How to find right instagram and facebook influencers for your business: A Complete guide

Influencer marketing is still generally misunderstood by brands when they are making a social media strategy. The size of the platform you choose to market on and the size of marketing trends shouldn’t really impact your strategy, however knowing where they tune into and where they give their attention to, should. This is why, as a Global Leading Social Media Marketing agency, we built this guide to help you find the right influencers for your business.

What Even are Influencers on Facebook? 

When it comes to influencer marketing, Facebook isn’t usually the first social media app that comes to mind. However, Facebook is the biggest social media network, and has about 1.6 billion users around the world. So, even though influencer marketing is often used through Instagram and YouTube, it may be time for your business to consider Facebook. 

For the most part, Facebook influencers are the same as Instagram influencers. Similar to Instagram, Facebook influencers are usually famous people, media, and other well-known brands. However, if you don’t have a big budget like Apple or Nike, it makes more sense to use micro-influencers through Facebook marketing. Micro-influencers have hyper-targeted audiences that provide higher engagement and therefore can have a more impactful influence when deployed at scale. Also making them a great tool for affiliate marketing programmes to turn your biggest fans into your biggest asset.

How to find Facebook influencers

Searching for influencers on Facebook is a lot more difficult than Instagram. The search engine itself is limited and a bit difficult to use. Very few people also use hashtags on Facebook, so there’s no point in searching for them. In order to find influencers, you will have to use specific marketing tools. 

Facebook is centered around content. This means that you are more likely to find influential pages that focus on content, instead of people who manage the page. Since Facebook encourages sharing as well, it is the best platform to create viral content, which could mean memes, relatable posts and posts that have a big influence.

When looking for a Facebook Influencer, try and search for:

1. Someone who shares useful content that you could see go viral 
2. Someone who builds trust through a talent or expertise in a certain niche 
3. Builds a community around the page (people talking and tagging in the comments, and exchanging opinions)

Knowing what to actually search is maybe the trickiest part of trying to find influencers on Facebook. We recommend coming up with a list of specific words and phrases that cross over into your industry and niche.

If you are a pre-established company, you can also look for posts that already contain your business’ name. This can help you find influencers for brand ambassadors who have already mentioned your brand, and therefore, are more likely to work with you. You can also use the name(s) of your competitors. The reason why keywords are so important is because you can monitor them on Facebook. You can choose how you want to find influencers by grouping them all together in one topic or dividing them by topic. You can also specify the country and the language of an influencer or add positive and negative keywords to make the search more realistic.

Choosing the right Influencer on Facebook

We think that the key tips when looking for influencers to collaborate with on LinkedIn are: 

1. Content: what do their posts look like, and do they align with your brand messaging? Look at what they are already currently reviewing and discussing. 
2. Engagement: Look at how many followers they have… and look at whether they participate in conversations or not. Look at how many likes and shares they get as well. An engaged audience is more important than a seemingly large audience. 
3. Tone: If they seem to have the perfect content, ask yourself next if the way that they deliver it falls in line with your brand’s ethos. Language and visual aesthetics are really important, and can turn away your audience really quick if it offends them. 

Once you find an influencer that you want to work with, look at how they are perceived on Facebook and the rest of the Internet already. Then, all that is left to do is reach out and build a relationship with the influencer. Once that is formed, you can discuss conditions of your partnership, and negotiate a contract.

The Difference between Facebook and Instagram Influencers

It’s pretty obvious that the most common influencers are the ones that are found on Instagram. This makes finding the right ones that much harder, as the market is so oversaturated. Like Facebook, it’s important to think of Instagram as more than a celebrity platform. No matter who you choose to work with, it’s important to ensure their influence is appropriate and relevant to your brand. 

When it comes to Instagram influencers, it’s key to envision your brand as an online personality of its own. Facebook influencers are less about personality, and more about viral (sometimes controversial) content. When thinking of choosing between the two, think about whether content or personality resonates more with your brand’s ethos. 

