Choosing the right influencers
Choosing the right influencers for your marketing campaigns isn’t as straight forward as it might seem. It can be a big challenge, with pitfalls aplenty. Considering influencer marketing is still one of the top forms of digital marketing for ROI, it’s important to make well-formed decisions based on your brand IP and commercial goals.
So, let’s break it down.
Relevance
First off, what should you be looking for when you bring an influencer on board? Number one is the relevance of their content to your target consumer. If their content isn’t on topic, your audience won’t be interested enough to engage. Too salesy and not authentic enough, and that audience is unlikely to be engaged enough to purchase.
For example, yes, it’s impressive to use the latest, trending star for your campaign, but will their audience or content bring are turn for your particular brand. Not necessarily. What they post about can be as important as who they are.
Quality
Quality of content can be more crucial than follower numbers in some cases. It’s important that influencer content is highest quality, because as an someone posting on behalf of your brand, they essentially become an extension of your own marketing team. What they produce represents your brand image.
No fakers
Look out for fake influencers. These are accounts within genuine engagement rates, that pay for more followers and engagement, to look influential. If you’re unsure whether to trust an account, try looking into the below metrics as a sanity check.
• Engagement rate
• Comments– are they of quality, or just emojis/’spam’.
• Does the account react to comments, or start conversations?
• Who's following them and do they look genuine?
• Who they're following.
As a rule of thumb, if you’re questioning a creator’s high follower count, in comparison to their lack of engagement, it’s usually best to go with that gut feeling and look for an alternative.
