Let’s do away with the suspense quickly, shall we? No, influencer marketing is not necessary for a successful SEO Los Angeles strategy, but it sure can be helpful with one. If you’re attempting to get your website to rank, there are all kinds of onsite things that you can do, keyword research, making sure your calls to action are visible, improving your UX and site loading speed. The list goes on and on. But off-page SEO is equally important, and influencer marketing, if done right, can be a huge boost to get you closer to your goals.

So Why Don’t More People Do It?

The reason that some businesses seem to be reluctant to get into the market for an influencer, or more than one, is that they’re uncertain about ROI. Does this sound familiar? If you’re a director of marketing for a large company, it probably does. Maybe you went before your boss and made a presentation to them about how beneficial influencer marketing could be. You were eloquent. You were insightful. You were dazzling. And your boss came back with those three hated letters, ROI, return on investment.

It’s not to say that CEOs or company higher-ups are off track when they talk about getting a tangible ROI. Everyone is held accountable to someone else in a company’s infrastructure, so if you are asking for part of the ad money to be spent to land an influencer, your superiors want to be confident that the money is not being wasted.

Some companies shy away from influencer marketing because they hear of similar campaigns failing. These might be campaigns by major companies that had big budgets and dedicated professionals working on them. And yet, the campaign was an SEO failure, not bringing in the page views and conversions that were wanted. What went wrong?

The Wrong Influencer Was Used

This is often the biggest mistake that Los Angeles companies make when they try and engage an influencer in promoting their brand. They believe that because the influencer in question has the most followers that they are the best choice for the job. However, what is far more critical is whether the person who was engaged is a favorite in the niche in which the company operates. A person with a million followers might not be anywhere near as valuable to your SEO efforts as a person with 20,000 followers if every one of them is likely to visit your website.

Concentrating on One Platform  

The other most significant mistake made by Los Angeles companies in engaging an influencer, or multiple influencers, is that they only focus on one social media platform. You might hear that Instagram is going to be most useful to you in this endeavor, but it does not mean you ought to ignore all the others, like Snapchat, for instance. Diversification is going to be your ally here. Just know that you’re going to want to take a different approach with each platform.

It can be tremendously beneficial to use a brand influencer for SEO, or more than one. If you’re going to do it, though, study each candidate very carefully before reaching out to them. It’s true that you could be wasting your money if you choose wrong, and then you’ll be worthy of all the criticism from your boss when the ROI is not what was expected.