With the rising popularity of influencer marketing, the number of talented people creating social media profiles and building their followings has grown drastically. With millions of accounts to choose from, finding the right influencers for your campaign can be a daunting task. The following five factors will help to quickly narrow down your potential pool of talent.
When first evaluating an influencer for a campaign, analyzing the size of their audience is a good place to start. This will provide a sense of how large their reach will be, and is often the main factor that influencers use to price their deliverables. Note: unfortunately, some people do buy fake followers, which leads us to our next important factor:
It is also imperative to scrutinize the amount of engagement on potential influencers’ social media content. Are people liking and commenting on Instagram posts? Are they receiving a significant number of video views on Facebook and YouTube? Looking at recent activity will help you predict the amount of engagement you can expect on a sponsored post, as well as highlight any red flags for fake followers. (Influencers with a significant number of fake followers will have a large audience with relatively little interaction on their content).
Once you have determined that the influencers you are considering have the right size audience and an engaged following, take a deep dive into their social media profiles. Consider whether the imagery and videos they post will reflect your brand properly. Avoid asking influencers to reinvent the wheel and instead look for talent that has a proven track record of creating the type of content you are seeking.
As you whittle down the number of potential influencers for your campaign, consider the demographics of the influencers’ audiences to make sure that you will reach your target customers. Our team uses software and third-party data to analyze the location, gender, age breakdown, income brackets, education level, and ethnicities of influencers’ followers for all the campaigns we execute.
Finally, when you begin contacting influencers to gauge interest, take note of their level of professionalism. Since this is a business transaction, you want to ensure that you are contracting people that will treat the campaign as a business opportunity. Casting responsible influencers from the start will help you avoid any hiccups during the campaign and lead to longer and more authentic relationships with influencers for your brand.