You’ve probably heard about the power of influencer marketing but do you know exactly what it’s all about and how to find key people in your niche?
Here’s what you need to know about finding influencers to help your marketing efforts!
What is Influencer Marketing?
In a nutshell, influencer marketing is all about building trust and authority through your connections with leading names in a particular niche.
Most people will put more trust in you if they can see that someone they trust is giving you the thumbs up, which is why influencer marketing is becoming increasingly popular with brands.
And if you can tap into the network that these influencers have, it opens the door to a whole new audience for you. Research has suggested a much better level of engagement and Return of Investment (ROI) through influencer marketing compared to more “direct” forms of marketing.
Trouble is, you can’t just team up with any influencer and hope for the best. To get the kind of results you’re undoubtedly hoping for, you need to make sure that you pick your influencers wisely.
How to Find Influencers in Your Niche
Social influence: The likes of Klout analyze the influence that particular users have through their social presence and rank them accordingly. Searching by industry allows you to highlight the people who are considered to have big authority in that particular area. Kred goes a step further than this and monitors the interaction that users have with other people. This can be useful to see the chances of being able to forge an all-important connection with them.
Channel specific tools: When it comes to finding influencers on particular social platforms, there are tools that can do the legwork for you. For Youtube influencers, there is Peg. For Snapchat, you can try SnapVIP.
Hashtags: Searching on hashtags that are being used in your niche can help you to find industry leaders on Twitter. On Facebook and LinkedIn, you’ll probably find it more useful to look at groups relating to your industry and seeing which have influencers lurking amongst them. In industry specific groups, you’re bound to find at least a few potential influencers – especially when you bear in mind that these don’t necessarily need to be big names (as long as they’re relevant for you).
Search engines: If you’re working in a really narrow niche, you might find it hard to pinpoint potential influencers on social media. In this situation, literally searching for blogs or profiles in your niche could bring better results.
What to Look For in an Influencer
So what should you be looking for to narrow down the prospects in your niche and find the influencers that are most likely to work well for you?
Don’t get hung up on stats when you’re looking at potential influencers. Someone with a big audience is going to be of no real use to you if they have no strong relevance to your niche.
It’s really important to think about how a potential influencer’s content fits with your message and personality, rather than making traffic and numbers your main priority.
Another thing to look at is the level of engagement that a prospective influencer tends to get from their audience. In other words, to what extent does their audience feel compelled to interact with their content and trust what they have to say? A small but engaged audience can be more valuable than a larger audience that has no strong connection to the influencer’s content.
image: cyberalert
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