Have you wondered why a company would want to invest in influencer marketing? Why are businesses seeking new approaches to finding the appropriate influencers?
Because the number of influencer marketing services/companies grew by 26% in 2021.
Influencer marketing is when brand partners with an individual (referred to as an “influencer” sometimes called a “creator”) to promote a specific product or service.
Influencers are trusted by millions of consumers, and marketers are paying attention.
Tiktok, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs all are great platforms for leveraging influencers. But none is more powerful than Instagram. The undisputed king of Influencer with over 2billion monthly active users.
Brands are struggling to find the proper influencer partners to collaborate with as the influencer marketing industry has gotten increasingly competitive. According to the benchmark report survey, 22% of participants found this task difficult, 56% ranked it as ‘moderate difficulty,’ and only 22% believed it was easy.
Do you still think finding the right influencer for your business is an easy task? That’s why I have created this detailed post to help you identify and find influencers for your brand.
Ways to Find Influencers for Your Business
So, how are you going to find the best partner for your business? Are you certain that the person you choose will deliver results in the short or long term? There are so many choices that it’s easy to become overwhelmed or make a hasty decision. Here’s a checklist to help you make your decision.
Understand your target audience
One of the most important aspects of influencer marketing is the target audience. And this is where a lot of brands go wrong.
They fail to ensure that their target audiences follow the influencer with whom they select to collaborate on social media.
Due to this knowing your audience is the first step to finding your influencers for your business.
Consider the following scenario: you own a beauty brand. You decided to work with a beauty blogger in order to sell your products.
How can you tell that you’ve made the right decision?
- Keep in mind that not every beauty blogger caters to the same type of audience.
- Some may wish to target millennials.
- others may wish to target mothers or middle-aged women.
- some may have social media followers who prefer organic beauty goods.
- Some may have social media followers who are interested in cosmetics, and so on.
So, what exactly do you need to keep an eye out for?
Make certain that your target audiences are the same as those of your influencers. This is critical when looking for social media influencers for your business because the right ones will ensure that your items are seen by the right people.
Vet your influencer
To locate and select the right social media influencer for your brand, you must first properly examine them.
Evaluation is critical, otherwise, you may end up with the wrong influencers, or even fake ones.
Here are some metrics to consider while seeking influencers for your business.
Reach
It refers to an influencer’s total number of followers on social media or on their blogs.
Make sure your influencer has a sizable fan base on the social media platform where you’ll be running your campaign.
When looking for social media influencers for your business, this is one of the most important factors to consider.
Engagement
For some, engagement is more important than reach, but why is an influencer’s engagement rate more significant than their reach?
Because it shows how engaged their fans are with their social media content.
It is basically a measure of an influencer’s ability to influence a customer’s purchasing decisions.
Before making a decision, make sure to check the level of engagement (likes, shares, comments, etc.) that an influencer receives on their social media posts.
Authenticity
Only when an influencer’s recommendations seem genuine do their followers ‘trust and follow them.’
Influencers’ social media posts (particularly any branded sponsored material) did not appear to be about something they are passionate about solely because they were paid to do so.
To manually examine an influencer’s previous brand collaborations and content.
Personality
Look for influencers whose personality and style complement your messaging and brand values. This kind of resonance will make your content more enticing and relevant to your target audiences.
Niche
When looking for influencers for your business, check to determine whether their niche aligns with your company, products, or sector.
For example, if you are developing tech gadgets, look for technological influencers. When it comes to deciding the fate of your influencer campaigns, relevance is everything.
Where You Can Find Influencers for Your Business?
Influencer marketing isn’t just for celebrities. Influencers with smaller but highly engaged audiences are sought after by brands.
So, where do you look for influencers for your brand? Here are some suggestions
Search using Hashtags
To discover hashtag keywords, use websites like inflict and All hashtag. Once you’ve created your hashtags, put them into any social media platform and look for accounts that frequently use them. These tools are also used by influencers to find creative hashtags, so there will almost certainly be some overlap.
Be open to discovering influencers via location-specific, topical, or even other brand campaign hashtags.
Networking events both in person or virtual
Keep an eye out for networking events and content development seminars led by industry experts. Many content creators will attend events like LaterCon and Digital Summit primarily for networking purposes. These events might not only help you locate influencers, but they can also provide you with new ideas for campaigns.
Your social media followers
One of the most effective ways to locate the appropriate influencers for your company is to look for those who are already talking about you.
You may uncover influencers on social media for your business by analyzing brand mentions, so keep an eye out for those.
Social media monitoring and listening tools can help you locate influencers on various social media channels that are talking about you or your industry.
Influencer platforms
The influencer marketing platforms or marketplaces make the process of identifying influencers more convenient; otherwise, it may take brands a significant amount of time to locate suitable influencers, create relationships with influencers, and launch campaigns. Finding the right influencers was especially tough if you didn’t have any inside knowledge of the industry. Some popular examples of Influencer platforms are
- CreatorIQ
- Klear.com
- Creator. co
- Refersion and so on.
Conclusion
Finally, we can argue that with influencer marketing efforts, you can’t take a one-size-fits-all approach. You must monitor your influencers and campaigns to ensure that the strategy is still yielding results.
If you’re looking for influencer marketing, social media marketing, or any other form of digital marketing service, you’ve come to the right place. Simply email us at stellardigital@gmail.com.
