How to pick the right influencer for your brand 

It’s no secret that social media influencers play a prominent role in today’s PR activities. Instagram posts, YouTube videos and tweets can serve as the perfect tools to reach your audience, promote positive branding and increase customer engagement and awareness. 

But how do we make sure we are working with them effectively? The first step is to pick the right ones. Here are our top three areas of consideration when making your choice.  

Relevancy 

Just like every brand, every influencer is different. Influencers are typically specialised in a specific topic or category, and it is this topic that their audience is interested in. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that the influencer’s content is aligned with your brand’s product, messaging and ethics. This will then allow you to target and reach an audience that would be interested in your brand.  

Standard categories such as food, fashion and technology are great as a first criteria, however in order to make sure that your influencer is a strong match its best to define it further. For example, just because an influencer specialises in food recipes it doesn’t necessarily mean that they would be a good fit for your vegan brand.  

The right platform 

It is also important to keep in mind that influencers can own a variety of social platforms. What you need to ask yourself is, which platform would your customers visit and which one would be able to best showcase your product. For example, if you are a fashion brand, someone with a large following on Instagram is more likely to be valuable than someone on Twitter with a larger audience.  

Engagement 

Don’t let the amount of followers dupe you- an Instagrammer with a very niche and engaged audience of 10,000 might be much more effective than an Instagrammer with millions of followers. It’s always best to look for how many comments, shares and likes each post receives.  

Influencer questions to ask yourself

Taking your time to select the right influencer for your brand is crucial in an effective influencer campaign. We have all seen the influencer faux pas Listerine did back in September… To avoid it ask yourself: 

• Is the influencer’s brand and content relevant?
• Do those readers/followers  respond, comment, and share? 

• Does the platform showcase the product effectively?