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As you scroll through your social media feed, you will find many posts featuring influencer marketing. Whether it is a photo showcasing the latest fashion trend or beauty product, or a quick video demonstrating the use of a must-have gadget that will help simplify an everyday task – influencer generated content is everywhere and it most likely grabs your attention.

Influencer generated content is defined as the images, videos, or other creative content made by social media influencers, usually in partnership with a brand.

Many brands use influencer generated content to increase brand awareness and help sell their products and services, and we don’t expect this trend to stop. In fact, 86% of marketers engaged in influencer marketing in 2017. With more than 3 billion people using social media, it’s pretty clear to see how influencer marketing on social media can be an effective tool to garner brand awareness and increase sales.

But, outside the numbers game on social media, why is influencer marketing so powerful? Here are four reasons why influencer generated content works so well.

1. Quality, Quickly

Experienced influencers can create engaging, eye-catching content for social media that is the quality of studio-hot content, and they can do it quickly.

For most brands, content creation is a time-consuming process involving many different teams working together to conduct a professional photo shoot with models at the perfect location. Influencer generated content helps alleviate the demand of the brand’s advertising team to generate fresh content in a short period of time.

Plus, many social media users prefer influencer generated content over traditional ad creative. According to Forrester, influencer content earns more than 8 times the engagement rate of brand-directed content.

2. Authenticity

Influencer marketing does not have the feel of a direct sales approach. In fact, it is the exact opposite. A social media influencer creates genuine content that can tell your brand’s story authentically. Their followers do not feel sold to, but rather enjoy reading the experience the influencer had with a particular product or service. The influencer's followers have similar interests and often respect and trust the opinion of the influencer they are following.

3. Diversity

By partnering with influencers, you are able to acquire many different types of content, whether that be images, videos, or GIFs. Different messages resonate with different audiences. You are also able to reach a broader range of consumers from different walks of life -- consumers that you may not already be reaching through brand-directed content.

4. Affordability

There are hundreds of thousands of influencers who can potentially create jaw-dropping content for you simply using their iPhones, but micro influencers are among the most inexpensive kind of social media influencers. Micro influencers have smaller followings consisting of 10,000 or fewer, but those followers are intensely dedicated and typically provide higher levels of engagement. Often micro influencers are willing to enter into a trade agreement, rather than a financial partnership.

Regardless of whether you are working with a micro influencer who is being paid through trade, or a more prominent influencer with tens of thousands of followers, the cost is likely still less than what you would pay for a professional photo shoot. 

Are you ready to leverage influencer generated content as part of your social media marketing strategy? Contact THAT Agency today to get your brand's influencer marketing program up and running!