Social Media – How to choose an influencer?

Instagram has more than 1 billion monthly users and is used by many people and companies to build followers. Social Media Marketing is on the rise. Choosing the right influencer to partner with your brand can be a difficult task.

Influencer marketing is all about building relationships with mutual benefits. The right influencers will drive better campaign results and save you time and money. Here are some tips and tricks on how to choose wisely and identifying them:

Photography by: Georgia De Lotz

1.Set clear marketing campaign goals.
What are your campaign goals? For example your campaign goal could be to grow your brand awareness by 10%, increase engagement for the next 4 weeks, receive 100 comments on the latest content for your brand, gain 50 enquiries on a new product release. Setting SMART goals for your campaign will enable you to find the right fit for your brand and ensure that there is a tangible outcome from the partnership.

2.Set a budget on how much you are ready to spend.
What’s your budget? Set a budget on how much you are willing to spend? Will it be a short term partnership or will it be a long term partnership? Usually for 1 post and a couple of Instagram stories it will cost you a minimum of ($200 - 500 AUD for a micro influencers) depending on the type of influencer.

3.Find influencers that aligns with similar brand values and ethos.
What types of values and principles does this influencer has? Do they align with your brand? Will this be a good partnership in the short term as well as in the long term? Avoid mismatched partnerships and make sure to look through their historic activity.

Think big picture; influencers can be a double edge sword. For example if you hire a footie player as brand ambassador. He might be a good fit in the short term because he is the season’s favourite and is winning many games. But think long term whether or not the person is someone is likely to participate in controversial campaigns, if so it might back fire. At all cost preserve your brand publicity positively and think of upholding good reputation.

4.Look at their data analytics.
Don’t be fooled by an influencers social media following. A following of 150,000 people doesn’t mean that everyone is paying attention or is a real follower on that persons account. Nowadays, it is increasingly easy to purchase followers on social media platform. Some influencers might fool you with tones of following from robots and fake accounts. Do you research, ask for media kits, ask for their data analytics on their following and do an audit of their following.

A good way to evaluate engagement is to measure click-throughs. If links are provided in the social posts, check how many people bother clicking through the links? Read the comments click on the engaged account check if they are real people. If you are selling an e-commerce product, you can produce a specific code for them to promote (i.e.: AlicePayne_SpecialCode21).This way you can measure the outcome of your campaign for positive or negative ROI.

5.Results.
Results, results and results. 
Ask them for past examples of campaigns they have done for other brands and how did the partnership help in furthering the brand’s marketing goal?

6.Do your research.
Think of yourself as a HR manager trying to identify the right fit for your company in the media landscape.

Ask how long they have been in the social landscape? When did they consider themselves as influencers? How did it all happen? What piece of content have they produced that went viral? Are they willing to create content for your brand? Will their aesthetics match your given brand?

7.Maintain good relationships.
Build strong professional relationships with your network of influencers. You might be using one type of influencers for a certain campaign and want to rotate to another influencer for another type of campaign. Retain their details and build on maintaining good relations.

8.Research what types of influencers will fit your campaign.

-       Micro influencers are between 1,000 followers – 100,000 followers have a niche following. Their community often shows a high level of trust and engagement.

-       Expert influencers are thought leaders in their industry and may include executives, bloggers or even members of the media. They are viewed as credible sources and their following looks to them to learn about new trends, industry advancements and their general perspective on relevant topics

-       Celebrity influencers usually have more than 500,000 followers and are broader in scope. This type of partnership usually comes with a higher price tag and I would suggest to think of a long term contract with them between 6month – 12 months if your brand is ready to invest into them.

Using influencers in your campaigns can have tremendous benefits such as increased engagement, traffic and views on your social platforms which will then feed into your sales funnel in the long term prospect. Engage first, turn into built interest, then convert the data at the end of the funnel to become a sale.

Finally, ensure that you purposefully engage influencers at different periods of your marketing calendar and be strategic about it! 

(Statistics from article: https://lnkd.in/dXqvsSQ, Photography by: Georgia De Lotz, Reference: https://www.prdaily.com/how-to-choose-the-perfect-influencers-for-your-organization/)