Social media influencers can boost your brand awareness, engagement, and conversions, but how do you find and vet the ones that suit your goals, budget, and niche? In this article, we'll share some tips and tools to help you craft a strategy for finding and vetting social media influencers.
Before you start looking for influencers, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your influencer marketing campaign. Do you want to increase your reach, generate leads, drive sales, or build trust? How will you measure your success? What kind of content and tone do you want your influencers to create and share? Having a clear vision of your objectives will help you narrow down your search and align your expectations with your influencers.
To find and vet social media influencers, I define campaign objectives, use discovery tools/platforms to identify relevant influencers, review their content quality, engagement rates, and audience demographics. I assess reputation, past collaborations, and check for fake followers. I engage with shortlisted influencers, evaluating professionalism and fit with brand values, and negotiate terms for successful partnerships. Regular monitoring ensures ongoing alignment with brand goals.
Next, you need to identify who you want to reach with your influencer marketing campaign. Who are your ideal customers? What are their demographics, interests, pain points, and preferences? What social media platforms do they use and trust? How do they interact with influencers and brands? Knowing your target audience will help you find influencers who have a similar or complementary audience, as well as influencers who can influence their purchase decisions.
When I was publishing my first book, Bet on Yourself, connecting with my ideal readers was a top priority. I needed to not only consider where they hangout online but also how they engage on each platform. My book is aimed at driving career empowerment and democratizing success so longer form content was ideal for me. I found that partnering with podcasters and those writing insightful articles on LinkedIn were my most effective mediums to make sure that engaging with my book was an active, on-going conversation. I thought beyond the traditional "influencer" title and focused on networks. I developed partnerships with business school professors, entrepreneurs, VC firms, accelerators, tech conferences and more. The response was strong.
I am yet to find a good influencer who has a high intelligent quotient and an admirable objective that I would like to recommend people to follow. I think faffing, fluff, and mediocrity rule the roost of the social media influencer domain. I would stay away from it.
Once you have defined your objectives and target audience, you can start searching for relevant influencers who match your criteria. You can search hashtags, keywords, or topics related to your niche on social media platforms to identify popular or authoritative figures. Additionally, influencer marketing platforms or databases can help you filter and sort influencers by followers, engagement, niche, location, and price. You can also request recommendations from your existing network, customers, or partners who may have worked with or followed influencers in your industry. Lastly, monitoring your brand mentions and social media analytics can reveal who is already talking about or engaging with your brand or products.
Influencer discovery tools make it easy to find relevant creators based on your search criteria: - Follower count - Audience demographics (age, gender, & geo) - Average impressions or reach - Engagement rate - Keywords and hashtags - Past brand sponsorships - Fake follower analysis - Lookalike profiles Many influencer marketing platforms include creator discovery tools that can save you time and help you make informed decisions about the best influencers to engage for your campaign.
After you have a list of potential influencers, you need to evaluate their performance and fit for your campaign. You can use different criteria and tools to vet influencers, such as checking their engagement rate, which is the ratio of likes, comments, shares, and clicks to their follower count. A high engagement rate indicates an active and loyal audience. Additionally, you should review their content quality, style, and tone; analyze their audience demographics, interests, and behavior; and compare their rates and expectations. You should also see how they disclose partnerships and endorsements, if they follow the best practices for influencer marketing, how their audience responds to their content and recommendations, if they trust their opinions and expertise, how they communicate and negotiate, and if they are professional and transparent. All of these factors should align with your brand voice, values, goals, target audience, budget, and objectives.
Finally, after you have identified and evaluated the influencers that fit your campaign, you need to build a relationship with them. Reach out to them with a personalized and respectful message that explains who you are, what you do, and why you want to work with them. Provide them with a fair compensation, whether it is monetary, product-based, or exposure-based, and respect their creative freedom and input. Additionally, give them clear and realistic guidelines, expectations, and deliverables for the campaign while keeping them updated and informed throughout the process. Show your appreciation for their work by giving them feedback and support. Moreover, maintain a long-term connection with them and look for opportunities to collaborate again or refer them to others.
Finding and vetting social media influencers can be difficult and time consuming but with a clear strategy and the right tools it can be made easier and more effective. By following these tips you can find and vet influencers who can help you reach your goals and grow your brand on social media.