How to Choose an Influencer

Convincing consumers to invest in your products is no easy task, but luckily for you, we live in the digital age where you don’t have to do it yourself any more. With influencer marketing taking the world by storm, many brands are now seeking refuge in using social media influencers to grant them and their products desired exposure.

Knowing how to choose an influencer for your brand is key to a successful marketing campaign and, though it can be a daunting process, you will form a relationship that will exist beyond the business proposal. There are plenty of influencers out there, but choosing the right one for your brand may not be as easy as it seems. This blog will share all the tips and tricks with you to discover how to choose an influencer.

How to choose the right influencer for your brand

Before even looking for influencers, you need to establish your brand’s goals for the campaign. These could include;

1. Increased brand awareness
2. More sales/leads
3. Additional followers on a chosen social media platform
4. A supported content strategy

Your chosen influencer(s) should be able to aid you with the majority of these goals. After all, this is a collaboration between the both of you. 

How to Choose an Influencer: Mirror Mirror on the Wall

For both you and your influencer, image will be at the top of your priority lists. Remaining on-brand, aesthetically, is that which keeps your audiences loyal to you and is what your entire brand is built around. Your chosen influencer should mirror your brand. For example, if you are a brand who delivers minimalistic, neutral-toned images, your audience are not as likely to engage if you were to collaborate with an influencer who uses bold, bright colours and busy imagery to engage with their followers.

Not only are aesthetics important, but alignment in terms of your audiences is also absolutely necessary. While your selected influencer can promote products, you need to make sure they are promoting it to audiences that will listen and take action. Otherwise, they shout into the void and it’s a waste of your time and money.

How to Choose an Influencer: If the Shoe Fits

So, you’ve now found someone whose style and demographic matches yours. This should be it, right? Wrong.

On your influencer marketing journey, you will stumble across the term ‘engagement rate’ constantly. Your influencer’s engagement rate will indicate how well their audience resonates with and responds to their content. In other words, if you were to work with this creator, their engagement rate is a good indication of the interactions your partnership will receive.

To work out the engagement rate of a post, you add all engagements (likes, comments and shares (if available)), divide this by the number of followers, then multiply by 100.

If you want to calculate the average engagement rate of an entire profile, you need to find the average engagement rate over a minimum of 10 posts. Good engagement rate is considered anywhere between 1% – 5%.

Once the engagement rate has been calculated, you should be looking into why they have the rate that they do. If high, look into how they are interacting with their followers. Are they responding to comments or reposting their followers’ stories on their own? If they are invested in their followers, then their followers are more than likely going to be invested in what they have to share.

How to Choose an Influencer: A Match Made in Heaven!

You’ve followed all of the above steps and are so close to finding your perfect match. There are just a few more baby steps.

Knowing how to choose influencers for your brand goes hand in hand with knowing how to spot good quality content. Scroll through your potential influencer’s profile and see if you can spot content that is creative, well-shot, consistent and optimised for Instagram.

In addition to this, click on their posts and read their captions out loud. They should be coherent with the image above and well thought out. For sponsored posts, check that the caption is informative and whether or not they have explained why they like to work with certain brands. This will be very telling of your influencer’s authenticity. No one wants to work with someone who is only in it for the money.

FAQs

How to choose an influencer:

Firstly decide which social media platform you are going to use to deliver your influencer marketing campaign on. Once this is done, consider the following when searching for potential influencers to collaborate with:

1. Audience alignment 
2. Engagement 
3. Relevance
4. Authenticity
5. Values
6. Content quality
7. Frequency
8. Reliability 
9. Audience quality

How to choose the right influencer for my brand?

Set aside your brand’s goals and values and continue to keep these in the back of your mind when searching for influencers. If you come across someone whose values align with yours, hold onto them and do further research into the way in which they engage with their audience and deliver content to them. If they are right for your brand, a collaboration will happen effortlessly, as you will have so much in common.

How to choose an influencer on Instagram

Research research research! Use your brand’s following list as a way to study the types of people who follow you and compare the results to the following lists of potential influencers that you have come across thus far. If these lists are mostly similar in terms of age range, gender, ethnicity etc. then you have found a match and are guaranteed the correct exposure to your brand’s target audience.

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 blog.

@ Socially Powerful

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