How To Find Social Media Influencers
Influencers can considerably boost your brand’s online presence. They can also help you augment brand awareness, reach potential audiences, get backlinks, and, most importantly, generate leads that drive conversions. If your business wants public endorsements, you need to look for the right people to help you get there.
According to SocialMediaToday, influencer marketing tends to be 11 times more effective at ROI generation than conventional marketing forms. That is why brands look forward to influencer marketing as a potential channel to help them drive higher returns.
And when 20% to 50% of all purchase decisions are made on the basis of word-of-mouth marketing, it is essential to find and invest in the right influencers who can convince your target audience to buy from you.
Furthermore, the Association of National Advertisers revealed that 75% of the brands use influencers for promotional tactics. So the chances are that your competitors already have an influencer marketing strategy, even if you don’t.
But better late than never!
Finding good influencers to work with will be the biggest hurdle to developing a viable strategy for your business. But it’s not as difficult as it seems to be.
Let’s dive deeper on how to find social media influencers!
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer marketing is an effective digital marketing strategy that involves leveraging an influencer’s authority and reach to increase visibility and build awareness for your brand.
These social media influencers inspire and connect with others through social platforms. They take their time to build a repute and following online, creating a ready-made audience of like-minded individuals who enjoy their content.
And for a price, their audience could be yours!
Brands can partner with influencers and get them to:
- Spread the word about a brand. Influencers can engage the audience with brand mentions or content to entice the audience to take action, such as visit your website, social media handles, or check your content.
- Become a brand’s representative. Influencers can become a brand’s spokesperson and ambassador. It can share brand-related content with the audience and build recognition.
- Talk about a brand.Influencers can develop their content pertinent to a brand’s values and story to promote their products or services.
These are big names of social media sites and have already established relationships that resonate with their followers. You can use their clout to drive conversions and genuine engagement.
Advantages of Influencer Marketing
You can partner with a macro influencer like Kylie Jenner with around 137 million followers on Instagram or a micro-influencer like Karrie Truman, a niche blogger with 14K Instagram followers. Either way, your brand (as long as it has the same audiences as theirs) can reap several benefits out of this deal.
Influencer marketing campaigns can help you with the following:
- Build and increase brand awareness
- Reach your potential audience in a significant way
- Boost your social media followers
- Develop and maintain the relationship with the target audience
- Build high-quality backlinks
- Get earned media coverage through promotional strategies
- Generate new prospects and drive conversions
Now that you are aware of precisely what influencer marketing is all about and how it can help your brand achieve its intended goals, let’s look at how to find the social media influencers in the most effective ways.
9 Tips To Find Social Media Influencers
Social media influencers have the skills and reach to sway the audience and entice them to respond to a specific call to action and generate leads and conversions for your brand.
A Twitter survey revealed that 40% of Twitter users made purchase decisions after reading an influencer’s tweet.
Furthermore, influencers deliver your content with genuine authenticity, fostering the followers’ trust, and getting hooked to the influencer and their content. This, in turn, helps to plan and execute an effective digital marketing campaign.
There are over 500,000 influencers on Instagram alone, which means there are numerous potential opportunities for you to collaborate with an influencer. It also means that you have to put in the effort to find an influencer that fits your brand’s unique needs.
Today, influencers are everywhere. However, finding the right ones with appropriate engagement rates and followers is a daunting process, but don’t fret! We have rounded up some of the best ways to simplify your journey of searching for an influencer.
Let’s explore these:
#1 Understand your Purpose and Goals
When it comes to finding social media influencers, it is imperative to focus on the right influencer rather than every influencer. These help you achieve your goals and reach the intended audience on time.
For starters, devise your influencer marketing strategy and outline the campaign’s purpose, what goals you aim to achieve, and expectations from it.
Your campaign-related objectives may include increasing brand awareness and recognition, building an audience, generating leads, driving engagement and conversions, and boosting customer loyalty.
When you define your primary objectives, you can better gauge the effectiveness of influencer campaigns and relationships.
#2 Identify the Appropriate Type of Campaign for your Needs
It is vital to map out your marketing plan and also build an influencer marketing campaign that is sure to resonate with the intended audience. This will also help your influencers run the promotion for your brand in the most impactful way.
