Influencer Marketing â the Fine Art of Identifying an Influencer
Influencer Marketing â the Fine Art of Identifying an Influencer
So you have gathered all the info on the game-changing influencer-marketing campaign, identified the social-media platforms which will be hot in the next year and earmarked your media-spend for the year. All set, are you?
Wait a second! Have you identified the right influencer? With hordes of bloggers available across the platforms, it may look like an easy job to identify an influencer for your campaign. Except that it ainât!
From fake followers to influencers and their followers not aligned with product profile to costing issue to the low frequency of postings by the influencers â there are many problems the brand leads and creative teams in influencer marketing agencies face every day.
Add to that heavily booked pipelines and delayed or no-response to messages and you have quite a handful of influencer woes at your hand.
So here we give you five tips on how to identify an influencer best suited for your influencer marketing campaign.
1. Credibility â Fake followers may be the biggest of the credibility problems, but itâs not the only one.
âThe content posted by the influencers also has to be credible. Some influencers outsource content, and that is not something any influencer marketing agency shall appreciate. Interactivity with the followers that comment has to be good with a prompt responseâ says Mahima Chawla, Brand lead at ANTS Digital.
To tackle the problem of fake followers, Chawla suggests checking of profiles and  âfollowers-to-likesâ ratio of the influencer. âMaking long-term relationships with influencers and being open to trying out new and upcoming ones is the key to address the credibility issueâ opines Chawla. Â
2. Content â Often the influencers become complacent after having acquired a huge following and their frequency of uploading content goes down. This leads to lower traffic on their posts and less exposure to your brand. âRegular posts are a mustâ asserts Akash Agarwal, Brand lead ANTS Digital. âEngagement has to be high, and for a platform like Instagram, visual appeal is a mustâ concludes Agarwal.
3. Cost â what is the correct fee of hiring an influencer? Could they be over-charging? âNoâ asserts Chawala who hires influencers on a regular basis âThis is a lot of work for the influencer and what we pay works out to a very reasonable amount when you calculate cost-per-click. Again, long term relations lead to rationalisation of the costs furtherâ says Chawla.
4. Alignment â so you have a high-end fashion brand to promote and your influencer, for all her gorgeous looks, is followed mostly by travel enthusiasts buying two cargos a year? Itâs important that both the influencer and the followers' profile is aligned with your brand. âYou can ensure this by checking their posts, looking at their website, check the comments to know about the followers' profile and by keeping an eye on the previous brands that the influencer has worked withâ suggests Agarwal.
5. Aesthetics â well you donât exactly need a fashion model if you are promoting a spices brand but then letâs face it. Advertising is a visual medium and the most popular platform, Instagram is more visual-driven than any other.
âThough the old-fashioned notions of glamorous looking advertising have changed, and the emphasis is on real looking visuals, a certain level of aesthetic appeal is expected of all visual material in the digital space too. So influencers and their posts must have a certain amount of effortless beauty balanced with real, relatable visualsâ opines Nitesh Agarwal who has worked as creative director on products like FRU2go fruit snack, STUDDS helmets and AamRus Frozen Mango Pulp.
Keep these five points in mind when you hire the next influencer for your campaign. With the correct person and the right strategy, influencer marketing shall definitely turn out to be an effective tool for your campaign.