The most important part of brand storytelling with influencers is finding the right people to spread the messages in the right ways. Influencers are in the business of authentic relationships. Today we're going to learn how to identify and vet influencers for your campaign. For your reference, here are some additional sources that go beyond what we're going to discuss here today. Influencers aren't a good strategy for all brands. It's important to know your target audience and denote who they find credible. These additional readings will help you to develop a solid understanding of persuasion and using opinion leaders to create word of mouth. First, social media influencers is a persuasion tactic. It's part of a larger communications strategy. You must know the goals and objectives of your communication plan. Your goals dictate everything, including whether you'll reach out to a nano, micro, or macro influencer. If you want to promote your brand, look for macro-influencers with broad reach on the platforms your audience uses. If your goal is conversions, a micro-influencer with a highly engaged following is a better choice. Once you have identified the goal and objectives of your communication plan, it's time to identify influencers that support your goals and objectives. This means discovering influencers with audience demographics that support the network you're trying to target and whose values align with your brand values. One of the most crucial steps to launching an influencer campaign is deciding on your goals. Your goals will inform how you measure results. Campaign results are a critical component of measuring the return on investment or ROI. The key performance indicators for your influencer campaign are determined by your overall goal. Influencer campaign goals generally fall into two broad categories. Brand awareness or direct response. Brand awareness reflects how recognizable your brand is to customers. Brand awareness can be more difficult to measure than direct response campaigns. Followers and subscribers. Social media following is the tally of followers an influencer has across all their social media channels. Impressions are defined as the number of users that have viewed a social post. Impressions are a critical metric for determining a campaign's reach and a preferred way to measure social reach compared to following. Engagement rate measures the audiences interactivity in relation to a social media post. Engagement speaks to how well an audience receives a post. The key performance indicators, or KPIs, that are tracked for social media engagement are likes, dislikes, comments, and social sentiment, shares, follower growth, mentions, and hashtags. Then there is press and media. Press coverage around your influencer campaign helps to spread your message even further. Media mentions and links to your website boost brand awareness. You'll find that increased media coverage produces a halo effect around your website, increasing the overall traffic from all sources, organic, referral, social, and direct. There are many ways to identify social media influencers. You could use a search engine like Google, for example. You could also opt to use social media platforms. As with Google searches, social media searches are time-consuming. You can also use social listening software. We've touched on the benefits of social listening in a previous course. Programs such as BuzzSumo or Sprout Social, let you flag the topics you are interested in and identify as content creators talking about those topics. The downside of social listening software is that many programs have an associated cost if you want more than limited access to basic functionality or a time trial period. Here is a list of various options for you to investigate and see which one is right for you. It's important to make the right choice of influencers for your brand. Here are some factors to consider. The audience size. Your first instinct may be to look for influencers with large audiences. But that isn't always the best option. Surprisingly, a larger audience correlates with lower engagement. For a good balance of region engagement, consider micro-influencers with around 100,000 followers, a genuine audience. Be aware that some content creators pay for followers or use follow-back strategies to build an audience. You won't see a lot of engagement or sales from automated bots and people who are interested in building their own audiences. The right demographic, it doesn't matter if an audience is too large or too small. If it includes people who simply aren't interested in what you have to say, it's important that you find an influencer with an audience that fits your brand. The right personality, the right voice, and the right demographic go hand in hand. If you find an influencer who talks to the people purchasing your products, there's a good chance they're already talking your language. It's always worth checking a content creator's work very carefully. You don't want to end up working with someone who makes controversial or offensive statements that have the potential to harm your brand. Regular content. In social media, quality may be king but quantity is important too. Audiences want a constant stream of content to enjoy. You must keep up a consistent schedule to maintain relevancy. Industry relevance. When you choose an influencer, you need someone who has relevancy in your industry. That way, you know you are tapping into an audience that's interested in your product and you know the influencer has the knowledge to speak with authority. Consumers are more and more seeking recommendations about products and services from someone they're familiar with and trust. The right influencer is uniquely positioned to connect with their followers and get them interested in your brand. However, it's important to do your due diligence before agreeing to work with an influencer. You should check out their previous influencer campaigns. Ideally, you should partner with an influencer who already uses your product or service. But that isn't always possible. Check out the influencer's previous campaigns with other brands to see if their personal brand resonates or vibes with your brand's mission and core values. If you aren't vibing, the partnership won't feel authentic and won't bring many results. You want to ensure their core values reflect your brand's core values. Before you partner with an influencer, you want to ensure their target audience aligns with your target market. Dig into everything from location to demographic data. Do your research and choose a reputable influencer who matches your target audience. You should perform a deep background check. There is no room for surprises in a brand partnership with an influencer. Part of that is finding out what their following and engagement looks like. Look to see what brands and companies they are promoting. Quality matters more than quantity. Find influencers who focused on quality content and not just a pay-to-play approach. You want to be clear with the communication goals and then ask about past results with similar brands and partnerships. You should discuss the goal and measurable ROIs before you enter into any partnership. You should also review their performance data. Check the validity of your potential influencer partnership by asking for examples of similar work and checking their references. For brands, storytelling is a great way to connect to audiences. Capturing audience attention today is more difficult than ever. Influencers are one way to get people to identify with your brand. Influencers can help your brand's story get out. Influencers tend to have a large, highly engaged audience who are likely to pay attention to brand mentions. Storytelling is a long-term strategy, complete with ongoing relationships with the types of people who can spread the word about your brand.
