How to Find Instagram Influencers You Can Work With
If you are looking for a new, effective strategy for reaching new and unique audiences for your brand, you might want to start looking into making use of influencers. While this has always been considered a big-budget marketing strategy, the fact is that you don’t need a huge corporate budget to hire effective influencers.
Micro-influencers have started flexing their digital muscles and proving their worth online. Not only do they reach highly targeted and high converting audiences, they usually come with a good price tag.
So, what do you need to look for when hiring an influencer? How do you go about finding the right one for your company? Should you look at spending a bit more for a bigger influencer, or will a highly specialized one be good enough for your company?
We thought we would unpack a few pointers and help you out on your influencer journey.
Use Tools and Platforms to Help You
One of the best places to start is to get some automated assistance. If you are doing this for the first time and worried about knowing what to look for, this could be the right way to get the strategy off to a good start.
Look for an Instagram profile analyzer to assist your business in its search for influencers. This advanced AI technology is created to help you analyze public Instagram profiles. From this, you will be able to gather valuable profile metrics and key information to decide on which influencer to use.
You can gather:
- The number of followers;
- Engagement rates;
- Average user activity on their platform;
- How regularly they post;
- Number of uploads in the past;
- Top hashtags used;
- Top keywords used in captions.
This will help you get the influencer strategy off to a good start from the get-go if you have all of the right tools and information.
Know What Your Customer Wants
In order to get the right person to speak to your customer, you actually need to know something about them. Basic demographics and information are important, yes. Things like average age, location, gender, and those really important pieces of information you need to know about your customer.
But, what is also important are aspects like interests and behaviors online. Take a step back and understand what is going on on Instagram.
- What is trending?
- What content is going up in general and in your industry?
- Are there any keywords that you need to know about?
- What and who are your customers responding to?
The more you know about what your customer wants to see, the more you can curate a strategy around that. Influencers also usually have keen insight into Instagram trends and content. So, reach out and ask for their input too.
Have a Look at Their Audiences
What is important to remember when picking an influencer is to know something about who they are speaking to and who follows them.
Micro-influencers are usually a great idea for brands because they have real people who are following them because they are genuinely interested in what they are posting. So, when looking for someone, choose an influencer who is somewhat relevant to your brand and industry. It doesn’t need to be an exact match, but someone who is linked.
A great example here could be if you are in the insurance industry, for example. That’s a tough industry to align with an influencer. But, if you look for a local car enthusiast or car journalist with a couple of thousand followers, you know that their audience follows them because they are interested in cars. Partnering with them on car insurance information, and really educational content will mean that you are talking to a direct, engaged, and highly targeted audience.
Create Content Collaboration Ideas Before Going In
Before actually starting the partnership and engaging with the influencer, know what you want out of the partnership. Know what types of information and content you want to get out there. Know what message you want to convey.
Yes, your influencer will have their own ideas and some of them might be great and highly engaging, which is incredibly useful. But the fact of the matter is that you do want to go into the partnership armed with something and knowing what you want to achieve.
So, brainstorm content ideas and understand what you want to convey with the campaign so that you can work on it together.
The Bottom Line
We hope our guide will help you identify the right Instagram influencer for your brand. But, you also need to remember to keep an eye on the success of the campaigns at all times. If the campaigns aren’t converting, don’t wait too long to try something else.
