How to Identify Social Media Influencers
By: Uma Bhat
Tags: Traffic, Neil Patel, Leads, Social Media Marketing, Influencer Marketing

In today’s world of social media marketing, there is one person who does not need any introduction.

Yes and that’s none other than the Social media influencers!

Social media Influencers have carved a path for themselves due to higher audience reach and a better reputation.

Who Are Social Media Influencers?

This may need no explanation. But I have noticed that there exists a false notion that an influencer is a person with huge fan following. Hence trying to clear the confusion.

Today people can easily buy followers and show a high follower count. Most of it may be bots and fake accounts. This does not mean the person has influence over his followers.

So then who is a real social media influencer?

Here is a list of factors that you can associate with a real social media influencer:

Established reputation due to knowledge and expertise around a topic

Established credibility in a particular industry

Access to huge audience

Active engagement with audience

Power to persuade audience by virtue of their authenticity and reach

Create trends and encourage followers to buy products they promote

You can see different kinds of social media influencers such as bloggers, celebrities, micro influencers and industry experts.

For example, Neil Patel is very famous in the online marketing industry and is a huge influencer for brands such as Amazon, HP and Viacom.

@neilpatel has almost close to 300,000 followers on Twitter.

Related Content: 19 Strategies That’ll Help You Become an Influencer

Why are Social Media Influencers important for your brand?

When the traditional outbound marketing started declining, influencer marketing started to pick up aggressively.

Modern consumers stopped paying attention to advertisements and billboards, and influencers emerged as the most trust worthy people who could bring context with the help of social proof.

Social media influencers are extremely important for your brand. The audience values the opinion of an influencer.

They are crucial for your brand because of few major factors:

Build trust Build awareness Authority and influence Build relationships Excellent communicators Creative Engaged with audience Drive traffic Convert leads Generate sales

Factors to Identify Social Media Influencers

So before you engage with the influencers, it is important to Identify Social Media Influencers. This is where it becomes tricky.

You can find influencers in many ways:

Niche

This is the most important aspect to find your influencer. Find their area of expertise. Look into their social media accounts to find their niche. If they are talking about food then it’s clear that they are into food industry.

It’s very important to collaborate with an influencer in your niche so that your message reaches the right audience.

2. Reach

A person with high number of followers can spread the message far and wide. Though it’s not necessarily important to have thousands of followers, having a decent number of followers is important else the influencer’s message is not reaching the required number of customers.

Micro influencers have followers anywhere ranging between 1K to 100K. Macro influencers have followers between 100K and 1 million followers and generally have high engagement rate. Mega influencers have fan following of more than 1 million followers

Based on the type and depth of reach that you are planning you can either engage a micro influencer, macro influencer or a mega influencer.

3. Engagement

Apart from just follower count, the next most important factor is the engagement of the influencer.

Engagement shows how the followers are getting connected with the content that the influencer is sharing. Engagement includes likes, shares, and comments for the posts coming from the influencer. This shows the real involvement of the audience with the influencer.

4. Creativity

Influencers generally have an edge over the traditional advertising since they are allowed creativity without any one directing them.

The influencers that you want to choose, should be creative in the ways that they post your content. Ensure that their work is aesthetic and has an appeal towards consumers. They should not be repetitive and use the same methods across different products that they promote.

5. Geography

Very obvious but an important factor to identify the influencers is the geographic location. Try and understand if you are trying to reach out to global customers or limited to a particular geography.

Some influencers many not be well known at global level, but very popular in their country or region. Choose your influencers based on your influencer marketing strategy. If you want to capture local market choosing a micro influencer who is popular in that location will be a wise choice.

How to identify social media influencers?

Now that you know the factors to identify the right influencers for your brand, you now have to think of ways to find them.

There are two options:

Manual search on social media platforms and Google

Manual option is open for those who are ready to spend a lot of time on research and experiment. Conduct simple Google search with keywords relating to your industry.

For example if you are into food industry, search Google with the keywords such as food, drink, recipe, menu, tasty, chef, etc. that can lead you to the right influencers who are taking about these words on social platforms.

You can also use the analytics available on each on the social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The audience analysis will give you a great deal of information on the people who are interested in food, those who are food bloggers, those who like, comment and share food blogs. Etc.

You can further filter and choose people who have a good amount of influence over their fan following.

2. Employ smart social media management tools

Marketing in the digital age is much easier than ever before. Though you have a larger audience, you are also blessed with tools that can help you to get your work done much easier and faster.

Social media management tools make your job easier by suggesting the influencers in your industry. There are various tools available that can identify and suggest your influencers based on the content they share, conversations and mentions on social media.

The tools will be able to search the industry influencers who have the ability to promote your content. The tools are so advanced that they are able to capture data relating location, expertise, profession, social shares, ranking and number of backlinks, and much more.

There are excellent tools that help you to reach out to your desired influencers. Some of them are listed below:

Related Content: Top 5 Influencer Research Tools for Social Media Marketing

Conclusion

So ultimately we all know that just like how the word-of-mouth marketing has a special value, so does the influencer marketing. It’s very likely that recommendations coming from known people whom they trust is much more trust worthy than corporate advertisements.

Always look into the 5 important factors that are explained in this article before choosing your influencers.

Choosing the right influencers can be quite a task if you do not know the methods of identifying the social media influencers. Go for manual search if you have time and you understand the efforts required for manual search. Else there are always smart social media management tools that you can resort to find the best and the most relevant influencers for your brand.