How to Become an Influencer in 11 Steps: Your 2024 Guide

What is an influencer? 

An influencer, also known as a social media influencer, leverages social media channels to influence followers’ buying decisions. Successful influencers typically offer value on social media with quality content that shares specialised knowledge, “edutainment,” or insight into a niche topic. Influencers are also known for their ability to build relationships with an audience and build an engaged and loyal follower base.

The definition of an influencer and what it means to be one constantly evolves regarding what content influencers share on social networks and how they share it. Influencers can range from TikTok dancers to people who post detailed how-to videos. Even with this variety, you’ll find some consistencies:

• Influencers don’t have to be celebrities to succeed. Launching a career as an influencer is possible without already being a public figure. Even though influencers can attract online audiences of hundreds of thousands and even millions, they may not consider themselves “celebrities” in offline settings. 

• Distinctions like macro, micro, and nano influencers have worked their way into this industry’s terminology to indicate the size of an influencer’s audience. Macro influencers have 500K to 1 million followers, micro-influencers have 10K to 50K followers, and nano influencers have up to 10K followers. 

• Influencers have the potential to drive business growth. The power of being an influencer lies in the possible kind of marketing. You can garner the attention of social media users and brands that will pay you to promote their products in influencer marketing campaigns thanks to the connections you've built with their target audiences.

Content creator vs. influencer

In your research into becoming an influencer, you may wonder how influencers differ from content creators. In the table below, we’ve outlined a few similarities and differences so that you can pursue your marketing career path from a state of clarity. 

Influencer marketing: What to know in 2024

As you consider a future as an influencer, you must investigate the industry in which you’ll operate. According to Ernst and Young’s 2023 State of Influencer Marketing in India, influencer marketing will reach ₹2,344 crore in 2024, an increase of 25 percent from the year before. By 2026, data predicts it will top ₹3,375 crore [1].

For more perspective on current trends, consider some of the other findings revealed in the report, including:

• 47 percent of brands prefer working with micro (10,000–100,000 followers) and nano (100–10,000 followers) influencers because they offer a lower cost-per-reach 

• Categories driving growth include lifestyle, fashion, and beauty

• Preferred platforms include Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook (Meta), while platforms like Moj, Chingari, and MX TakaTak are viewed as useful for specific purposes

• 45 percent of brands have in-house teams and work directly with influencers; 46 percent work with agencies specialising in influencer marketing

• 151 per cent of influencers report that growing their audience is their top challenge, followed closely by 147 percent of them citing maintaining credibility and authenticity

So, what do these trends mean for you?

Influencer marketing is becoming mainstream across industries so that you can garner a follower base for almost any topic. Your influencer income may depend on the size of your audience, how much engagement you get, and your brand collaboration rates. According to EY’s report, 77 percent of influencers have enjoyed income growth in the past two years, with 86 percent anticipating their income to rise by 10 percent or more over the next few years [1]. 

The industry may become more competitive as more influencers enter the social media landscape. Some of the foundational skills you’ll need as an influencer include:

• Mastering the latest features of different social media platforms

• Cultivating authentic relationships with an audience

• Developing content people love, 

• Editing audio and video content

• Live streaming

• Conveying your expertise or authority on a particular topic

How to become an influencer in 11 steps

Becoming an influencer can be an exciting endeavour. You can inspire your audience, share your passions, and generate income. Follow the steps to make your influencer journey a rewarding and successful one: 

1. Complete basic business tasks.

An important first step in starting your influencer brand is approaching it like you would a business. Adopting business approaches can systematically attract your target audience and generate income. 

Some basic tasks to complete include the following: 

• Articulate your influencer goals, such as building a following around your passions, working with specific brands you admire, and generating income.

• Write a summary of the kind of influencer brand you want to create, including the topics you want to post about, the aspects of yourself you want to share, and your methods for generating income (affiliate links, sponsored social media posts, etc.).  

• Determine the prices you want to charge brands to promote their products. 

Tip: Refer to IZEA’s 2023 State of Influencer Earnings report to discover the average cost per sponsored post on different platforms and how these rates change according to follower counts. 

• Find a payment solution that makes sending invoices and receiving payments from brands easy. 

• Draft an outline of a business plan that articulates your goals, summarises what you offer, and analyses competitor influencers in your category. 

• Gather influencer tools like Canva to design simple graphics or Linktree and aggregate links to the URLs you want your audience to click. 

2. Identify your niche.

A niche is a particular market segment of consumers an influencer can market to online. You can base your niche on a category of content that you’d share on social media and the demographics (age, location, income, etc.) and psychographics (values, beliefs, interests, etc.) of your target audience.  

To gain clarity on your niche, reflect on your passions, the content you enjoy consuming and that you’d like to create yourself, the successful influencers you already follow, the kinds of social media users that follow these influencers, the social media channels they use, and the products you love to use and would like to promote to others.

