4 Tips to help you find the right social media influencer for your brand or company
What is a social media influencer?
We are living in a digital world, heavily relying on different media platforms for new connections, marketing opportunities and our daily intake of current affairs.
Businesses have had to take a more digital approach to marketing, as the coronavirus (Covid-19) has made face to face engagement impossible.
Social media platforms are utilised by companies to advertise their services or products. This can be enhanced through the use of a social media influencer. By hiring individuals to promote the company, they are increasing online traffic for the brand’s digital presence.
Influencers get paid by companies to create content around their product or service. This can be through creating videos on Youtube (e.g. reviews, vlogs or tutorials), podcasts, using Snapchat, creating TikToks, paid promotional posts on Instagram or even through blogging.
These paid social media sponsorships can be of anything; from gaming channels advertising a new console, to Instagram posts by models on new cosmetic products.
How do I find the right person to represent my brand?
1. Find influencers relevant to your brand
Research influencers on various social media sites, by going through hashtags. Seeing what’s trending and what’s popular will open up a wide range of influencers specific to your brand.
If you sell beauty products, search for #makeupartist or simply #makeup, to find promising influencers. From here, you can instant message or email the potential influencer, which will also allow you to build a good, personal rapport.
You can also use HypeAuditor. This shows the most popular influencers on Instagram, through ranking and specifying location, topics and audience engagement.
However, if you would rather opt out of searching manually for an influencer, there are many agencies such as, Brandambassador, Upfluence, or Zine where you can directly hire an influencer.
2. Do they produce content that will fit with your brand?
Whether it’s short and snappy videos on TikTok, longer videos on Youtube, posts on Facebook or Instagram or even a tweet on Twitter, it is important to research what kind of content a potential influencer produces and whether their lifestyle fits in with what you’re selling.
Say you own or manage a butchery you wouldn’t, for example, approach Fearne Cotton to promote your business as she’s known as one of the country’s favourite vegans!
3. Is your influencer reliable? Research them!
Before getting into contact or creating a pitch for an influencer, you should ensure their accountability.
If you’re going to find an influencer yourself, there are thousands of auto-bots and fake influencer accounts out there. In order to avoid them, you should check their followers - are they real accounts? If the accounts don’t have profile pictures and have way too many numbers in their username, then the ‘influencer’ may not be active.
Check out the comments on their posts - do they respond to any followers? Or do they have hundreds of followers but barely any comments? This could be another sign that the account is fake.
4. Do they fit into your budget?
Influencer costs depend on the number of followers they have, the number of posts they create, what type of content they produce and how well the brand fits in with their own page.
According to webfx, on average, Facebook influencers charge $25 (£19.17) per post, per 1,000 followers. Instagram influencers charge $10 (£7.67) per post, per 1000 followers. Twitter- $2 (£1.53) per post, per 1,000 followers. Youtube- $20 (£15.34) a video, per 1,000 subscribers. Snapchat- $10 (£7.67) per post, per 1000 followers. Blog post- $60 (£46.01) per 1,000 visitors.
As these are all estimated charges, every individual influencer may have their own specific requirements. For example, some beauty companies send out PR packages as a part of their agreement.
Communicating with a potential influencer on what they will receive for creating content is vital as is ensuring you have a valid, legal and signed document in case there are any disagreements.
We will continue to post more tips and tricks on how you can enhance your content marketing skills, so keep an eye out for new posts!
Image credit: Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash