How To Choose The Right Influencer For Your Brand

Influencer marketing is already the first- line strategy for corporations across industries, including giants like Amazon and the popular startups like AirBnB. According to Bloglovin‘s survey, 53% of women make their purchases due to an influencer’s post. With such successful benefits reaped in its pickup last year, It’s no wonder marketers have increased their influencer marketing budgets in 2017.

However, many marketers dive head first into social media marketing without a clue on the tricky science behind it. This includes the demographics of the influencer’s audience and the percentage of inactive followers. Thus despite taking a right step to building up their brand, they have a poor return on investments from their badly planned strategies. Therefore, it is imperative that you choose the right influencer for your brand, lest you flush your investments down the toilet. This is how you do it in 5 steps.

1. Relevance of influencer

Influencers are usually specialized in a category/ theme that they post about. On top of that, their followers are usually specific to an age group, countries, as well as gender. Whether your target audiences are Italian moms or student- South East Asian travelers, it’s important to look into their content and audience demographic to ensure that the influencer is relevant to your brand.

Age, country, and gender distribution of followers from various accounts (Source: Popular Chips Insights)

2. Reach of your campaign

Despite the large traffic the influencer may seem to drive, many of their followings may be bots or inactive.

Audience insights from Kylie Jenner’s Instagram account (Source: Popular Chips Insights)

3. Engagement of their followers- do they listen to the influencer?

See if followers value their influencer’s opinions through the level of interaction their posts obtain; Seen through the ratio of likes/ comments to total followers. The level of engagement will indicate how meaningful their relationships are and thus, how ‘influential’ they are.

Analysis of Ariana Grande’s followers’ comments, likes, and dislikes (Source: Popular Chips Insights)

4. Social Listening

Follow keywords, hashtags, and topics related to your brand and target audience. Through this, you’re able to get to know potential influencers who talk about these topics and thus engage them.

Statistics of those who have seen and used the hashtags #friesday on Instagram in the last month (Source: Popular Chips Insights)

5. Research on your campaign

Study potential influencers’ top posts and videos to understand what their followers enjoy and see if you can craft a story that will appeal most to them.