What should I follow when choosing influencers?
Searching for the perfect influencer for a brand is akin to getting ready for an important outing.
Surely you know that state when you spend hours looking through things in your closet and eventually come to the conclusion that you have nothing to wear. Seemingly your closet is overflowing with a huge variety of clothes. However, just when you think you've found the right outfit for the evening, you put it on and look at yourself in the mirror - it turns out that it's not it. Then comes a moment of resignation and lack of faith that you will be able to find anything. Until finally, after dozens of minutes, several nervous breakdowns and arguments with your other half, you find that one outfit that will make you shine that evening.
The same is true of finding an influencer or ambassador for a brand. This is a lengthy process that requires attention, analysis and a bit of imagination.
What should I look for when choosing an influncer for a brand?
- Number of followers?
- Recognition of a particular artist?
- How about on his or her story?
More and more brands are aware (thankfully!) that the number of followers is not an indicator of a good influencer.
Whenresearching and analyzing the profiles of people we are considering for cooperation, it is important to pay close attention to several main aspects:
🏮 Commitment
Keyindicator, which makes us realize that it is often much more beneficial for us to choose a macroinfluencer for cooperation, who has 15% engagement, than a mega-influencer, who has 1% of activated audience. By analyzing the engagement on a given creator's profile, we are able to see how many people will realistically react to the materials created by that creator, including, among other things, paying attention to the product and going to our website.
🏮 Recipient group
Whenlooking for a brand ambassador or influencer for a single campaign, we should carefully check whether his or her audience overlaps with our target group. A given influencer may have great stats and produce amazing creative content with our product. Only so what if it doesn't reach the group that could potentially be interested in buying?
For example, we have a brand of exclusive cars and we enter into a partnership with an influencer, 85% of whose audience is in the 16-25 age range. Of course, these people may look with admiration at a breathtaking car, but will they consider buying it? It will probably remain in the realm of their dreams, because they don't have the means.
🏮 Range
An extremely important indicator that we should pay attention to is the reach of the materials in question. This allows us to estimate how many people our publication will ultimately reach. It may be that an influencer has several hundred thousand followers, but his posts have an average of a few thousand reach. In such a case, it is better to consider an influencer whose publications reach a larger audience.
🏮 Credibility
Ifwe are looking for someone to promote our services or products, we should consider how reliable this cooperation will be for the audience.
The creator should fit in with the brand, and his beliefs and values should be the same as those of the brand.
For example, we have a beauty brand that is also available in other global markets, where products are tested on animals. We decided to work with a beauty influencer who has a great reach and supports ecology, animal defense, etc. Such a person has an audience around her who have the same beliefs as she does. At the time of our cooperation, one of her observers sends a link to an article about cosmetics being tested on animals. We, instead of advertising, have an image crisis and anti-advertising.
Is it worth it? Not worth it.
🏮Quality of content
Evenwhen working with micro-influencers, it is important to pay attention to the quality of the content they create.
- Does the creator care about the space in which he creates materials?
- Does it stand out from other publications?
- Are its materials aesthetically pleasing and thoughtful?
A few minutes on a particular creator's profile can make us convinced to work with him or her and confident that he or she will create great content for us, or give up on the idea.
🏮 Interaction with recipients
It's worth taking a longer moment to see if the creator interacts with his audience, and how he responds to their messages. You can see that the influencer is engaged, often on stories answering his followers' questions, doing live, or actively responding to their comments with something more than a like or an emoticon? If so, there is a good chance that he or she will respond the same way to any questions about our brand. What's more, more interaction with the audience means more engagement and trust in the creator's recommendations.
🏮Previous collaborations
Evenfor one-off activities, I recommend verifying that the influencer has not recently collaborated with a competing brand or with a company we do not want to be associated with. Let's imagine we have healthy, fit snacks, and the influencer we've contracted to work with has published a photo with an energizer. Putting healthy food side by side with a carbonated, sweetened and energizing drink doesn't look good, even less so if we know that its composition significantly deviates from the word "health."
Paying attention to all of the above aspects will give you a sense of security and allow you to minimize possible crises. Of course, you should also not forget to check the history of the influencer in question, his character and controversiality.
#PROTIP FOR BEGINNERS
Are you starting your influencer marketing adventure and selecting creators for your brand for the first time?
Make an excel in which you write down each person you are considering. Create several columns where you will enter valued benefits, honorarium, number of followers, engagement, reach and audience.
By putting all the data in one place, it will be much easier for you to choose that right influencer.