Finding Influencers to Promote Your Brand
Influencer marketing is a new word-of-mouth marketing strategy that is taking the world by storm. Recommendations from trusted influencers are now a major asset for today’s brands.
Influencer marketing is already up and running, with brands having spent between $25,000 and $50,000 on individual influencer marketing programs in 2016.
Influencer marketing is about more than sales; it includes branding, engagement, and loyal followers for your business.
So, how do you find influencers interested in promoting your brand?
Factors That Determine the Best Influencers For Your Brand
It is obviously necessary to find influencers whose content is relevant to your audience; a salsa influencer won’t be very effective in promoting pet products. What brands need are influencers who are already producing content that their audiences find valuable.
Reach
Influencers are social celebrities in regard to their reach and followings. These are the metrics, which take into account likes, followers, retweets and comments, that really matter when selecting an influencer to promote your brand.
Beyond an influencer’s reach and following, it is important to find out the kinds of products and brands with which he or she is associated. These products and brands should be similar to yours if the influencer is to have a significant impact for you.
Resonance
The most effective influencers have loyal fan followings and receive lots of positive comments on their posts. Earning a like is good, but influencers who can spark conversation through their posts are even better. You can use platforms like Influence.co to find business influencers.
It just makes sense to use the biggest professional social networking service to find business influencers. All that you need to do is enter relevant keywords in the LinkedIn search box to generate a list of second-degree connections who may be able to play the role of influencers. When you are activating LinkedIn-based influencers, the following leverage practices can help you to build a rapport:
- Like influencers’ pages and share their posts
- Include value-adding content in comments on their posts
- Join their LinkedIn pages and request that they join yours
FollowerWonk
Moz offers this superb tool for finding influencers on Twitter. Just go to Moz > FollowerWonk and click on the “Search Bios” tab. Add keywords, select “search Twitter bios only,” and click on “Do It.” To organize your Twitter influencer search, you can use this fantastic cheat sheet from SproutSocial. Looking for more? Check out this list of influencer marketing platforms from Seosandwitch.
Blogger Outreach
Did you know that 86% of influencers operate their own blogs as well? This makes blogger outreach a great approach for identifying and networking with influencers. Check out Neil Patel’s comprehensive list of tools that you can use to conduct blogger outreach.
Snapchat
Snapchat has only around 100 million users, which is nothing compared to Facebook. It’s a young platform, though, which means that it has less noise and more space for you to create visibility for your brand through influencer marketing. Pay attention to the A-listers; consistently send them comments and thoughts on their content, and, once you become a familiar name to them, request action from these influencers.
The key to making your influencer search and outreach activities a success is to be organized and consistent. Happy marketing!
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