Social media influencers not only influence the way people live their lives, they also make lots of money doing it. And that’s great! Why not have followers who adore you and get paid for it. It’s a win-win.
However, social media influencers need to step up their game – their marketing game that is. Take marketing to the next level so to speak. Text message marketing helps social media influencers do just that – level up their marketing. Text message marketing allows influencers access to followers even when they aren’t scrolling through their social media feed.
Influencers, using text marketing, market products, services, and even their brand, to followers even when they are offline. All it takes is setting up a few different text marketing tools. After that, the work is done for you.
The following are five ways social media influencers can utilize text marketing.
- Put Keywords in Images on Social Media
Social media platforms overall are trending toward images. Images are one of the best ways social media influencers catch the attention of their followers. And, incidentally, is one of the best ways to use text marketing.
The text marketing tool that works well in images on social media across the board is keyword campaigns. This technique is pretty simple. When a social media influencer posts an image, they simply include a keyword and number on the image. It can be as simple as “Text MAKEUP to 50505”.
When a follower engages the keyword campaign, as shown above, an automated set of messages responds. These messages are completely customizable. They can include links and attachments to an influencer’s products or services, maybe a promo code or two, or anything else you can imagine. Plus, influencers can include an option to opt-in to their future text marketing messages.
Types of Keyword Campaigns
There are two types of text message keyword campaigns. The first is a single message keyword campaign and the second is a multiple message keyword campaign. A single message keyword campaign is exactly what it sounds like. When a follower engages a single message keyword campaign, a single automated message response. With a single message keyword campaign, there’s no opt-in.
However, with multiple message keyword campaigns, an opt-in is the first automated message the follower receives after engaging with the keyword campaign. This is because of federal communications guidelines that social media influencers have to follow which will be explained in more detail below.
The opt-in message simply asks a follower for their consent to receive future text message marketing from the social media influencer. Once the follower opts-in, they receive the rest of the messages from the keyword campaign and are added to your text message marketing list.
Ask Followers to Opt-In
The beauty of asking followers to opt-in is that instead of the follower having to text in for promos or offers each time, is that once they’re on your text message marketing list and opted-in, you can send them marketing messages on your own timetable instead of having to wait on them to text in.
Basically, if you have a new product or service to promote to followers, you don’t need to wait for them to engage a keyword campaign, you simply send them a text message with the information right away. For the follower, it’s great because they are the first to receive any promos or offers which is especially useful when there is a limited amount to go around.
- Put Keywords in the Comments or Description
Social media influencers may not be comfortable putting a keyword in the image of a post. And that’s totally okay! A viable option is to simply put the keyword in the comments section of the post. This has all the same advantages and works the same way as using a keyword in the image, except that in some social media platforms, a follower needs to click-through to the actual post before they see the keyword.
However, just because the keyword is a little more difficult to see doesn’t mean that followers won’t find value in it. We are all aware of the products social media influencers promote. This is a great opportunity to do just that. Use keywords to market the products you’re promoting to followers.
The great thing about a keyword campaign is that you can send as many messages as necessary once a follower has opted-in. Therefore, you can send a message about as many products or promotions as you need. Links and attachments are also super easy to put into text messages.
In all of this, the goal is to reach followers and translate their love for you into an actual sale. This is exactly what a text message keyword campaign does.
- Send Mass Text Messages to Opted-in Followers
One of the best ways social media influencers can use text message is mass text messaging. Mass text messaging is sometimes referred to as broadcasting. What you can do is send a text message to many followers at one time and the text message, even though it was sent to hundreds of thousands of followers at once, is received individually.
That means that unlike group messaging, mass text messaging helps you get your message out without annoying followers. Plus, if a follower replies to a text message, the reply is only sent to you (the sender) rather than everyone who was originally messaged.
Requiring Opt-In and Opt-Out
As stated previously, followers must be opted-in to be included in mass text messages. That’s why opt-in is so critical. It allows you to ask followers explicit permission to send them marketing messages. An example is: “To receive text messages from Roccos Pizza, reply with NAME.”
Opt-in is set up like this because of federal communication guidelines in laws administered by both the FCC and FTC. One major law that pertains specifically to text message marketing is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. This act basically outlines all the stipulations that a business or person sending text message marketing must follow.
These rules are in place to protect consumers from unwanted communication with businesses and other entities. One of the most important parts of the TCPA is when sending text message marketing, the consumer has to have the option to opt-out.
