Influencer marketing has been turned out to be a fashionable and prevalent way of social media marketing over the last few years. Surely, Social Media marketing is more powerful than other forms of marketing, that is why it is crucial to build a strong influencer marketing strategy for your campaigns.

According to a survey conducted by Influencer Marketing Hub, with more than 4000 marketing agencies, 91% of respondents believe that influencer marketing is an effective marketing strategy.

Finding the right influencers to promote your brand isn’t an easy task. And for a marketer, this matters because influencer selection has a great significance to the success of campaigns.

All joking apart, selecting the right influencers is a challenge. So in this post, we are here to guide you on how to choose the best influencers for your brand.

At the outset consider influencers as mutual friends between you and your target audience. They raise brand awareness, enhance the quality of your content, strengthen engagement levels, effortlessly reach your target audience around social media platforms, improve your brand’s credibility and trust among your followers, and much more. Eventually, they will contribute to the success of your brand.

Before listing the steps to choose the best influencers, mindfully answer a few questions which will make your proceedings more clear.

1. Who is your target audience?

2. What is your goal- whether product-driven or social goal?

3. What is your budget?

If you have answered these questions the rest is quite easy. Simply follow the steps to choose the best influencers ideal for you.

1. Identify appropriate social media platforms to find influencers

Present-day people are following current trends and are under the influence of their favorite social media stars. This greatly impacts their purchasing decisions and the brands they use. So at the outset select the social media platforms to drive your campaign.

2. Determine the type of social media influencers

It’s important to take into account influencers’ audience size because it determines your product's promotion and also your budget.

Based on the number of followers on social media, influencers are categorized as

Mega-influencers with more than a million followers

Macro-influencers with 500K to 1 million followers

Mid-tier influencers with 50K to 500K followers

Micro-influencers with 10K to 50K followers

Nano-influencers with 1K to 10K followers

3. Do your Research

After determining the platforms and type of influencers you want to choose you can move forward with research.

The next question is where you can find influencers. There are many ways to find influencers such as

• You can search using Hashtags across all social media platforms and these hashtags must be related and relevant to your brand.

• You can simply set google search alerts based on a keyword that is appropriate for your brand.

• Use social media monitoring tools and listening tools. This helps to track your brand mentions across all social media platforms.

• Readily you can use blogger outreach platforms or influencer marketing platforms and can find influencers for your brand without undue delay.

Presume that we have found a list of influencers and we believe that they are apt for promoting our brand and appropriate for our campaigns.

But these beliefs alone cannot guarantee that your selections are great. Decision-making must be done by considering certain characteristics and metrics that can be statistically validated.

Here come those factors you should keep in mind while analyzing the profile of each influencer before selecting them.

1. Find out the Relevance of the influencer

You should be conscious of the type and quality of the content in the posts. Reviewing their previous posts will address this issue.  Make sure that their audience matches your target market as well. A study about the influencer’s background will also work to understand them better. Ensure that their follower’s age, gender, location, interests, language, etc. are favorable for the growth of your product.

2. Engagement rate is very important

Simply evaluating an influencer doesn't make perfect sense, checking their post's engagement rate is necessary. Simply stated engagement rate is the level of interaction between an influencer and followers.

The engagement rate can change according to the number of followers, it is striking that nano and micro-influencers have higher engagement rates as compared to macro and mega influencers.

It reveals how many followers are truly interested in their content. And it also measures the influencing capabilities of an influencer. Thus, checking the engagement rate is worthy for you before taking any decision.

SocialiQ is here to help you to find out the engagement rate of your favorite influencers on Instagram.

3. Reach of the influencer in social media

Reach is the number of followers of an influencer. Larger the reach larger the number of people who will see their posts. But Bigger is not always the better.

Let me explain with the help of an example:

Influencer A with 10000 followers on Instagram receives 1000 likes for each post.

Influencer B with 20000 followers on Instagram receives only 500 likes for each post.

This seems to be objectionable, but this happens. So take into account the number of followers of influencers. Consequently, depending on your budget and level of engagement, you can select a type of influencer apt for your brand.

4. The authenticity of an influencer should be valued

Authenticity means the quality of being real or true. Authentic influencers have more followers. If the content posted is trusted by followers influencers are more likely to be authentic. Influencers who share their personal stories, life experiences, tips, advice, etc. connect with their followers more personally. So the products they promote have more credibility among their followers.

5. The values and personality of the influencers

Make sure that the influencers you work to match your brand's values.  Reviewing their previous posts and contents can help you to determine your values and personality. The resemblance in values and missions of your brand and influencers will make a considerable impact on your success.

Be Patient, Good things take time. For choosing the right from countless influencers, you should be determined and easily follow the steps and you will get remarkable results. Bank on that social media influencers is the most powerful way to promote your brand and boost the success of your marketing campaigns. Remember influencer marketing is gonna be the nitty-gritty of social media marketing in the future.