If you want get into this effective and relatively cost-effective form of promotion, the challenge is to find the right influencer.

‘Self-serve’ influence marketing platforms introduce small business to influencers. Some services allow influencers to opt in to make themselves available as an influencer.

Others try to find the best match by gleaning data from posts across social media channels.

As a business, you need someone who has a following that represents your values and target audience demographic.

All the best advice is not to look just at the number of followers and to seek brands and content that are a good fit with your brand.

Once you’ve found an influencer, it’s then a matter of presenting campaign goals and negotiating how content will be created.

Some influencers like total independence to protect their brand. Some others are happy to collaborate and create overt advertisements.

Downside

There’s another consideration when choosing the right influencer. A person might have a massive following but if they’re likely to make inappropriate remarks, there’s going to be some referred brand damage to their clients’ business.

Take, for example, Lily May Mac, who has more than 3.5 million Instagram followers.

She was contracted by the Federal Health Department to contribute posts to the #girlsmakeyourmove social media campaign, which aimed to address “lower level of physical activity and barriers faced by young Australian women”.

She was forced to make a public apology for tweets she had sent in previous years that used racist and homophobic references. The apology came about after the tweet received significant media attention.

Fan tales

For some lucky enterprises, promotional social media content is created free by happy customers.

Take the Perth-based Facebook page Kmart Hacks & Décor, created by a small group of hard-core fans to share ideas about using Kmart products to style the home. Membership of the closed-community page has grown to over 153,000 members.

Co-founder Bree Gallagher says the Facebook page is unpaid: “We have no affiliation with Kmart – we’re just a bunch of Kmart lovers”.

Tourism WA’s Instagram account #justanotherdayinWA also has more than 750,000 posts showing beautiful images of WA destinations and visitor experiences. Most of these are created by tourists and locals with some paid contributions.