When it comes to consumer spending, online content and social conversations have a huge impact on how and what people choose to buy. Social Influencers play an important role in this. 

As marketers, you create content in order to persuade and engage with customers. But modern consumers are skeptical and savvy. 

Marketers constantly struggle online with all of the clutter and noise that’s on social media. One way marketing pros have been heading is toward the use of social media influencers. Choosing social Influencers for your campaign is a difficult task when there are hundreds of thousands of options and each offers a different perspective. 

Working with the right influencers is key to any successful influencer marketing campaign. Influencers who are relevant, authentic, engaging, and well-matched to your brand values and image will contribute greatly to your campaigns. 

How do you know if you picked the right influencer?

A Youtube superstar. An Instagram model. A fashionable blogger. Influencers come in all shapes and sizes and with the digital possibilities increasing; this branch of native advertising is getting more and more popular among brands. 

In this large market of digital influencers, big mistakes are waiting to happen. A mismatched message seeded to 1M followers can potentially do a lot more harm than good. Therefore choosing a person to tell your story requires careful selection and research. 

This blog will take you through some of the elements you want to consider, in order to identify the right influencer for your brand. 

Lets dive in!

Define your target audience

When selecting social influencers it is key that you identify what demographic you want to target. This will guide your decision about what influencers you should work with. First, you should define the following:

• Gender do you want to target 
• Age group are you looking to reach 
• Your target audience interest

Set your campaign goals 

You need to first clearly outline your goals before searching for influencers or setting up your campaign. There can be a variety of goals you want to achieve with your campaign, some of which may include:

• Brand awareness
• Content creation
• Sales or app downloads
• Newsletter subscribers or followers on social media

Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, you can choose how you want to collaborate with influencers. By setting your campaign goals before selecting influencers, you’ll be able to choose influencers you know are likely to help you reach your goals, rather than working with influencers who may or may not contribute to them. 

Set influencer criteria

Influencers are typically specialized in a specific topic or category. Mapping out the relevant context for your brand is essential to improving relevance in the target audience. The standard categories such as fashion, mommy, food, gadget, etc. can be helpful, but defining other criteria for your influencers will help you create a strong match.

Setting up all the criteria in advance will help you find a strong match and automatically decrease time spent on finding the right influencers – you will know exactly what to look for.

Pay attention to influencer statistics

Influencer marketing is a tricky beast. Many marketers look at an influencer’s following base without evaluating its real value or foreseeing the results they may generate during a potential campaign. In the example above, it is likely that the micro-influencer would generate better results than the celebrity, and that they would, therefore, attract more people to your local restaurant. 

Simply speaking, a trusting, tight-knit, and engaged community created by an influencer with a smaller reach can be more valuable than thousands of users casually following a popular profile. 

Know the influencer’s audience

There is always a story behind a number. Thoroughly check if an influencer’s audience overlaps with the desired target group for your brand. It may turn out that there are many fake or suspicious accounts following a particular influencer. It might also turn out that their audience is rather uninterested in the published content, which should be an immediate red flag. 

Always request audience demographics from the influencers you want to work with. Influencers can share social media stats with brands via NapoleonCat’s Data Dashboards.

It is also worth checking if – and how – the influencer interacts with their target group. If community management is rather non-existent on their account, and followers do not get involved in discussions, then engagement could be really low during your campaign with that influencer too.

Final thought

A single positive recommendation from a trusted source can trump even your most beautifully written copy or most engaging video demonstration. And while brand-crafted content is useful and can help build trust with customers, sometimes the most influential content comes from like-minded people that your customers know and trust. 

Social influencers boost trust in the marketing campaign. It helps in preparing a return on investment that meets the highest expectations.

Also read: Instagram Marketing Strategy to Drive More Sales