A simple example is “To stop receiving messages from Roccos Pizza at any time, text the word STOP.” This allows followers to decide when they want to opt-in and opt-out of marketing messages.
Scheduling Mass Text Messages
One of the cool things about mass text message is you can schedule marketing messages in advance. Scheduling marketing messages saves you time, headaches, and money. Think about it, you can schedule messages to followers as soon as you know a product is available.
And you can even set up a list of followers who receive messages before everyone else, like elite followers who love your brand. As long as you have the right tools, text marketing communication can be a breeze.
- Direct Followers to Text Marketing with Webforms
Webforms are a solid way to direct followers to join your text marketing list. They are easy to set up and use. Plus, webforms can go anywhere! As long as you set up your webform as a separate page, the webform can go anywhere online. If you want to add it to your social media bio, try a URL shortener so the link is less long.
That’s the beauty of a webform. Followers who sign up for marketing messages are automatically opted-in. In other words, when a follower signs up for text marketing via a webform, you have their explicit permission to start sending them text message marketing communication. Therefore, enabling you to send them messages right away.
Webforms are often overlooked as part of the text message marketing arsenal. But don’t underestimate them. You can even put them on your social media landing pages. Unlike text message keyword campaigns that you sprinkle through your posts and images for posts, webform links often do better when you put them in the description of your channel on social media.
This is perfect for followers who are subscribing to your page and navigate to your social media channel URL. Not only will they follow you, but they read the description of your channel and see the link to be involved in your text message marketing. Plus, you can tag them on your text marketing list as coming from a webform sign up.
- Tag Followers to Send Better Text Marketing
Speaking of which, a great way to organize the followers on your text message marketing list is tags. Tags allow you to organize your followers into categories. For example, you can tag followers with how they signed up for your text marketing.
Some followers saw a keyword campaign, others filled out the webform. Tracking where followers signed up for your text marketing tells you whether the keyword campaigns and webforms are used by followers. Plus, when you have multiple keyword campaigns and webforms you know which works the best.
Once a follower is tagged on your text marketing list, add some more! The amount of tags per follower is limitless. So go ahead and tag them with the kind of products and services they like, the type of campaign they respond best to, and so on.
Find a Viable Text Marketing Platform
Text marketing helps social media influencers improve marketing to followers. There are essentially two ways you can utilize the above text marketing tools. The first is to build all of the tools on your own and create your own, essentially, text marketing platform.
This option is very time consuming and takes a decent amount of money. Plus, you’d most likely need to hire a few different contractors to ensure that your text marketing system fits your needs and follows federal guidelines.
The second option is using a pre-existing text message marketing platform. A text message marketing platform already has the tools you need to market to followers. The ones listed above and many others. There are so many good text marketing platforms. A simple Google search will yield many choices.
Choose a text marketing platform that fits your needs and budget. When considering a text marketing platform, use the following list to help you decide.
- What tools does the text marketing platform offer?
- What is the cost of the text marketing platform?
- What is the estimated ROI of using the text marketing platform?
- How much control and autonomy does the text marketing platform give you?
- Does the text marketing platform follow all federal telecommunications guidelines?
- What do reviews about the text marketing platform say?
- Does the text marketing platform fit your needs and budget?
- Is there another platform that does the same for cheaper?
Of course you can add questions to this list when researching text marketing platforms, but the questions above help get you started finding the right platform.
Organize Text Marketing for Better ROI
However, no matter the platform you choose, or even if you decide to build your own platform, you’re going to need extreme organization. Making sure the right text message marketing tools are implemented in the correct way is essential.
As we all know, ROI refers to the return on investment. Basically, it’s the amount of money, time, and resources you put in versus the money or benefit you receive. Ideally, you want to have a higher ROI or receive more money than you put in.
But as with almost any kind of investment, it’s going to take time for the ideal outcome to come to fruition. My advice here: be patient. Text message marketing is a great way to reach out to followers and succeed in making more money, however, it’s not going to happen overnight.
You are going to need to put time, effort, and energy into the process before you see the results. That’s what you signed up for, though.
Utilizing text message marketing tools is perfect for social media influencers, so stay the course and don’t give up. In the end, text message is really one of the most effective ways for social media influencers to stay connected with followers and enjoy better profits.
Author Bio
Carrie Duford
Carrie is the head blogger at TextSanity. When she isn’t writing, Carrie enjoys all things outdoors – especially hiking. She is currently working on a podcast series; fulfilling a bucket list goal.
