How to Find the right Influencers for your Brand

You might think that working with influencers for your brand’s campaign is easy, but in reality there’s a lot of work than just finding an influencer, and then driving new faces to your brand.

Working with influencers comes with risks and rewards. The success of influencer marketing is generated by the fact that it’s not perceived as traditional marketing. People have grown accustomed to advertising and have begun tuning out conventional advertising messages. They have grown to recognise when influencers are being endorsed by brands to promote their products or services. But this doesn’t mean that the people are not interested in what the influencer has to say.

Influencers have their own personal brand, and they’ll associate only with brands that align with them. And people are still influenced by them, because the content they generate is their own. When you work with influencers, you need to keep in mind that they will portray the brand’s message in their own way.

This is why working with influencers is more powerful than traditional marketing, through them you’re tapping into their engaged community. And it eases the process of finding loyal customers and expanding your audience reach.

But how do you know an influencer is right for you and your brand? That’s easy, all you have to do to ensure they are aligned with your brand’s message and values is:

Understand your target audience

The influencer you are deciding to work with, must be one that your audience follows. If not, you need to make sure your target audience is the same as the influencer’s. This ensures that your products and services are shown to the relevant audience.

You need to analyse your influencers

Before agreeing to working with an influencer, you should analyse their social profile and see if they are a good fit for your brand. Take a look at the content they are sharing, make sure it will fit with your brand’s message and personality. Look at their followers, manually go through their followers and identify if there are bots or real people and of course if the real ones are aligned with your brand.

The next thing you need to look at is engagements. Because it is the best indicator that shows if their followers are truly interested in what the influencer is posting. And essentially it measures how much the influencers can be able to influence their followers' purchasing decisions. Also, you need to make sure they are from the same niche as your business. If you’re a beauty brand, you need to look after influencers that are beauty gurus, or make-up artists.

Search through hashtags Hashtags are a good way to find the right influencers for your brand campaign. Just by searching on Instagram a relevant industry hashtag, you can find influencers that could potentially be a good fit. After you’ve found one, it’s best to check their audience, their social profile and decide if they are truly the right ones.

Search on social media

Look out for brand mentions, you can find influencers that follow your brand. Searching after people that are already talking about your brand eases the process and also it gives you the opportunity to work with the right people.

Influencer marketing platforms

These platforms are also a great way to find influencers to work with. They can easily and quickly find them. You can search influencers by different categories, however, they don’t ensure their quality. You still would have to do some social research and see if they are a great fit for your brand.

These are the steps you need to take in order to ease the process of finding influencers to work with. Now your campaign can get the green light. But, remember, they are still people and you need to engage with them and pay them for their work. After all, it's one thing finding them and another thing to actually get them to collaborate with you. But, that’s a different article for some other time ;) Are you ready for your next great batch of influencers? If you think this might be a little too much for you, we at Social Media Boutique, are very skilled at picking the right influencer to do the job. Book a FREE call with us, and let’s start your influencer outreach:

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