How to Find the Right Influencer for Your Brand

in Brand Awareness, Influencer Marketing, Social Media

There’s no denying that social media is an integral part of our daily lives. What was once branded as a way to simplify the process of communication, has transformed into an online extension of the world around us. Anything we can do in the physical world can by done online. Though the possibilities are endless, there is a learning curve to managing this technology. This is why finding the right influencer for you is so important!

An influencer is a thought leader in their respective area of interest that has found and seized the opportunity to make themselves stand out, especially on social channels. With influencers, your brand has the opportunity to organically reach untapped audiences. When looking for the right influencers for your brand consider these 5 steps.

1. Definition Is Everything

What makes an influencer so powerful? How will they contribute to your overall brand value? There are several factors to consider when defining an influencer.

Relevance- Just because a social media personality generates engagement from a large following, doesn’t necessarily mean they are the right fit for your brand’s influencer marketing program. You have to consider your target audience. If the relevancy of a candidate is confined to the 30-50 year old age demographic, but the target audience for your product is pre-teens and adolescents, you should look for a different influencer.
Reach-Choosing the right influencer is largely a numbers game. The size of their audience correlates to the number of people your brand message can potentially reach. How many social platforms they utilize determines the type of user you are wanting to reach. Defining an influencer’s social reach sets the stage for how you will later assess their overall value for your brand.
Relatability-How influencers interact with their audience members determines their relatability. You want to find someone that is engaging with their audience in a relatable way and aligns with your brand’s messaging.

2. Do Your Research

Preliminary research is important when making sure influencers you’re interested in meet your defined standards. You need to consider which metrics to use when evaluating a prospective influencer. How does their blog rank among search engine pages? How many followers or subscribers do they have on their social channels? Do their fans comment on the content that is posted? Do the influencers engage with their followers? Comparing the data from these metrics will give you an idea of how valuable this person can be for your brand.

3. Assess Your Contenders

It’s important to rank your top influencer choices by assessing their metrics. You want to consider a few different influencers that will bring their individual contributions to complete an overall team. This is how you will effectively reach your audience.

4. Ready. Set. Engage.

Once you’ve ranked your top contenders, you can develop a strategy for how to engage with them and invite them into your program.

Start a conversation- Simply start a conversation with them. Comment on their posts, retweet their tweets, or share their latest videos. In doing so, you’re building a rapport of interest when you finally sit down to talk business.
Paint a pretty picture- Explain why you think they are the ideal candidate to represent your brand. Do you like their well-versed tone in social media posts, or their respectable brand image? If you dive straight into the metrics of why your partnership makes sense, the influencer may feel like they’re being used for their outreach. Instead, offer up some flattering, yet sincere compliments to your influencer on why you think they would make a good partner.

5. Incentive Ideas

If a social media influencer is going to devote their time and efforts on driving their audiences toward your brand, they’re going to want something in return. You’ve told them why you think they’re the best for the job, but what’s in it for them? Why should they influence their audiences to check out your brand? This is where incentives come into play. Incentive ideas include product discounts, exclusive access to new products, special events, recognition, etc. Your partnership should be a win/win for both parties. However you want to highlight how the influencer benefits in order to close the deal.

So Now What?

Once you partner with your ideal influencer, you’re going to need a way to maintain your relationship. How are you supposed to know if they are holding up their end of the deal? It’s not like you have the time to monitor all of their individual social media channels to see how they are representing your brand. Don’t worry, at Sideqik we can help you with that. Imagine being able to monitor each of your individual partner’s activity of representing your brand from a central technology platform. Find out more by visiting our website.