Influencer marketing has become an instrumental part of every business’s marketing strategy. Brands continuously look for the next influencer to put them in the spotlight. One video can turn viral and attract lots of clients. As a business, leveraging influencer marketing to grow your sales and reach more people is essential. One of the early barriers to running successful influencer marketing campaigns is how to find influencers for your business. You need to find freelancers who will have a powerful impact and generate great results for your business.
Each social media has its own codes of conduct, audiences, benefits, and inconveniences. You must understand how each platform works to leverage it and get the best results. Conduct some research and browse the platform to ensure you know how it works.
What is an influencer?
An influencer is a content creator who can affect people’s opinions, behaviors, and decisions with their content. They often work within a niche or area of expertise like food, electronics, or fashion. Some are much more niche, while others reach a broader audience. Regardless, they all influence their audiences thanks to their knowledge, expertise, and passion for what they talk about.
What does an influencer do?
Influencers post content about their topic of expertise and share their opinions. They often have a very original and signature way of presenting content to their audience. After years of posting, they’ve found the formula to engage their audience the most.
What sets an influencer apart from the rest is knowledge and credibility. They are often experts with lots of experience, so they don’t randomly recommend products. Instead, they find an original angle to present a product and share the benefits and why this product impacted them.
Types of influencers
There are multiple types of influencers online. Each type has a different audience size. While it can seem logical to target the ones with the biggest audiences, you’ll see that’s not always the best strategy.
- Mega-influencers: Famous people and celebrities with millions of followers.
- Macro-influencers: Influencers with a significantly large audience (Over 100K to 2M followers)
- Micro-influencers: Influencers with a smaller audience that is very engaged (Under 10K followers)
- Nano-influencers: Influencers with a much smaller audience that is usually super specific and engaged.
Tips for finding the best influencers
While influencer marketing may seem simple on the surface, it’s a bit more complex than it appears if you want top-level results.
It’s not just about audience size
It may seem that the easiest way to run a successful influencer marketing campaign is to find the most popular influencers with millions of followers. But there are two reasons why that’s not the case. The first is that the audience is too broad. In choosing someone with a consequential audience, you might reach thousands of people with little to no interest in your products.
The second reason it’s not the best strategy is that engagement rate is the most essential factor. Reaching millions of followers is useless if none engage with your brand or product. Take Kim Kardashian, for example. She has a staggering 359 Million followers. But, her engagement rate is only 0.27%. That’s extremely low. So, you would pay a lot of money to engage only with a few people who might have an interest in your brand. The average engagement rate on Instagram is 4.7%, so you should target at least above that to get positive results. Find influencers with a 10% engagement rate, and you’ll get even better results. To find an influencer’s engagement rate, you can use an engagement rate calculator.
Find passionate influencers
An influencer marketing campaign differs from regular social media posts because you’re trying to convince people to buy a product or a service. To have the best results, you need to find passionate people who will inspire their audiences and convince them that your brand is right for them. Someone who can create a captivating story and present you as the ideal solution.
Consider the value of content
Content has taken a central part in successful digital marketing. Influencers are expert content creators. As such, you can leverage their content beyond just their initial post. You can repost it and use it for advertising. Use it as a testimonial. Get creative and extract more value from it.
What platforms should I focus on?
There’s no one-size-fits-all platform. It depends on your audience. You should know where your audience spends the most time online and engage with similar people. If you don’t know, you’re missing an essential part of your marketing strategy. Knowledge is the cornerstone of any effective strategy. To find out, you can interview a few power users or conduct a survey. Once you know where they spend time, you can be sure that other people with the same background can also be there.
How to find influencers for your business on Instagram
Instagram is one of the, if not the most popular, influencer marketing platforms. That’s because it reaches varied age groups, and you can find all kinds of niches on the platform.
Leverage the tools available on Instagram
Instagram has many built-in tools you can use to find high-level influencers. You can use the keyword search to find specific topics and see related posts. The posts are not shown in order of recency. Instead, the “Top posts” are shared first. Those are the ones with the most engagement, so you’ll usually find some high-quality candidates that way. You can also use the hashtag search to find relevant posts and content.
There’s also the explore page that shows you the content you’re most likely to engage with. Instagram has a super powerful algorithm, so the more you search for related topics, the more content will be targeted and relevant.
Use freelance influencer marketing experts on ComeUp
Professional influencer marketing freelancers will provide you with the best results and enable you to focus on other responsibilities. It’s a win-win situation for you to grow your business more smoothly and efficiently. Find a freelance professional on ComeUp today to jumpstart your influencer marketing campaigns!
