your Brand

While Facebook has been around since 2004, there are new ways popping up every day to market on Facebook. Finding creative ways to reach your audience is essential to your brand’s success. Instead of looking for typical influencers, find communities on Facebook that can help you reach your goals, then provide interesting, relevant content for them in all their favorite places on Facebook.

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