For brands that desire to increase their awareness on Instagram quickly, influencer marketing campaigns can be of great help. Even though the engagement rate of sponsored posts has dipped, they still have more engagement than organic posts, according to Searchenginejournal.com. However, the brand must choose the right influencers to work with because campaigns will only be successful if there is a proper fit of the brand with the influencer. Unless influencers are relevant and well-matched to the values of your brand, their ability to contribute to the success of your campaign will be severely limited. Because there are many factors to look out for, researching and identifying the right influencers can be pretty daunting. On top of that, you will also need to ensure that the influencer is authentic.
Establish the goals of the campaign
Before starting your hunt for an influencer, you need to first set out what you want your marketing campaign to achieve. Depending on your goals, you will need to configure your campaign as well as understand the profile of the influencer, you may want to engage. Some of the more common campaign goals are increasing brand awareness, creation of content, increasing the number of followers, building engagement, building an email list, drive app downloads, or generate revenues.
Your choice of an influencer will depend on what you are trying to achieve because each influencer has his own expertise. By establishing your campaign goals before starting to identify an influencer, you will have ensured that you have a better chance of success in finding an influencer who can help you to accomplish your objectives. Some of the most important considerations for choosing an influencer explained:
Relevant Audience
An association with an influencer can only be fruitful for the influencer who has a following that is relevant to your brands. In other words, the influencer’s followers should be your target audience otherwise; the marketing campaign will not yield the desired results. The best way of understanding this is to visit the account of the influencer and investigate the kind of engagement taking place. You can also visit some of the influencer marketing platforms and use their tools to analyze audience demographics to be able to identify influencers who have an audience with the same demographics you want. Using influencers with the right kind of followers will help you to talk to the right audience and get likes on Instagram fast.
Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is a metric that indicates the extent to the audience responding to the content. When an influencer has a good rate of engagement, it demonstrates that the content being posted on the account resonates well with the audience, which also gives its feedback via likes, comments, and shares. The engagement rate is arrived at by simply dividing the total number of likes and comments of a post by the total number of followers that the influencer has, and multiplying the result by 100. It is not wise to form an idea of the engagement rate by looking at only one post; at least 10 over a while should be taken into account to get a better idea. Additionally, marketers should also scrutinize the time being taken by the influencer to respond to comments by their followers. The quicker the response, the better the relationship with followers, and the more invested they are in the content posted by the influencer.
Authenticity
Authentic influencers are those who have a demonstrated passion and expertise on the subject of their influence. It is because of the authority influencers enjoy in their niche that they are looked up at. While celebrity influencers in sports and the performing arts can show their expertise in the public gaze, other influencers who are not so high-profile will need to demonstrate their hold over their subjects by sharing tips and advice as well as genuine stories of their personal experiences. The degree of authenticity can be made out by visiting their accounts and examining the captions of both normal and sponsored posts. Influencers need to provide a greater degree of detail that helps the audience to understand the merits of the product and also the reason why the influencer has selected that product over others to endorse. When an influencer can communicate why he loves the brand, it adds to his authenticity. Some influencers may already be following you. If an examination of the comments on your posts does reveal it, it can be helpful to seek them out for collaborations because they already love your product and are likely to be more willing to be your brand advocate. It is also worth examining the frequency of publishing sponsored content by an influencer. If there are too many sponsored posts as compared to normal posts, the audience may question the credibility of the influencer and the engagement can drop leading to a poor ROI.
Values
You must check out whether the value of the influencer matches that of your brand’s because otherwise, endorsements would seem rather strange to your target audience. For example, a manufacturer of fried snack foods should try to avoid an influencer who is a fitness enthusiast. It can be relatively easy to figure out the values of the influencer by examining the bio and posts on his Instagram account. The captions are also a good reflection of the preferences and dislikes of the influencer and his attitude to various things in life. Establishing a synergy with your brand values is recommended to get the best out of the association.
Conclusion
In addition to the factors mentioned, you should also lookout for the quality of the content because it will need to be a fit with the image of the brand. Factors like posting frequency also affect the degree of engagement to a great degree, so you will want to hire an influencer who posts frequently on his own but does not have too many sponsored posts. Additionally, the influencer should have a reputation for being dependable and proactive. Influencers that are too slow in responding to followers may end up damaging your brand image.