This brand voice will coincide similarly to a human personality, which results in influencers gravitating towards certain brands, versus others. Think of the influencers that you choose as compatible with your brand, personality wise if you want to achieve a successful relationship. If you’re stuck on a personality, think of the kind of people who would buy your product. To find this information, you can use social media to conduct surveys and see who likes your current content. 

Build an imaginary personality of who your customer is, where they shop, what they listen to, what they are passionate about, etc. It’s also important to think about the people who could be potential customers, and how to improve their experience with your influencer campaigns. You can do this by looking at the content they produce and how their own followers interact with it.

Look to your own followers to use as potential influencers

Looking at your own business’ profile is a key to understanding your brand’s personality. Most influencers began influencing because of something that they were passionate about, and from there, they dedicated their page to making content to showcase that. 

Choosing someone who already follows you on social media to influence or represent your brand is a great way to get some ‘free’ publicity, since they are already interested. Offering them money for even better content will help build a relationship and build engagement as well. See who is already talking about your brand, and once they start posting your paid/sponsored content, it will seem more organic to their followers. 

Your pre-existing followers are pretty much already your own little niche network. This should be optimized, as it’s a cost effective way to start a foundation for your social media strategy. Community is key when building any kind of social media strategy, and taking notes on who if following or a fan of your page will help you build a good bank of data that will only benefit your brand.

Finding the relevant hashtags to see which Influencers are the most engaged

In every social media strategy, it is important to follow hashtags. Most specifically hashtags that are branded, industry-specific, same wordings, or marketing. Learning how to master hashtag searches is key to strategising, so keep in mind which hashtags your industry commonly uses. Think of building a bank of keywords that don’t just associate with your brand, but with your target customer’s lifestyle and profile. For example, if you are a fitness brand, think of the kind of food your target audience would be interested in, like #eatclean. 

Another tip is to use the Instagram search engine to browse the #sponsored or #ad tag to analyse pre-existing promotional content. You can use both of these hashtags to find other potential influencers in your niche, or to see which ones your competitors are using. 

While monitoring these hashtags, it is important to look at who is already posting similar content that you are posting. Some may be influencers that you want to work with, so look at their followers and engagement numbers, not just on Instagram but across all social media channels. Also look to see if they have any sponsored posts already on their page. 

However, sometimes searching a highly-dense tag like #fashion is a waste of time, because much of the content is not organic, and will be too oversaturated. If you have to go through say 500,000 posts — it’s probably better to refine the tag. For example, try #sustainablefashion, or #londonfashionweek. This creates a niche or is geographically based, which means it will have more chance of being authentic and purposeful.

Using Google to Help find Instagram Influencers

Another effective way to find Instagram influencers is to run a Google search, because you can never have too many influencers interested in your brand. If you google ‘top marketers on Instagram’, it’ll provide you with a second opinion to the ones that you are already working with, and therefore, a new potential audience. 

It’s also key to think beyond traditional social media metrics. This means vetting out any fake followers and engagement, which can be done by simply looking at the ratio of how many followers they claim to have, and how many likes they get on an average post. There is also such a thing as fake engagement, this means having their own friends or hub engage with their content, to make it seem as though they have a fanbase. Real followers also ask questions, and make real, personal statements. This means ‘word-of-mouth’ reactions, which is the soul purpose of influencer marketing on Instagram. 

Like SEO, lots of companies are pouring money into influencer marketing without any promise of ROI and long-term guaranteed results when it comes to reach and branding. This is why it is important to use influencers who have measurement protocols in place to understand their real value. Influencer marketing on Instagram however is continuing to grow.

That being said, it is super important to choose the right influencer in order to make your social media marketing strategy succeed. The best way to ensure that you are picking the right influencers is to outline your objectives as clearly as possible.  This is why most of your efforts and time should be spent ensuring that the influencer you select is synonymous with your brand persona, and have a genuine following and relationship with their followers, whether it’s on Facebook or Instagram.

Our Influencer marketing agency and Social agency are located worldwide, with our agency network based in the USA, UK, UAE and China.

If you want to receive our industry insights, visit our Influencer Marketing & Social Media blogs here.

@ Socially Powerful

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