Let’s test your knowledge to kick things off. Let’s say you’re a French food company introducing an all vegan dessert line to grocery stores in the Paris area. You’re looking for Paris-based vegan Instagram influencers to help spread the word about your new offerings online.

You’ve done some searching for “influencers,” and you’ve whittled down your selection such that the remaining candidates are all based in Paris and write about vegan food. You’ve narrowed it down to three potential partners, and now you need to pick one to work with your brand on its campaign.

How about you make a decision….

Who is the 15,000-follower influencer?
Who is the second influencer that has 100,000 fans?
Who is the third influential person with a million fans?
What did you decide upon, and what prompted that decision? Did you pick choice C because you anticipated the greatest reach and, so, the greatest return on investment?

The query was intended to be deceptive. There is no correct answer since it is impossible to choose amongst these three influencers for your brand’s campaign without further information.

This is a topic we’ll return to in the future; for now, though, let’s focus on answering your immediate question: how to locate and recruit the most appropriate influencers for your brand’s needs.

Identifying Key Opinion Leaders

Identifying influential people is step one before making a final decision. Finding influencers may be done in a number different methods, each with its own set of pros and cons based on the available resources.

Social Networking sites

Searching on social media is an option if you don’t have the resources for more expensive technologies or additional staff to assist you locate influencers. You can do a search on your own, but realise that it will take much more time and effort and that you won’t learn as much as you would with the other choices.

When conducting a direct social media search, it’s best to focus first on locating influencers who have shown an interest in your company. Influencers are more likely to be interested in working with your company if they are familiar with and enthusiastic about your brand.

Seek out key opinion leaders:

who are already connected to your brand through social media.
The people who have interacted with your social media postings (through like, sharing, or commenting).
Who have made reference to your company or utilised your branded hashtags in their posts.
Who posts using hashtags pertinent to your field
Manually searching through social media is time-consuming, and connecting with influencers to gather data about their performance-driven metrics is also time-consuming (more on that below).

There are more effective approaches to locate influencers if you have some more time and money to invest.

Platform for Influencer Marketing

Investing in an influencer marketing platform is the way to go if you have the funds available but would rather not sweat the small stuff while trying to locate influencers. Of course, you’ll need a subscription to access this programme, but there are three main advantages to paying for it.

Filter your search for influencers by their region, specialty, number of followers, level of interaction, etc.
In-depth information on influencers’ performance-based metrics allows for instant analysis of their profiles.
Create a list from your search results and utilise it to automate your outreach.

The best practises for selecting an appropriate brand influencer

Now that you know where to seek for influencers and what to consider while reviewing their profiles, we can move on to the decision-making process of selecting the best candidates to work with. Your brand’s mission and principles might help you determine who the best influencers are to promote your campaign. Let’s analyse what this actually implies.

Think about what you want to accomplish

You must first learn these things about influencers before making any choices.

So, what are you hoping to accomplish with this campaign?
Who are you hoping to reach with this?
Just how much of a financial incentive are you able to provide an influencer?
You may map out your path to finding influential people by answering these three questions. Don’t worry if you can’t afford to pay influencers a high salary. The highest-performing influencers in the industry—the nano and micro influencers—often accept partnerships in return for free items.

Find a compatible pair

A piece of advice you may have heard previously is to connect with influencers who share your brand’s values. What this boils down to is identifying an individual who shares the same ideals as your company. This is also done by businesses when employing new staff. You probably wouldn’t hire a personal trainer who actively disliked working out if you owned a gym.

Now apply this logic to those who have sway over others. Join forces with vegans if you want to market vegan goods. Selecting an influencer who is stuck in the 1980s is not the best move if your fashion line creates items with hippy 60s vibes.

Metrics for influencers based on performance that go beyond the simple number of followers

Increase in the number of followers

Quantity of followers is crucial. Yet, this is not the most crucial factor to consider when ranking influencers. The quantity of one’s followers is the determining factor in both their profile’s potential audience and their market value as an influencer. This, however, does not make a profile superior to others. You should also consider how they attracted such a large following.

Gaining new followers organically is a gradual and steady process that, when mapped, appears like a hill. This kind of expansion is more sustainable and indicative of an audience’s interest in an influencer’s work.

Engagement Rate

The engagement rate is a metric for determining how active an influencer’s following is. Simply said, the more faith fans have in an influencer’s posts, the more likely they are to engage with them.

How engagement is calculated varies by social media platform; on Instagram, for instance, we would calculate it as follows x likes x comments x 100.

Average engagement rates change depending on the social media platform and the demographics of the account’s followers. So, influencers on Instagram with the same number of followers as those with 50,000 subscribers on YouTube cannot be held to the same standard. So, it is vital to be aware of the usual rates in the sector, or to employ an influencer marketing tool that will do this comparison for you automatically.