Title: The 4 Most Important Things to Look For When Choosing an Influencer

The 4 Most Important Things to Look For When Choosing an Influencer

The 4 Most Important Things to Look For When Choosing an Influencer

Hiring an influencer can do great things for your business – but it’s not always as simple as it sounds.

As an influencer marketing agency, Wear Cape have barrels of experience when it comes to hiring influencers. This means we know exactly what you need to look out for when you’re on the hunt for the ideal person to partner up with. 

Put simply, you just won’t feel the benefits of influencer marketing unless you know how to choose an influencer. But don’t worry – this article will tell you exactly what you need to know.

By keeping a keen eye out for some key things, you can rest assured that you’ll find the best influencer for your company to work with. Read on to find out what they are.

1. Content is King

Without a doubt, this is the most important thing to remember when looking for your influencer. You need someone who is making content that fits in with your aims and what it is you’re offering to potential customers.

Knowing the importance of content means many things, but the foremost is this: don’t be blinded by follower counts. 

Just because an influencer has half a million followers, it doesn’t mean that working with them will improve your brand awareness or sales numbers. If their audience isn’t going to be interested in your company, then a partnership with them will be for nought. 

This is where scrutinizing content comes into play.

Working in business lends itself to knowing about customers, so it’s simple: apply your analytical mindset to your influencer search to find new potential customers through them. Take a look at what it is they post, how they speak and write, where they base their content. All of these things will come together to tell you exactly who makes up their audience – and you will know best as to whether those people will want what you’re selling.

Content is also important for your brand’s reputation and the image you’re trying to create for whatever it is you are promoting.

Put simply, if you’re marketing something you believe in, make sure your influencer puts just as much effort and attention into their content as you have into whatever you’re advertising.

Accounts with lots of followers don’t always have the best captions. They might specialize in sharing graphics or specific types of images rather than having a person face-to-face with the camera. You need someone with a personality who’s on-screen connecting with people in a real way.

The audience needs to know them in order to trust their recommendations.

Think: do they make the best use out of social media features such as stories? Do they have mastery over advanced modes like hyperlapse? These are the kinds of things that you want in your partner.

You need someone with charisma, smarts, and a real desire to help you promote your content.

Once you’ve found someone who ticks those boxes, you’re onto a winner. The content that goes out to promote your campaign will be second to none.

2. Fake Followers Mean Avoid!

When you’re entering a business partnership, you’re looking to create something wonderful based on honesty and trust. Influencers who buy their followers are using dishonest means to create a certain outward appearance on their accounts, so working with them is destined for failure from the outset.

Beyond it being a matter of principle, there are practical reasons you should avoid working with influencers who buy fake followers.

The accounts that boost that ‘follower count’ when followers are bought won’t be investing in your business. That’s because they aren’t real: there’s nobody behind them.

We’re all familiar with bots if we use social media – those friend requests from fake accounts, the automatic replies to tweets. Those empty profiles are what make up a significant percentage of the following of influencers who buy followers. 

Not only will they not be buying your product or service. Their presence on the influencer’s followers list actually has a direct negative impact on engagement, meaning that the influencer’s post will be way less likely to take off and end up on lots of people’s feeds.

All in all, this is one of the most important tips for choosing an influencer to work with: fake followers are a total no-go.

When you’re looking to see whether or not an influencer has bought a high proportion of their followers, bear in mind that anything up to 20% is a normal rate of false followers. 

Being followed by bots is to be expected when working as an influencer, and this is around the point at which numbers can hit without indicating fraud. Anything more, and you need to be careful: higher percentages suggest that the influencer has paid for followers, and they just aren’t as popular as they wish to appear.

Remember, it’s not worth jeopardizing your carefully curated reputation by entering a risky partnership.

You need someone with a genuine following – whether it’s massive or micro-sized, the thing that really matters is that their audience is on the other side interacting with the influencer’s content. A good influencer marketing campaign will be based on the same honesty you offer to your customers. 

3. Engagement Rates Should Be Good

This is how you really narrow down those genuine influencers with content that suits your needs to pair up with the best influencer for you. If you’re trying to choose between influencers, simply check who has better engagement.

An influencer agency like Wear Cape can cut out the analytics process and pair you up with the ideal influencer, having already checked that the influencers on their books have good content and genuine engagement.

Still, if you’d like to understand social media engagement for yourself, it’s a great thing to be able to manage and capitalise on.

Engagement refers to the amount of real, quality interaction an influencer is getting on their content. It summarises data such as the numbers of likes, shares, and saves an account gets on their posts. 

The better an influencer’s engagement, the better their reach and their long term trajectory. It is what helps their accounts to grow and multiply their success rates. A good influencer to partner up with is one who has put their time and effort into understanding how to maximise their engagement.

When you’re investing in a partnership with someone, there’s every reason to look for a candidate who’s investing in themselves.

That’s why you should be looking out for an influencer with slightly higher engagement than average. You can use online tools for this, or come to an influencer marketing agency for help with all of this and more.

For influencers, the average engagement rate is 2%. When seeking someone for a partnership, look for a little more. Anything from 3% upwards should stand you in good stead.

Good engagement on your influencer’s posts should never be underestimated. It can be the difference between your promotional post ending up on hundreds of viewer’s feeds or being shoved to the bottom of the pile. Make sure you’re going to get your money’s worth from your campaign.

4. Follower Count

At first glance, this one might appear to contradict our earlier points. But there’s a reason it’s last on the list.

It’s important to be sure that you don’t choose to partner with the first influencer who has a seemingly huge follower count. But it can still be worth taking a look at once you’ve made sure your potential partners tick boxes 1, 2, and 3. 

Ultimately, when you’re in the final stages of choosing between partners, follower count can clinch it. If engagement rates are similar and all of your potentials give you access to your target audience, then you can make your final decision based on follower count.

Going with the influencer with the most followers has obvious benefits. More people engaging with the posts means more people noticing your company.

But depending on the nature of your campaign, you might want to pair with a micro-influencer. Promoting yourself on their niche corner of social media can add a sense of excitement and exclusivity to your influencer marketing campaign.

Whatever you choose, just be sure that the style of content and the level of engagement are right for your ads.

If you stick to these tips for choosing an influencer, you’ll be sure to pick the ideal partner for your influencer marketing campaign. Before long, you’ll be feeling the benefits of an influencer campaign.

Advice from an Influencer Marketing Agency Will Do You Right!

These ideal tips come from Wear Cape’s professional experience working as an influencer marketing agency. The company knows the industry inside out, and you can get more great advice on our website.

What are you waiting for? It’s time to get out there and find that perfect influencer for your advertising needs.

Wear Cape can help every step of the way. If you’re feeling unsure or don’t know where to start on your search, you can get in touch with us today for some expert advice.