6 Tips for Finding the Right Influencer for your Business & Brand

To successfully communicate your brand’s story, you should form partnerships with the right influencers in the right social channels that share your brand values and ideals. Otherwise, influencer marketing can easily lose authenticity and appeal with a “#sponsored” hashtag in a social media post.

“The act of influencing requires a specific result: a change in thinking or behavior. An influencer, therefore, is someone who has the power to influence the perception of others or gets them to do something different.” - Gerardo A. Dada, Forbes Communications Council

Which Influencer Type is Best for My Business?

Influencers can serve as a modern-day equivalent of (paid) word-of-mouth marketing, which is especially critical for small- to medium-sized businesses that are still in an earlier stage of growth. Here are recommended criteria to consider when selecting the right influencer(s) with which to partner to promote your brand in the right social channels:

1) Channel

Not all social media platforms are created equal. Identify which platforms (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, etc.) are the ideal ones for your brand to connect with the right age demographic. From there, search for groups (i.e., on Facebook or LinkedIn) and hashtags related to your service, product and market sector. Each social media platform will require a unique research strategy to identify the best influencer(s) for your brand, which is why you want to narrow down the initial search to the ones that your target audience.

2) Geography

For every business, small or large, geography is key consideration in your search for the right influencer(s) with which to partner. For small- to medium-sized businesses, you're most likely looking for influencers with an audience in a specific region. To find these influencers, you will want to set-up searches and follow hashtags specific to your target market geographies. These searches can be as specific as an iconic street or neighborhood or be as broad as a state, country or region (i.e., the Pacific Northwest or Sub-Saharan Africa).

3) Traits

Once you identify potential influencers to promote your brand, you'll need to consider whether they have the ideal characteristics from which your brand will benefit most. According to Forbes, great influencers must have a “combination of three key factors: reach, contextual credibility and salesmanship. The higher these three factors, the higher the influence potential of an individual.”

4) Size

Bigger is not necessarily better. For start-ups and early-stage businesses, nano and micro-influencers can give you the most bang for your buck (i.e., the best return on investment). These influencers with smaller followings (1,000 - 50,000 followers) may have the following advantages: lower cost, better availability, higher engagement rates and more authenticity. With smaller-scale influencers, business owners can hone their messaging with the ability to target specific market niches and demographics.

5) Engagement

No matter the size of the following, take time to read through comments and reactions to an influencer's posts (and not just note the amount of 'likes'). Typically, the right influencer for your business will have gained their followers because they have the three key traits mentioned above, as well as authentic, engaging content that appeals to their audience. If you see posts with a lot of likes, but that have no comments (or comments that are clearly other accounts trolling for business), then this may not be the right 'influencer' for your brand.

6) Brand Values

Last, but not least, ask yourself: do these influencers that you've selected identify with your products or services because they directly benefit them and their audience? Influencer-partners are essentially acting as a brand representative for your company. As a business owner, you want to make sure that you and the influencers with whom you work have an open dialogue about expectations and content direction at the onset. You will also want to have an agreement in place prior to entering into a partnership.

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If this sounds overwhelming, we can help profile the right influencers for your brand and facilitate those connections! Contact us for a complimentary consultation for a complimentary consultation to ELEVATE your business - and brand - to the NEXT level and connect you with the right influencer-partners.

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