The term brand influencer became so popular that even your next-door jobless neighbour can be a social media influencer if they have the right skills (or hacks) to build up the following or happened to go viral at some point in life (like the Salt Bae).

So in a world oversaturated with influencers, how do you really decide what’s right for you and your business and is influencer marketing the right tool?

Before you start…

Before you start your search answer few of the important questions:

1. Who is your audience? If you haven’t created a buyer persona yet, you can do so by downloading our persona template. Alternatively, draft a list of characteristics of your target audience. Specify their age, gender, geolocation, language and use it as your criteria in search for the right influencers.
2. What platform do you want to attract your audience on? Identify the right platform for your product. While Instagram & Pinterest are great for travel, go beyond that and research where your target audience is is. Is it Bloglovin’? Maybe it’s Periscope or Snapchat? Or VK (if they live in Russia) or LiveJournal?
3.  Where is your influencers’ following? While an influencer might have a million followers, make sure that this is the right group you want to reach out to.
   1. What reach/objectives do you have? Are you after reach and brand awareness building or revenue and leads? This will help you define whether you should be working with a micro-influencer or maybe someone with over 1 mln followers mark.

Also, watch and learn from the competition. See who your competition works with (the best way to find out is to check the pictures they are tagged in or follow the hashtag they used). See if this is your right influencer and if not, look at ‘similar accounts’ on Instagram.

Where to look for potential influencers

1. Always start your search among your followers. They are your best bet because they are already aware of your brand. Oftentimes, they are already engaged brand advocates and are the best way to increase brand following and create a strong relationship.
2. Check out hashtags relevant to your brand. Instagram lists the most popular content first, so these could be your potential influencers. It is also worth checking hashtags relevant to your target audience’s interests. Are they into cooking? Look for foodie influencers. Fitness or yoga? Find fitness accounts. Fashion? Look out for fashionistas.
3. Check out competition’s accounts and see who they worked with. Influencers tend to hang out together and a lot of the times, work on projects together, so if you see your competitor worked with Influencer A, it might be worth browsing through their profile to see if they know an Influencer B that could be a good fit for your brand.
4. Use tools that will help you narrow down the ideal influencer material.
5. Make a list of your potential influencers along with your content expectations (and their potential to deliver) and grade them based on the criteria.

Influencer platforms

There is a number of services that serve as a platform to connect brands with influencers. They are great for narrowing down your search and managing your campaign and influencer relationship if you are after a short term, one-off relationship.

Tribe Influence. This platform, initially launched in Australia (the home of Instagram influencer marketing) has quickly grown beyond prediction and took the market by storm. Now, launched in the UK, offers a range of Instagram influencers with following size ranging from 5k to millions…

How does it work? Create a pitch with a brand influencer profile specs and let influencers bid for it. The size of the influencer affects the price for the post.

FameBit – Similarly to Tribe, it allows brands to create a quick campaign with influencers available on their platform. Prices per post vary starting at $100 a post. Platforms – Youtube & Instagram. Used by Adidas.

Revfluence is another transactional platform which enables brands to reach out to influencers and create a quick, targeted campaign.It’s a bit more expensive than the above-mentioned platforms; however, it offers a top-notch segmentation and analytics allowing you to select the right influencers for your targeted audience.

BrandBacker that lets users collect the brand mentions from all over the web and see who their influencers are. Works across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter & Pinterest.

Final points

Few things to keep an eye on:

1. What’s their engagement rate?
2. What language do they write it?
3. Who is mostly engaged with their content?
4. What content do they create and what platforms do they use?
5. How aligned are their with what you represent and believe?
6. Who takes their photos & videos (as this might mean you have to incur costs for +1’s)?
7. What other brands do they work with?
8. What do media say about them (you would want to avoid working with an influencer like Paul Logan who is constantly politically incorrect)?

These are some of the tricks when starting your brand influencer marketing journey. The most important thing is finding a right influencer for a brand. In this case, quality over quantity is the case.

If you are ready to take your next step in influencer marketing, read on about finding brand influencers online.