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How to Identify the Right Influencers for your Brand

July 21, 2021

Today’s consumers will block, skip and ignore disruptive advertising. The number of Americans using an adblocker will grow to 86.6 million in 2021, 24% more than in 2020, predicts eMarketer. Avoiding advertising creates a marketing opportunity to use organic and natural touchpoints to reach consumers, even influencers.

By developing content for your marketing and business, influencers increase engagement, reach, and even conversions.

Why use influencers to get your brand message across?

As the name suggests, influencers influence. Your experience, reach and influence on the subject can be a great asset to your overall marketing strategy. Some other reasons influencers are effective:

How do you research influencers?

However, not all influencers are the same. In fact, there are a lot of fake and crippled ducks out there. How do you determine if they can make a difference to your brand’s ROI? Here are three ways.

  1. Relevance:

You need to choose influencers that are right for your business so that your shared content will reach a relevant audience. For example, Scott Disick and Kourtney Kardashian are not working on a B2B SaaS solution.

Answer the following questions to determine if the influencer is relevant to your brand:

  • Is the influencer an expert in your brand’s industry?
  • The influencer speaks well in the [final topic].
  • Is the [local] influencer based (if geographic relevance is important)?
  • Does the influencer’s audience match your brand’s demographics?

  1. Scope of application

It can be measured by followers, website visitors, and subscribers. While the numbers vary by industry, here are some basic numbers based on the influence campaigns we’ve run for brands:

Followers.

  • Twitter: 10,000+
  • Facebook: 10,000+
  • Instagram: 10,000+
  • Snapchat: over 100,000
  • YouTube: over 100,000

If your industry is a niche, these numbers are likely too high. You should examine your industry to see if these limits make sense. The same applies to the number of visitors and subscribers to the website.

Subscribers

Influencers often post their subscriber numbers on their websites. Look for influencers with at least 5,000 subscribers.

  1. Resonance

While the number of audience members reached is important, it doesn’t matter if the influencer doesn’t have an active audience. Resonance refers to the influence of influencers on your online audience; it’s all about the message they convey and the impression they make on their audience. It can be measured by real online activity and statistics.

Ask the following questions.

Real-world results:

  • Is the influencer a speaker at industry events?
  • Is the influencer a published author?
  • Does the influencer have a diploma, award, or special award?

Influence Score: Does the influencer have an influence score of X or higher? (We recommend looking for influencers with a Klout score of 60 or higher.)

Tools to put in your arsenal

Tools can make it easier to identify the right influencer. Here are some you can use:

  • ClearVoice: ClearVoice Content Studio allows you to discover voices relevant to a specific keyword. You can see where and how often influencers post content and social stats for each piece. (Note: I am the CEO and co-founder of ClearVoice.)
  • Klout: As noted earlier, you can use Klout to determine the resonance of an influencer.
  • LinkedIn: LinkedIn finds industry-relevant matches with its “industry search” feature and lets you see if people are LinkedIn editors.
  • Twitter: This platform provides a good overview of influencers. You can see the number of followers, tweets, moments, and shared content, and content engagement levels. Tools like Twinonomy provide additional profile data about Twitter followers.

Some Parting Words

Be sure to create a backdrop for the campaign as part of the influencer identification process. It includes social channels, content types, goals, and targeted KPIs. Help define your brand and influencers for success.