For inspiration, you may find it helpful to research industries, content categories, and hashtags on social media platforms. For example, Instagram’s Explore page may suggest content categories, like “indoor gardening,” “animal photography,” and “women in sports,” that you could narrow down or tweak to reflect your unique angle. 

3. Get to know your audience.

Once you’ve identified your niche, conduct market research to understand your audience. That way, you can develop a lasting connection with your audience and post valuable content that satisfies their interests and goals. Click around on social media to find out: 

• The content your audience responds to the most

• The type of comments your audience makes on other social media influencers’ content

• The questions and challenges they face

4. Create your influencer brand.

Think of your influencer brand like a personal brand—a coherent presentation of your personality, values, passions, and authority on a specific topic that you can use to explore your business potential. Take time to clarify the impression you want to leave on an online audience and what you want to become known for. You may create an aesthetic for your influencer brand, complete with colours, fonts, and even a brand voice. 

5. Explore your content strategy. 

A large part of an influencer brand is the content you share on social media channels. Make a list of individual pieces of content that explore different facets of your category.  

You may find it useful to set up a content creation calendar that determines the frequency and structure of your posts. For example, Monday posts could offer a glimpse at your morning routine, Wednesdays could be reserved for “Ask me anything” live-streaming, and Friday posts could offer educational tutorials. 

6. Optimise your online presence.

Before officially launching your influencer brand and posting content in earnest, take time to optimise your online presence so you can build brand equity. Your online presence can include:

• Creating new social media accounts for your influencer brand or converting existing accounts into influencer accounts. (See Step 7 below for selecting your channels.)

• Building a website that social media followers and brands can visit to learn more about you, subscribe to your email content, and read blog articles or other longer-form content.

• Setting up an email marketing system specifically for your influencer brand.  

Did you know? Some social media platforms allow you to switch your account type and enable different capabilities, such as running paid ads or monetising content. Instagram, for example, offers three settings: personal, business, and creator. 

7. Select your channels.

Along with optimising your online presence, you need to select the social media platforms and marketing channels through which you’ll influence and inspire an audience. Being selective about your channels offers two main advantages. One, you can focus on mastering the features of one or two channels. And, two, you can choose the platform or channel that works best for the type of content you share. 

The following offers some general differences between platforms: 

• YouTube influencers perform well when promoting products that require an explanation or video tutorial. 

• TikTok influencers perform well in categories like entertainment, dance, pranks, fitness, and home improvement and typically cater to Gen-Z audiences. 

• Instagram influencers perform well when their content leverages imagery. Popular categories on Instagram include fashion, beauty, food, travel, and fitness. 

8. Post unique content regularly. 

Once you’ve set up your online presence and selected the channels and platforms you’ll appear on, it’s time to start posting content. Remember that it can take time to see tangible results from your content efforts; consistency is key. 

9. Engage your audience.

At the same time that you post regular content on social media, engage with your audience members to increase your “know, like, and trust” factor. Standard engagement methods include the following: 

• Like, comment on, and repost content by followers and fellow influencers in your niche. 

• Respond to comments on your posts. 

• Start conversations on social media by asking your audience questions about their interests and opinions. 

• Message highly engaged followers to ask them what kind of content they’d like to see you create. 

10. Collaborate with other brands.

As social media users take notice of your content, follow your accounts, and look to you for entertainment or information, brands may reach out to you to collaborate. You can also pitch brands directly. 

Completing the following tasks will help you prepare for these opportunities in advance, earn income, and work with brands in a way that aligns with your goals. 

• Make a list of the brands you’d like to collaborate with. 

• Decide how you want to collaborate with them, including through sponsored posts and affiliate marketing, and how you want to monetise your efforts. 

• Draft a description of content you can create to promote various products that you can use for your website or for contacting brands via email or messenger. 

• Draft a template for pitching these brands directly. 

• Create an Influencer profile on sites like Influence.co and Intellifluence to increase your visibility and connect with brands. 

11. Refine your influencer skills and strategy. 

As your list of followers and brand collaborators grows, commit to the regular upkeep of your influencer business: 

• Set aside time periodically to research new influencer tools and techniques, social media platforms’ latest features, and how your audience is behaving online. 

• Note which content engages your audience the most, and be willing to adjust your content strategy accordingly. 

• Stay connected to your audience and seek to understand their interests, goals, and challenges more intimately. 

Learn to market your brand on Coursera

Influencer marketing may be relatively new to India, but it is thriving, offering ample opportunities to those with the skills to get noticed. Remember: when you become an influencer, you can experience the rewards of generating income while sharing your passions with an engaged audience. To market yourself online successfully, you’ll need to build a broad set of skills and treat your influencer brand as a business.  

Get started with these online Professional Certificates from industry leaders, Google and Meta: