Let’s be honest, finding the right influencer for a marketing campaign can be a headache. Also, the task becomes much more difficult if you want to find more than one influencer.
That being said, if you equip yourself with a couple of techniques used by industry professionals and our easy-to-understand checklist, finding vetted influencers can be easier than you could have ever hoped for.
Before we get started with your go-to checklist for vetted influencers, we’ll offer you a rundown of how and what you should be looking for in influencers.
In order to run a successful influencer marketing campaign and reach your goals, you need to locate influencers that can help represent your brand. Depending on which social media platform you want to use and what type of influencer you’re looking for, the process can vary a bit.
However, there are certain things that you have to evaluate and double check, and there are strategies you can follow to ensure that you find the influencers that suit you.
In an attempt to help you with the process, we have collected the best tips from our team of social media experts who have experience hiring influencers for different brands in different industries. Those tips were then boiled down to a list of the 14 steps that every marketer needs to go through to find vetted influencers for a campaign.
Yes, there is.
When deciding to run an influencer marketing campaign, you have two choices. You can either research the market and look for influencers on your own, which is time-consuming work, or you can get help from professionals.
Beatly is an innovative influencer network that is spearheading the automated influencer vetting process. We can help you with everything from finding the right influencer for any social media platform to running and evaluating your campaigns. One of our main focuses is also to continuously improve our clients' campaigns based on previous results.
However, for the sake of this article, we will start with addressing all of you guys that want to spend the time finding vetted influencers on your own, and we’ll talk more about the easiest solution further down on this page.
So without further ado, let’s get started with our checklist for finding vetted influencers that fit your needs and can help you reach your goals.
Below is a list of 14 steps that you will have to go through in order to find the best influencers for your next campaign. The list covers everything from the work that needs to be done prior to your search all the way to what’s expected of you after you’ve hired your influencers and activated the campaign.
We recommend that you keep this list with you at all times during your campaign preparations.
Before you start looking for influencers you need to come up with a plan for your campaign. What are you selling and who do you want to reach? Without an outline for your project, you won’t know what type of influencer you need, and you shouldn’t get started with the rest of the list.
Setting up goals and expectations this early on will help you further down the line and is highly advisable.
Do you want to hire 1 influencer at once or a group of influencers for the same project? Are you going for large influencers or several micro influencers? Maybe you want to find a brand ambassador that can represent your brand over a longer period of time.
Your plan needs to include the platforms you want to use which will help you determine where you will go look for influencers. Remember that Instagram is the most popular platform for this type of campaign but that YouTube is better for longer videos, Snapchat is for the younger audience, Facebook is better for an older generation, etc.
Every platform has its perks and drawbacks, and you should pick accordingly based on the products and services you want to market as well as your intended target group.
With a campaign plan and an idea of the influencer and platform you are looking for, you can start researching the market. At this point, you want to see who is active in your niche and what they are posting about. Also, try to see if there are any ongoing trends or certain posts that seem to be performing better than others.
During this step of the process, you should start identifying potential influencers for later.
By now, you need to start collecting the names of influencers that you think could be a fit. Remember to collect more influencers than you actually think you need since they might not all work out and some might even deny your proposal.
At this early stage in the process, we suggest you aim to find at least twice as many influencers as you actually need.
Contact the selected influencers and tell them briefly about your idea and the campaign you’re running. This is the time you can ask for specific information that you think is necessary such as details about their demographics, engagement rates, etc.
Allow each influencer some time to respond. If your campaign is time-sensitive, you can give the influencers a deadline on when you need to hear back from them.
Based on the answers you receive, you can now start vetting the influencers and single out the ones that will suit you the best. This is when the real work starts.
Now that you have a short list of potential influencers you could see yourself collaborate with you can get to work. It’s now time to double check the influencers’ authenticity and evaluate whether or not they have a legitimate engagement or if they have been buying likes and followers.
Naturally, it's important that you only work with trustworthy influencers that can actually provide you with good results. Expect a few influencers to fall out during this part of the process, especially if you’re using Instagram or Twitter where paid engagement is prominent.
With an even shorter list of vetted influencers, you want to dig deeper into their content. What have they posted before? Are they growing in size? Who is interacting with their content? etc. Try to paint yourself a more detailed picture about each and every influencer.
Before you continue with the next steps, you need to have an idea of what each influencer can provide you with and why you want to work with each one.
This goes hand-in-hand with the point above and can be done earlier on during the process if needed.
As you can understand, you need to get an idea of the projects the influencer has worked on in the past and how they have performed. It can also be a good idea to make sure they aren’t working too closely with your competitors.
By now, you should have a solid list of vetted influencers you want to work with, and it’s time to give them the details of what you expect. Inform each influencer of what they will be marketing and how you want the products or services to be represented. Answer any question that might arise and don’t be afraid to raise any concerns you may have.
This is the point of no return, and everything needs to be crystal clear before you continue since it can be hard to make changes later on.
The time you’ve been preparing for is here, and it’s time for you to send out contracts as well as the products that are being marketed so that you can activate the campaign.
We encourage all of our customers to take a step back after this to give the influencer the opportunity to do what they do best, create amazing content that helps market your products.
In most cases, campaigns perform poorly when brands and companies have too much influence over the influencer's content. You hire influencers for their ability to produce engaging content and for the personal relationship they have with their followers. If you control them too much, their post will start to feel sham which will hurt your end result.
During the campaign, it’s important that you collect data and oversee the progress of each influencer. This data can later be used to evaluate the performance of each influencer individually as well as the campaign as a whole.
In addition, this information should be used to optimize future projects and marketing campaigns.
If you’ve done your part and found good influencers, your campaign should have been a success. Don’t forget how much time you’ve put into finding good and vetted influencers, and make sure you keep in touch with the ones you could see yourself working with in the future.
If you have any questions or want to get started with influencer marketing, feel free to contact us at team@beatly.com. We have years of experience in the industry and have the possibility of matching your brand to the perfect influencer, reaching new and targeted audiences.