What was once a strategy for a few, now has become a necessity. We talk about having influencer marketing in our campaigns and that, in sectors such as fashion or gastronomy, it is practically an obligation to count on it.

Knowing how to choose influencers is fundamental and is one of the main steps for actions in this regard to succeed.

How to Choose Influencers

There are different types and characteristics of influencers. We have those who are famous characters outside the internet, the generators of opinion, experts or bloggers.

We can also divide them according to the impact number and followers in micro-influencers, macro influencers or conversational influencers.

Brands look for the profiles of influencers that can increase social media engagement for the best of their products, seeking to create a direct impact on their followers to convert them into customers.

Sometimes, we come up with the idea of campaigning with influencers but we do not know where to start.

We think that the profile with the most followers is the one that will work for us or that we should work on all social networks. This is not true, therefore, it is essential to carry out adequate planning to be successful with these online marketing actions.

Steps to Take to Choose the Best Influencer

Choosing influencers is a personalized task that takes into account the type of target you are going after. The task may be more difficult than you thought since the influencer market has expanded and more and more people are influencing from the digital sphere.

This is one of the reasons why influencers’ representation or marketing agencies are built and established. In addition, some not only offer an intermediary service but also provide a solution for monitoring and analyzing the campaigns to be carried out.

Here are the main steps to choose the right influencers for your brand.

1. Clear objectives for actions

Why do you need an influential person in the digital field? How long do you want to collaborate? Are we talking about a specific campaign? Three main questions that you have to mark at the beginning of your selection. You must be clear about what you want to achieve with the actions of influencers.

2. Know and segment your audience

It is very important that you know perfectly the characteristics of your audience and your clients. We recommend that you create an ideal client profile, with its demographic characteristics, habits, interests, information consumption, etc.

It is possible that you have variations on that ideal client profile, based on this information to segment your audience and define the client map with which you will work. The ideal client profile helps you to formalize the personality criteria that influencers must have that you need to choose. These characteristics will also have followers or fans of the influential profile.

3. Preliminary list of influencers

Research, search and rank the profiles that meet the criteria of your target audience. Create a table to perform the analysis of each profile and thus assess the behavior of each. For example, track the number of publications, writing style, images, etc.

4. Type of interaction of followers

From your list, you should pay attention to the comments and interactions made by the followers of the profiles. Many times, there are ‘sub-influencers’ within the followers of your influencers. People who in themselves cause a direct impact to the rest of the followers and who have a faithful and lasting relationship with the influencers. There are different tools that help you in this research process about the profiles.

5. Brand and product related to interests

This point is key and you may have already met it if you made a good audience segmentation. Equally, it is important that you ask yourself: would this influencer be a client of my brand?

An action of this kind has to be the most credible and natural, so the person has to feel an affinity for the brand. Do you like our products? Many times our best influencers are among our followers and we do not always need the most famous influencer to promote our product.

6. Content quality

Both the visual content and the written content must be in harmony with the influencer himself/herself. That is to say, the quality of the creations of the influencer says a lot about the type of community that they influence.
Take your time to check if the wording is good or if the photos, videos or infographics fit your brand.

7. Lasting professional relationships

We recommend that you establish personal and close relationships with influencers. Remember that they work on their own brand and it has a lot to do with their personality. Therefore, it is more effective to cultivate a lasting relationship that can participate in different phases of the campaign to become a Brand Ambassador.

8. Plan B and crisis management

If you are making the first approach to your list of influencers, they may reject you. Either because they are already working with the competition or by tastes. Prepare for rejection and keep an ace up your sleeve.

Follow our recommendation with these eight steps and you can build your campaign successfully. Knowing how to choose influencers is one of the most important steps of your campaign and will increase your online presence and sales of your business. Talk to us to get more in-depth professional and the best influencer marketing advice.