If you’re a busy marketing professional (aren’t we all these days), you don’t have a lot of time to spend figuring out who the right influencers are for your influence marketing program.
We have an easy solution for you: get Appinions! (just kidding…kind of)
Seriously, though, finding the right influencers is a difficult task, yet something that is asked of marketing and PR professionals all the time. The reality is that creating a wish list of people is not all that hard; evaluating whether those people are truly right for your campaign is far harder. As we’ve mentioned previously, Twitter is great for many things, but a Twitter follower count is not a complete measure of influence and thus should not be the core-determining factor of who to engage. Here are our suggestions for what to look for in an influencer.
1. Their Content
Many influencers you’ll be reaching out to are likely bloggers or writers. So start with their content.
- What are the topics of their last five or ten posts or articles? Do they align with the topic, product or service you have in mind? (If they only wrote about it a year or more ago, they may have changed their focus!)
- Do they have a balanced point-of-view on the topics they write about?
- Are they reasonably good writers? Would you be proud if your product or campaign were written about by them?
2. Their Social Presence
You may be asking influencers to help amplify your content, or the content they create for you, so by evaluating their social presences you’ll be able to see how you’ll fit in those contexts.
- Do they have real conversations, share, and develop thought leadership on Twitter?
- Do they share brand-appropriate content in visual platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and Vine?
- Do they have engagement across all of their platforms, including their Facebook brand page, if they have one?
3. Their LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn can tell you a lot about a person. A savvy freelancer or writer will include the companies and projects they’ve worked on in their profile, and they may link to other key resources to help you evaluate their value to you.
- Is their LinkedIn profile up-to-date? What brands or companies have they worked for or with in the past?
- If they include links to SlideShare presentations they’ve given, are they appropriate content for your brand to associate with? Are those presentations well-written and interesting?
4. Their About Page
I’m often surprised about what many bloggers and writers don’t include on their About page. I usually want to know the following:
- Where are they located? (I might need to know this for events or local media coverage.)
- What are their other hobbies or interests? (To ensure that none of them conflict.)
- If they’re parenting bloggers, what are the ages of their children?
- The About page is also a great place to get a feel for a bloggers’ writing style and humor.
5. Their Videos
This is particularly important if you may want to have an influencer meet with your team or speak at an event!
- What’s their speaking presence like? Are they compelling speakers?
- Even if they don’t have a great stage presence, do they seem like they’d be interesting participants in a meeting?
- Is their video content also aligned with your needs?
6. Their Past Brand Engagement
Some influencers will never work with companies. So before you reach out, determine if they’ve worked with brands in the past.
- Have they written blog posts about companies, brands, products or services? Are those posts disclosed as sponsored posts?
- Have they tweeted about them? Are those tweets disclosed as sponsored tweets or ads (often with the hashtags #spon or #ad).
Evaluating as much as you can about each influencer you want to work with will really help to get your influencer campaign off on the right foot. A good match between your campaign and your influencers is good for you, and them.
Image credit: Micah Sittig