Use tools to find Instagram influencers
There are many tools out there to help you find influencers on Instagram. They allow you to segment influencers based on various criteria so you find the one that matches your brand and objectives the most. Some tools include Heepsy, Social Blade, and Upfluence. Unfortunately, many tools cost money. That’s why hiring a freelancer might be more cost-efficient. You get better results and don’t need to subscribe plus learn how to use a new tool.
Check tagged posts
You can check out different brands and look at who tags them to find influencers. It’s a great way to explore sponsored content and see how influencers present different brands. You’ll see who does a really convincing job at selling a brand and who is just sharing a brand with low impact.
Observe the competition
If your competition is already doing influencer marketing, you can take a page from their playbook. Look at their account and who is tagging them and talking about them. If you find good influencers and propose your products and services as an alternative. Highlight your product’s benefits and how it is better than your competitor to make it clear to audiences that you’re the ideal brand.
Use DMs to reach out to influencers
Once you’ve found all your influencers, create an impactful pitch to convince them to be ambassadors for your brand. Reach out to them directly with a personalized message. Build a real relationship, as you can work with an influencer more than once. The stronger the bond you build, the more likely you are to gain a long-term ambassador. That’s what will convince a new audience to purchase without hesitation.
How to find influencers for your business on YouTube
YouTube is a great platform to leverage influencer marketing and reach more people. There are many creators, and almost all different audiences spend time there. Chances are you’ll find some of your audience engaging on the platform.
Take advantage of YouTube’s search, filters, and hashtags
You know the top keywords that match your niche, brand, and industry. Use them to find the most engaging videos and influencers. The more time you spend browsing your niche on YouTube, the more the algorithm will optimize to recommend videos related to your search. Trust the algorithm to find even more engaging content.
There are various filters available on YouTube like “View Count” which will help you see the videos that got a certain number of viewers, and “Upload Date” which will ensure you’re checking recent and relevant content instead of videos from years ago with YouTubers who are no longer active.
Hashtags are also an integral part of YouTube. Find the most popular hashtags, and you’ll get access to savvy influencers who are marketing themselves well.
Use ComeUp to find high-quality influencers
Finding the right freelancers takes time and expertise. If you already have a lot of tasks to handle or want better results, you can delegate and hire a freelance influencer marketing expert to find freelancers for you. They will generate the best results and ensure your campaigns grow your sales, brand awareness, and revenue.
Leverage influencer marketing tools
There are so many tools at your disposal to help you excel in your influencer marketing efforts. A tool like Social Blade can help you get more data and analytics about YouTube channel performance to make better decisions. Use engagement rate, views, and subscribers to choose an influencer who is sure to have an impact on your target audience. You can go even deeper and check their audience and comments to get a better picture of that influencer’s performance.
Influencer marketing platforms will help you find influencers more easily. They are platforms designed for you to find the ideal influencer based on many different criteria. You can segment countries, audience sizes, niches, engagement rates, and other criteria.
Check out what your competition is doing
If your competitors have been doing influencer marketing before you, you can use them as a base to find some influencers and offer an alternative to their audience. Chances are they already did a lot of the work for you. Present your product as a clear solution compared to your competitor. Explain why your product or service provides more value. That’s a sure way to get some of their customers.
Use Google search
Another way to find popular influencers on YouTube is to search for them on Google. That might feel counterintuitive, but you’ll find that some people have already conducted your search. You might find articles and even forum posts. Subreddits about this topic can be a massive help because it’s not just brands looking for influencers but people actively engaged in a community or niche. They might have the best and most genuine insights.
Reach out directly to freelancers
When you find the freelancers you want to collaborate with, you can find their information on their profile page. Write a highly personalized message explaining why you chose them and what you’re proposing. Write a strong and convincing pitch to ensure you’ll hit the mark. Influencers can sometimes be picky in who they work with and how. Make the collaboration as smooth as possible to ensure it works.
How to find influencers for your business with ComeUp?
Finding influencers is the most essential part of your influencer marketing strategy. It’s the one that will determine what results you will generate. Now you know how to find influencers online. But as you’ve seen, it’s time-consuming, and it requires skills and tools. The best way to find influencers and ensure great results is to hire a freelance professional to find influencers for your brand. They will find high-quality freelancers with a high-engagement rate thanks to their experience and tools. Try ComeUp today and find many influencers for your campaigns!