Some of the different types of campaigns include:
- Affiliates. When a brand shares affiliate codes with an influencer, it lets them earn money every time a customer goes through their funnel and makes a purchase
- Sponsored Content. It’s a paid influencer campaign. Brands pay to the influencer, and in exchange, they share or create content for them
- Discount Codes. It allows influencers to provide the followers and fans with discount codes for your products or services
- Influencer takeover. It allows an influencer to take control of your social media handle for a certain amount of time
- Giveaways and contests. It’s used as an incentive to entice the audience to try out your offerings where influencers share a brand’s content or mention it
- Brand ambassadors. Collaborate with an influencer who promotes your brand in exchange for perks and discounts from your business
#3 Find Industry-Related Influencers for Your Brand
While deciding on social media influencers for your brand’s niche, the right place to start is with well-known people in your niche. Famous industry influencers allow you to build brand awareness and spread messages to your target audience.
Furthermore, you can also subscribe to Google alert to know industry-related terms and to check the essential topics for content in the industry. Also, you can visit forums to see industry-relevant queries and responses.
#4 Find Influencers Working With Your Competitors
To find appropriate influencers for your brand, you need to look for those who promote your competitor’s brand. They likely have more chances to work with you as they already create and share content about other industry players and relate to your brand and niche.
Additionally, browse and search for industry-related hashtags on digital platforms to assess who shares the content, talks about your competitors, etc. Engage the prospective influencers as they can help your brand reach its potential.
#5 Find Influencers That Resonates With Your Audience
Influencers who share the same audience as your brand are just as valuable as industry-related content creators. The social media influencers that complement your brand’s value can help you reach more of your target audience.
Furthermore, you can analyze the target audience to comprehend your ideal audience, their interests, needs, and the influencers they follow. That way, you can strategize your approach and also break through the curated feeds of your audience.
#6 Find Influencers Through A Social Listening Tool
Your audience may be talking about your offerings, i.e., product, service, or solution. And your task is to find the influencer that will help you accomplish your influencer marketing goals.
Social listening tools can help find your brand’s niche influencer and advocates. You must be wondering how? And rightly so. You can monitor and track your brand mentions and capture your most active followers.
A social listening tool like Mentionlytics lets you track your brand’s social mentions through industry-related keywords and competitors’ brands. If you aim to use your influencer marketing strategy as an overall part of your social media marketing strategy, go for the feature-rich tool such as Mentionlytics.
Furthermore, you can also analyze the results and gain valuable insights about your digital channels. You can measure the engagement level, conversations, comments, and much more under a single platform.
#7 Find Influencers Via Google Search
Google search is yet another way to find social media influencers to boost your brand’s visibility. You can search for the potential and relevant influencers via searching their follower count, online activity, and engagement levels.
To do this, you use the search panel and write your query like you do to fund any particular information on Google. By using the ‘advanced search’ feature, you can use advanced filters to find out targeted information regarding the best influencers in your niche.
Furthermore, you can filter your search results by location, time, and other options that may help you find relevant influencers. Most importantly, it’s free of charge, and you can leverage the platform in the most useful way to discover suitable influencers.
#8 Understand The Influencer’s Authority
When you look for an influencer, it is imperative to consider and evaluate their ability to determine if they have the reach and power to influence your audience and help you achieve your marketing related goals.
Consider the following factors before you select an influencer:
- Fan base or followers
- Followers’ engagement rate
- Content quality
#9 Measure The Results
In order to find the influencers, it is imperative to measure the influencer campaign results against the KPIs. That way, you can determine if you were able to achieve your objectives and reach your goals.
Furthermore, campaign results can also help you devise strategies to drive successful campaigns in the future.
The influencer marketing campaigns can help you gauge if a particular content creator was able to produce expected results. If no, it’s a good indication to find other suitable influencers to reach your audience and, ultimately, your goals.
Find the Right Social Media Influencers with Mentionlytics
We see the power of a single tweet or a comment on Instagram can significantly impact a brand’s visibility.
Businesses need to leverage social media monitoring solutions to track and observe their audience’s behavior. More importantly, see if their influencer marketing efforts resonate with the right prospects.
Mentionlytics can help. It is a feature-rich social listening tool that can track customers’ comments, monitor your social media to brand mentions and let you see which hashtags they use. This AI-powered technology allows you to effectively discover the most competent social media influencers in no time.
Furthermore, predictive analytics single out the influencers, and AI technology also generates better ROI and enhances its overall performance.
If you are on a journey to find the right social media influencer, Mentionlytics, with its AI-powered helps you in influencer discovery in the most impactful way.
Originally posted on Mentionlytics : https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/how-to-find-social-media-influencers
