The term Entrepreneurial growth means systemic plans to achieve a Brand's, Business or Organization's objective to grow and expand it's products and services by quality, quantity, and turnover.

Entrepreneurial growth can be in terms of innovators, business developers, radicals, expanders, customers etc. An entrepreneur who undertakes the risks, and effort to grow the business will certainly have entrepreneurial growth whereas the person who is not willing fails to achieve objectives.

Your business or Brand is like a plant, where the only healthy way forward is to grow. Entrepreneurial growth focuses on that early seed stage where you’re still always reaching for more sunlight and struggling to break free of the soil and leaf out above the competition.

The good news is that while your business is our metaphorical plant, you can be the gardener who prepares the soil, tends to the leaves, waters, and makes it a secure place to grow. All of those elements are strategies for entrepreneurial growth.

In this blogpost, we have narrowed down to discuss Social Media Influencing as a tool to achieve the type of expansion you desire for your business and brand.

What is Social Media Influencing?

The question, What is Social Media Influencing is what pops up on the lips of anyone who hears someone introduce himself as a Social Media Influencer. Social Media Influence is when someone has the ability to affect other people's thinking and decision in an online social community. The more influence a person has, the more appeal that individual has to companies or other individuals who want to promote an idea or sell a product.

Companies and brands can take advantage of social media influence to help increase customer engagement, generate brand awareness and make sales. This can be done by increasing the company’s own social media influence or by hiring established, trustworthy influencers in the same niche.

Social Media Influencer marketing works. That’s the reason why it seems everyone wants to become a social media influencer these days. This type of digital marketing continues to grow as a real and effective way of advertising and keeping your audience engaged in order to make a profit.

Today, there are over 3.7 billion social media users and the influencer marketing industry is worth an impressive $5 billion!

How to Measure Social Media Influence.

Fundamentally, influence can be estimated by examining the magnitude of a person's or company's social networks, such as Instagram followers, Tiktok followers, LinkedIn connections, Number of WhatsApp Status views, Twitter followers or Facebook friends.

However, a more thorough analysis is required, to determine how a person makes those social connections, who those connections are and the level of trust and engagement between the person and their connections.

Professionals have advocated the use of some social influence measurement tools. Klout is one such tool, which provides a score between 1 — 100 based on an individual’s online activity on popular social networking sites. Other industry experts have raised concerns about the validity of the metrics provided by Klout, however, pointing out that Klout does not measure all types of online activity. For example, a blog post from a trusted Blogger could reach a small but highly-targeted audience and potentially be more influential than a simple tweet that reaches thousands of people.

Who are Social Media Influencers?

A social media influencer is a user that has established credibility in a certain niche or content type that has access to a wide audience or subscribers. An influencer has a large enough following and the power to be able to spark a conversation and inspire an action or change in behaviour or choice. Companies can hire Social Media Influencers to help expand their social reach, become more relatable and sponsor products or services.

Types of Social Media Influencers include:

1. Celebrity influencers: These are the most popular influencers as they have acquired their followings from their celebrity status. Since certain celebrities attract specific demographics and target audiences, companies can hire these Celebrities to reach their or endorse their product to their fans.

2. Consumer influencers: These are everyday people that have gained a following due to their personality and relatability. They are typically active on their social media through content creation, text posting, involving in trending social issues, blogging or photo sharing. Because their audience considers them “real” or “relatable” they tend to take their advice closely, such as when they vouch for a service.

3. Microinfluencers: Also known as expert influencers, these are everyday people that have gained a following and substantial topical authority due to their knowledge in a specific area. When they recommend or praise a product, their audience is likely to trust their opinion. Most times times, microinfluencers may have to use the products or service, make necessary review before recommending to people.

4 Content creators: These include professional bloggers, vloggers and photographers. Their role includes developing new content that readers are interested in keeping up with regularly. Part of a company’s marketing strategy could be to send products to a content creator in the hopes they will review and speak positively about it to their followers. Another option is to write sponsored posts for their platform.

Before choosing Influencers, companies consider a few qualities. The first is if the influencer’s personal message aligns well will the company and is relevant to the same target audience. The second is how engaging the influencer is with their following, or how trustworthy their following considers them. Lastly is to consider the influencer’s reach or follower count as this can help predict return on investment (ROI). This same should apply with your brand or Business. You should get on the job as if you are an employee at your company who has been saddled with Social Media Influencing as sole responsibility.