6 Tips for Finding the Right Influencer for your Brand
To successfully communicate your brand’s story, you should partner with the right influencers on the same social channels that share your brand values and ideals. Otherwise, influencer marketing can easily lose authenticity and appeal when a “#sponsored” hashtag is used in a social media post.
“The act of influencing requires a specific result: a change in thinking or behavior. An influencer, therefore, is someone who has the power to influence the perception of others or gets them to do something different.” - Gerardo A. Dada, Forbes Communications Council
Which Influencer Type is Best for My Business?
Influencers can serve as a modern-day equivalent of (paid) word-of-mouth marketing, which is especially critical for small- to medium-sized businesses that are still in an earlier stage of growth. Here are the recommended criteria to consider when selecting the right influencer(s) with which to partner to promote your brand in the proper social channels:
1) Channel
Not all social media platforms are created equal. Identify which platforms (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat) are ideal for your brand to connect with the right age demographic. From there, search for groups (i.e., on Facebook or LinkedIn) and hashtags related to your service, product, and market sector. Each social media platform will require a unique research strategy to identify the best influencer(s) for your brand, which is why you want to narrow down the initial search to the ones that your target audience.
2) Geography
For every business, small or large, geography is a key consideration in your search for the right influencer(s) to partner with. For small- to medium-sized businesses, you're most likely looking for influencers with an audience in a specific region. To find these influencers, set up searches and follow hashtags specific to your target market geographies. These searches can be as specific as an iconic street or neighborhood, or as broad as a state, country, or region (e.g., the Pacific Northwest or Sub-Saharan Africa).
3) Traits
Once you identify potential influencers to promote your brand, you'll need to consider whether they have the ideal characteristics that will benefit your brand most. According to Forbes, great influencers must have a “combination of three key factors: reach, contextual credibility, and salesmanship. The higher these three factors, the higher the influence potential of an individual.”
4) Size
Bigger is not necessarily better. For start-ups and early-stage businesses, nano and micro-influencers can give you the most bang for your buck (i.e., the best return on investment). These influencers with smaller followings (1,000-50,000 followers) may offer the following advantages: lower costs, greater availability, higher engagement rates, and greater authenticity. With smaller-scale influencers, business owners can hone their messaging and target specific market niches and demographics.
5) Engagement
No matter the size of the following, take time to read through comments and reactions to an influencer's posts (and not just note the number of 'likes'). Typically, the right influencer for your business will have gained their followers because they have the three key traits mentioned above, as well as authentic, engaging content that appeals to their audience. If you see posts with a lot of likes, but that have no comments (or comments that are clearly from other accounts trolling for business), then this may not be the right 'influencer' for your brand.
6) Brand Values
Last, but not least, ask yourself: do these influencers that you've selected identify with your products or services because they directly benefit them and their audience? Influencer-partners are essentially acting as a brand representative for your company. As a business owner, you want to ensure you and the influencers you work with have an open dialogue about expectations and content direction from the outset. You will also want to have an agreement in place before entering into a partnership.
If this sounds overwhelming, we can help profile the right influencers for your brand and facilitate those connections! Contact us for a complimentary consultation for a complimentary consultation to ELEVATE your business - and brand - to the NEXT level and connect you with the right influencer-partners.
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