Finding the right influencers to use on social media is a lot like searching for a needle in a haystack. You’re looking for a service provider that fits your brand, appeals to the right audience, and provides measurable results. But without a clear strategy, it’s also easy to waste hours sifting through profiles or pursuing an ineffective contracting relationship.
This is one of those blogs that cuts through the bullshit. Once you’re done reading, you’ll have a firm grasp on how to find the right influencers to help promote your business, assess their suitability for your brand, and reach out to them.
Whether you are a beginner in the world of influencer marketing or looking to fine-tune your strategy, this guide will have you thinking like a pro.
Why Influencers Impact Your Brand
People who have large followings are respected voices for their niche. They influence opinions, trends and purchasing habits. Working with the right influencer enables you to:
- Get visibility of your brand.
- Just try to get trust with people you want to reach.
- Increase your sales by getting genuine recommendations.
Statistics don’t lie. In fact, 93% of those marketers responding to a study conducted by Influencer Marketing Hub had already seen a great return on their influencer investment. The trick, though, is identifying influencers that are not only a good fit with your brand but also will resonate with your audience.
Things to Think About Before You Start Looking
It’s not the sheer number of followers that you want in influencers — it’s about finding the right ones. It’s about connecting them with your overall business goals. Before you start, remember to ask yourself these questions:
- Who is my target audience? Describe the demographics and interests of the customers you wish to target.
- Which platform is most popular with my audience? Instagram? TikTok? YouTube? Having them for reference will make it easy for you to zero in on where your audience hangs out.
- What kind of material happens to be right for my brand? Consider formats like video tutorials, product reviews or live Q&A sessions.
- What’s my budget? Influencers are a mixed bag, from hoity-toity to dirt cheap. Know your budget well before approaching them.
Step 1: Appoint Social Media Platforms
The first step is to look at which social media networks you want to work with influencers on. Each platform has its own user acquisition curve and type of content.
- Instagram: Good for lifestyle, beauty, food, and fashion niches. It’s great for visual storytelling.
- TikTok: Best for entertaining short-form videos, great for DIY and brands that target Gen Z.
- YouTube: For in-depth reviews and tutorials. Good for consumer tech, fitness and education.
- LinkedIn: Great for business and B2B brands interested in collaborating with thought leaders in your industry.
Pick the channel that is consistent with your brand and where your prospective customers are.
Step 2: Employ Social Media Search Tools
The days of curating influencers yourself are gone. Tools can do the heavy lifting for you, thanks to technology.
Here are some popular places to discover influencers:
- Upfluence: Delivering advanced search capabilities to help you search for influencers according to engagement rate, follower demographics, and more.
- HypeAuditor: A tool to measure influencer authenticity based on audience quality analysis and fake followers identifying.
- Heepsy: A more intuitive tool with an exclusive focus on finding Instagram influencers by niche and audience size.
They can do so with these platforms that also give you valuable insights such as engagement rates, audience demographics and estimated rates for collaborations, which in turn, might help you in decision making.
Step 3: The Old-Fashioned Way – Search
If you like to do things the old-fashioned way, you can manually search through social networking websites as well.
- Employ appropriate and industry-related hashtags and keywords (e.g., #fitnessinfluencer, #sustainablefashion, #techreview).
- Find out who else likes the same brands or products.
- Look through popular posts and content on the For You Page of platforms such as TikTok or the Explore tab of Instagram.
While it takes more time, this option ensures you have the most control over the influencer selection process, and that every influencer is the right fit.
Step 4: Determine the Quality of Influencers
It is an influencer, but not as we knew it before. Going with the wrong one can mean you miss opportunities or even damage your brand. You can use these metrics to track if someone is worth working with:
- Engagement: High follower counts do not always lead to engaged audiences. Look at how many of their followers have liked, commented, and shared.
- Audience demographics: Check that the influencer’s followers align with your audience in terms of age, gender, location and interests.
- Quality of content: How nice is the content they have visually? Does it feel authentic? Amazing content makes your brand look good.
- Brand alignment: Fine if you two have worked together in the past. Do they have experience with brands in your sector? Are they already writing about something relevant to your product or service?
- Reputation and genuineness: Crawl through their comments to see if it applies to their interactions. A cascade of platitudes, such as “Nice job!” might be an indication of material applications.
Start Small with Micro-Influencers
Gone are the days when micro-influencers were just participating in small-scale endorsements and promotions.
Known to make marketing dreams come true, micro-influencers (or influencers with 10,000 – 100,000 followers) are valuable to growing your small business. They are usually highly engaged, have strong relationships with their audiences and are more affordable.
For instance, a small skin care brand might get more bang for its buck working with five micro-influencers than hiring a celebrity influencer for a whole lot of money.
Reaching Out and Cultivating Relationships
Introduction matters. But when they do, they won’t send general email messages. Instead, make your outreach personal to demonstrate you’ve put in some effort.
Start with a sample template like the one below:
Hi [Influencer Name],
I am [Your Name] from [Brand Name]. We love your [specific platform/channel] presence, in particular your recent [mention specific post].
We’d love to partner with you on an upcoming project in which [what the project seeks to achieve]. Would you be interested?
Excited to be working with you!
Best,
[Your Name]
This kind of personalization tends to create rapport.
Create Long-Term Relationships
Your prospects are not yet ready to buy and if you slam them with CTA, they’ll remove your product from their shortlist.
The best influencer collaboration goes beyond one campaign. Develop a relationship with an influencer who gets your brand. If you find an influencer who really understands and believes in your brand, keep them around. They will grow to be a valued representative for your products, which can have a major impact on credibility and trust from your audience over the long term.
Bringing It All Together
The influencers are one of the most potent weapons in the arsenal of the modern marketer. But identifying the right influencer is time-consuming and strategic, and requires a little bit of patience. Whether it’s tech-enabled tools, manual searches, or doing the dirty work with micro-influencers, the important thing is to make sure your tactics are true to your brand’s values and goals.
With all the steps to find your ideal influencer at your disposal, now is the time to get to work. Get started now, find new marketing campaign success stories!
Learn more about:How to Become a Social Media Influencer