Yahoo Finance 3 tips to find the right 'influencer' for your brand
With the boom of social media, content creators or “influencers” have become one of the most effective marketing avenues for brands of all sizes.
As great as it is to have someone with a fanbase back your business, it’s becoming increasingly harder to separate the diamonds from the dust.
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Here are three ways to sift through talent to find someone more likely to get you results.
1. Diversification of audience
Being able to work out if a content creator is substantial, trustworthy or has a true audience can be difficult.
The first way to determine this is to look at their other social media channels and see if there is consistent diversification.
For example, does a TikTok star have strong audience on both Instagram and YouTube?
That tells me their audience generally follows the creator wherever they go.
And I care about this as a brand owner because if my objective is traffic, you want your creator to have an audience who cares and is invested in what they have to say.
2. Are they a niche creator?
It’s 2022, so depending on the industry you’re in, there is almost always a content creator to match it.
However, there are a branch of content creators that don’t fit into a particular niche and have more generalised audiences.
To get the best ‘bang for your buck’ you want the influencer to align with your niche.
It’s true that there is a time and place for generalised audiences, but they are usually attached to macro-influencers who have been in the space for a long time.
That’s because brands that want these creators are most always looking for brand awareness rather than direct conversion and care about volume.. Large fashion brands can sometimes be a good example of this.
3. Analyse previous campaigns
Numbers generally don’t lie.
By spending some time looking at the engagement rates of an influencer you can determine whether or not their posting fee is justified.
What you’ll find is that solid content creators generally have a percentage which sits above the industry standard of 1-5 per cent.
So, when you’re scouting through a content creator's page, look for previous work they’ve done and check out the results.
Because by looking at the amount of likes and views on a post you can get a rough idea of how much traffic that will generate for your business.
But, always be pessimistic and assume 1-3 per cent.
Something important to note however is that all talent comes in different forms and that sometimes there are variables at play that are unquantifiable, such as the quality or purchasing power of an audience.
The best advice is whenever planning out a campaign, think like the audience and consider what you would want to see in terms of a creative.
Too many brands forget that content creators are experts in their domain and that imposing creative ideas will often result in a negative response from the audience or lack of interest.
It’s often best to listen to the creator and work with them and their ideas rather than impose highly restrictive brand guidelines.
So, be open to new ideas from someone who genuinely knows their audience and you never know what success the partnership might generate.
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