Why Working With Hospitality Influencers Is A Must For Your Business

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Transcript from the Episode

[00:00:00] Mark: I've done quite a lot of videos and podcasts and blogs and cetera, talking about influencer marketing and you coming into this video, coming into this podcast wanting to find out more about working with influencers. So what I wanted to do is to delve down into a couple of extra little ways and means where you can start to build relationships with influencers and then get them to come and stay at your property.

[00:00:21] In exchange for helping to promote your business to their audience. So before we start, my name is Mark Simpson. I've been, uh, founder of Boostly now for six years coming up. I help host just like you with the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly, the confidence to go and get your own direct book in using so many different types of marketing resources and tools and tips.

[00:00:43] And all I want for you to do is, is to try one. So if you are interested in work of an influencer, then we can do so. Now. If you dunno what an influencer is and please make sure that you check out the channel, there is tons and tons and tons of contact on influencer market. Amazing video with Harry Hugo from the From the Go [00:01:00] Agency, talking about that, about the different forms of, of influencers.

[00:01:03] So I won't go into too much detail about that. But what I want for you to do is just to really sort of shake your head, give your head a wobble and sort of forget about everything you think of what an influencer is. An influencer isn't somebody with millions and millions and millions of followers. What I want for you to do and to, and to figure out is, and to sort of change your mindset, is that everybody who comes and stays with you is an influencer in their own way, shape, or.

[00:01:25] Every guest is an influencer who can talk about your business. But what I wanna do is in this video is how do you find those people that have got a really engaged following that are maybe about three or four hour drive circle around where you are that would be interested in working with you to promote your business, your brand, to their followers.

[00:01:45] So there's got to be a relationship. There's gotta be a matchup. You've gotta have it like the ecosystem, for example, if you've got a family, Friendly property. So it's family friendly. Everything about you is for families, you know, loads of room, all the space, cool things to do, et cetera. [00:02:00] You're not gonna go and try and find an influencer or a person of influencer online that is catered towards going out, getting Larry and all those things.

[00:02:08] It just doesn't match up. So how do you approach number one? What you're gonna do is, is utilize the best channel for this, which is Instagram. Instagram is one of the easiest ways of doing so. Unlike any other platform, you can send a message to them without them following you, which is key. Cause if you tried doing this on Twitter, it wouldn't work LinkedIn, it's very hard to do so.

[00:02:29] But you can send a message to somebody on Instagram if they don't follow you, which is, Which is cool because what you can do is you can start to look on Instagram. For people that have got popular followings, and again, it's, it's sometimes hard to see if it's a real following or a fake following. And a fake following is somebody that pays for fake followers.

[00:02:53] There's so many fake follower programs and softwares and things out there, and unfortunately people do so to [00:03:00] trick. The brands to thinking, Well actually, hang on a second. This person is really popular cuz they've got 1 million followers, but 999,000 of them are fake bot. So people do do that and people used to get caught out.

[00:03:13] Luckily thanks to social chains, some really cool software that's out there they can highlight when people are a fake follower or real follower. But anyway, you can go and you can start to follow him and, and what I would recommend you doing, don't do this instantly, follow him for about a month to two months.

[00:03:28] If anybody's been involved with network market and you know that this is one of the things that they teach you time and time again, follow people, find out more about um, Text, send a message, et cetera, we're not gonna do that. What we're gonna do is we're gonna follow 'em and make sure you engage 'em. So I would recommend picking free to five people max, free to five people.

[00:03:45] Do a bit of research. If you want a bit more of a deep dive on this, I do go and check out all the free videos that we've got on the Booster YouTube channel where you can find out more about that. Just go and type in influencer in the search bar on YouTube. Uh, it's the best way of finding it all. Again, if you're a [00:04:00] member of the Boost Lee Academy, you know exactly where to go into the vault to get the full deep dive, the exact templates and everything that I use to to do so.

[00:04:07] You can go and grab that as well. Boostly academy.com. Um, but what I would recommend that you do is find somebody, three to five people and follow 'em consistently. Check out what they're posting, check their stories, check the post. Make sure you hit a, like, make sure you show up in their comments and get their attention.

[00:04:22] And then after about a month or six weeks or two months, if you feel like this is somebody that you could have a connection to, but you would actually wanna have a chat. This is a good way of describing it. If, if you would like to have a little discussion, a discussion, a proper discussion, have a chat with them, actually welcome 'em and sit down and have some, spend some time with them, then this is the next step.

[00:04:39] What you're gonna do is you're gonna approach the, the, the influencer of choice and whoever it may be. You may start with three to five, and you may whittle it down to one or two, but over time you'll just send a couple of messages. And again, just, just chatty, just say, Obviously is really cool, X, Y, and Z.

[00:04:52] They may reply, they may. But over time what you'll do is you'll find 'em on Instagram, and what I would do is I'd pick up the message and I'd send a voice [00:05:00] message, voice messages stand out so much because it has that level of intrigue around it. When someone sends me a voice note, bear in mind, I get lots of messages, emails, LinkedIn, you name it.

[00:05:09] Just what I do now, it attracts lots of messages, which is cool. I love it. But the ones that I will, uh, bookmark or go back to is the voice notes, because it's intriguing. I dunno what it is. So send a little voice note. No more than one. And just explain what you do and that you'd like to work with them.

[00:05:26] And again, so send a voice note, put a little note in your reminder to chase 'em up for 24, 48, 72 hours. If they don't listen back and if they don't listen back or they don't reply, then what you're gonna do then is you're gonna go do a little bit of digging. So go find their blog. Every single one of them will have a blog of some sorts because they will have got taught in.

[00:05:46] Influence the school or whatever it would be that they've gone to. But you need to have a blog for SEO and all the so cool things, but everybody has. And in there you'll find their email address. Go and get their email address and send 'em an email. Now, the reason why this is cool is that [00:06:00] so many influencers or in influential people will just get messages on social media.

[00:06:04] They don't really get emails anymore. So if you send an email and if you use a cool tool like Boomerang, so the Boomerang app, I recommend, it's a Gmail extension. I've got all of the members of Boostly team, Boostly members as in the people who work for Boostly using it because it's such a powerful tool when you send an email.

[00:06:20] You won't get notified when, number one, they open the email, and number two, it'll get boomeranged so it gets sent to the top of your inbox after a certain amount of days if they haven't replied open or clicked on the link. So again, it keeps it all nice and organized, and in terms of you and your time keeping doing this, And what you're gonna do and what you wanna try and achieve with this is you wanna basically send an email just saying, Hey, I send you a message on Instagram.

[00:06:44] I love what you do. Don't have it as a big paragraph, a big novel. Just a couple of lines are saying, I would love to chat to you about potentially working with you on an upcoming project. Would you be interested? Okay, super simple. Again, put a little boom run on it for maybe 72 to [00:07:00] five days, 72 hours to five days, and if they haven't got back to you at that point, then what I would just do is just say, You know what, They're too busy.

[00:07:07] They haven't got the time, they haven't got the systems and structures in place. They haven't got an assistant, they haven't got things in place. They're just not gonna be a good person to work with. Me personally, if they haven't responded within a week, whether it's on an Instagram message or on an email.

[00:07:22] And they haven't seen that after one more chasing as well. I would say rule of three move on because a good influencer, a good business owner, a good person will have the systems and the structures in place to where they can, um, reach out or reply. And if they haven't, then it just means that they're all over the place to skinny as, and it would never be a good deal working with him because actually getting to work auto groom with a date with him is gonna be a nightmare.

[00:07:48] But that's how we'd play it. Start off with Instagram. Make sure, again, you're gonna follow 'em. So don't go balls out. Don't just literally follow him and then send that message on the same date cuz it's spammy as [00:08:00] follow 'em, get to know him, and then start with three to five. And again, if you wanna find how to find influencers, look on the Boosty YouTube channel.

[00:08:06] There's tons of videos on this. And then obviously the Boosty Academy, you've got the vault. Once you've found your influencer, follow 'em. You know, for a good month to eight weeks. Get to know 'em. Get to know their personality. You'll see the type of post, you'll get to see all of the engagement in the audience and the people that respond to it, which is good.

[00:08:22] And then once you've got there and you feel like you could actually sit down and have chat with them, then you'll reach out, Start with Instagram, start with a voice note, and then what you will do is if they don't respond within sort of four. Find their blog, find their email address and send 'em a message, or before the email just come to mind, try and find another social channel that they're on, that they're not as popular.

[00:08:44] Big one, this one. So if they're super popular on Instagram, say 50,000 followers, but you can find their LinkedIn and it's only got like a hundred people. They're connected to. Send a message, the more likely that notification will pop up and they'll more likely see it when Instagram with a, an [00:09:00] absolute, um, barrage of messages coming in, in, It could be that you see that we're on Facebook or it could be on Twitter or whatever it could be.

[00:09:07] Find a channel that they're not as popular on and send 'em a message there. It's more likely to get the attention and if they miss that email and if after email, after five days, once you go in the boomerang and all of that, if they haven't got by, move on. But hopefully eight outta 10 times, they will reach back to you and you can start that dialogue and you can arrange for them to come and see.

[00:09:26] But that next step is gonna be another podcast episode. So this is like a part two coming up. If this is the first time that you've checked this out, then please make sure you hit the forms up button. You subscribe, download, do all that jazz. If you want more of this, and if you want me to actually get an influencer on to do a live video interview where we can have a little back and forth and find out more about this, let me know.

[00:09:51] And if you wanna check out part two, make sure you subscribe, turn on the notifications, and I'll let you know when that video and that podcast is ready. Thank you so much for stopping [00:10:00] by. My name is Mark Simpson. Let's stay proactive. Let's not be reactive. Let's go get some direct bookings. Having a blast.

[00:10:05] Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee led Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard on the tea is loose leaf. Making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.

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