Member question: I have an upcoming campaign and want to add some influencer marketing alongside it. What are some good tips for finding the right influencer?- Marina Strbac - Member Experience Manager at AA New Zealand

Influencers or content creators can be powerful marketing partners. Not only do they have their own audience, it’s an audience they know well and constantly interact with, creating engaging content you can use well beyond their feed. Finding the right content creator is an art form that requires careful consideration. Here are some tips we’ve learned along the way.

Define your objectives 

Awareness or action, reach or general engagement such as likes, shares and comments or swipe ups from Instagram stories into your sales funnel - content can drive any reaction, and some content creators will suit a campaign more than others. For example, do they have more than 10,000 followers? Because if not they can’t access certain features in the Instagram app. Once you know what it is you want to achieve it’s easier to select the ideal content creator and set KPIs to determine success.

Define your target audience then find an aligned person producing ideal content

A good content creator has curated a near perfect audience for you and knows how to reach it. They may also already be producing content that makes sense in the context of your campaign. If you’re wanting to talk about a new cake mixer Baker Gatherer is a perfect partner, if your company is passionate about overcoming adversity then Jess Quinn has already been talking to her audience for years about the subject, they trust her and will react well to your message. 

It’s also important to note that in producing content for their channels over the years, through trial and error content creators have a sense of what works, as such we are seeing more and more of their content used in the broader campaigns beyond their channels. Think beyond CPM, CPV, CPC for their post or story to how you can use their content in your campaign. 

Find someone with the right tone of voice for you

Influencer marketing is a brand collaboration where your brand meets an existing living brand. Find someone with the right tone of voice for you, brief them well with your objectives, trust them to brief you back in their tone of voice, then let them loose. Remember they are not digital platforms or billboards you give content to for them to distribute. Their advantage is in their ability to translate your message into their tone. 

Demographics 

One of the most common questions we get is about how do we know who a content creator is talking to. Well, both Instagram and Facebook have very detailed demographics that outline where a content creators audience is from, how old they are and their gender making it easy to find the right person for you. A good agent or influencer will supply these to you. These audiences are just the start though. If you find a good content creator you can boost their content into the exact audience you want to reach, that’s the beauty of social! 

Regularity in posting

Instagram and Facebook reward regularity in posting. Find someone who is posting regularly.

Use hashtags 

Many content creators use hashtags, it’s possible to discover new people by identifying the right hashtag for you and searching for it. For example, if you are interested in finding a fashion influencer you could search #NZFashion.

Engagement

For a while now the industry has used average engagement as a measure of success. An engagement is a like, share, comment, sticker tap, swipe up or save and indicates a viewer has spent time and contemplated the content. It’s a distinct advantage over radio, print or TV where this kind of measure simply doesn’t exist. A creators engagement rate is found by taking their average engagement, then dividing it by their reach and multiplying it by 100. A rule of thumb has been that a rate of 2% is deemed to be good, anything over is great. 

However, the way people are interacting with social media is changing and while post reach has remained the same with the rise of Instagram stories post engagement is declining. This doesn’t mean people aren’t contemplating it and seeing your brand message, it just means earning a like is getting harder by the day.

Fake followers

These days there are so many ways to see if a person has fake followers that anyone contemplating social media for a job would be crazy to have them. Even the more recent issue of fake engagement is now being tackled by easy to access apps like Social Blade and Hype Auditor. The apps will also help you understand their audience, with the only caveat being that these apps use a basic API that doesn’t have access to an influencers actual data, and so while a good indicator of audience, the best way to ensure you’re getting the right audience is to ask for demographics from the content creator. Some of these apps suggest price per posts but be aware that they are basing their estimates in US Dollars and using US influencers. Supply and demand here in New Zealand mean their prices are woefully inaccurate. 

Why use an agent/manager

While an agent means an extra layer of cost many are now more managers that can help you select the right person, make sure campaigns delivered on time and reported well. At WeAreTENZING we also help by providing feedback on what content may work given our deep knowledge of the content creator. We can even help shoot if needed. Influencer marketing is fantastic, but it’s new and at times confusing and it’s not bad having some folks who live and breath it to help you translate it. 

Article written by:
Brooke Howard-Smith
CEO - WeAreTENZING