When you’re running a business, you wear a lot of hats. In many cases, you’re the owner, manager, marketing team, and accountant—all on top of the regular work you do. Of course, you want to do what’s best for your business when using social media to reach out to your regular customer base and potential new customers.

Aside from traditional marketing options available to you or paying to play with boosted posts/ads, how do you reach new people? Well, many businesses are finding success with influencer marketing. If you haven’t worked with influencers before, you might be wondering:

What is influencer marketing?
How do I find the right influencers?
What are the risks?
What do I do when I find the right influencer?

So that’s what we’re going to cover today!

What exactly IS influencer marketing?

Sprout Social puts it best, describing influencer marketing as ‘a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers–individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche. Influencer marketing works because of the high amount of trust that social influencers have built up with their following, and recommendations from them serve as a form of social proof to your brand’s potential customers.’

While traditional marketing like social media ads might be ignored or skipped, the marketing you get with influencers is unique to the people you hire. You can work with two influencers and get two completely different campaigns to help market your business.

Influencer marketing offers powerful opportunities to business owners because the influencer’s followers already know, like, and trust them. So when they talk about your product, it comes across as authentic instead of salesy.

Finding the right influencer

Know their audience

Working with influencers can lead to massive success for your business, but it can be tricky to find the right people to work with. Anyone can be an influencer by having a social media account and posting content regularly about a specific niche (think: pets, lifestyle, cleaning, travel, etc.) that influence their audience to make purchases.

That means that you have a lot of influencers you can choose from, but because their audience is based on the influencer’s existing content, you need to find the one that’s right for your product or service.

For example, if you are a luxury hotel that wants to attract new visitors and hire a travel influencer who actually tours around on the cheap by staying at hostels—you might end up talking to their audience who has no interest in staying at a high-end hotel when they travel.

Unfortunately, if your product or service doesn’t resonate with the audience you end up talking to, it doesn’t matter how many followers your influencer has. (Especially when you consider that some unethical people purchase their audience to become an influencer.)

As with any type of marketing, it’s best to know what you want before you jump in feet-first! Here are tips on finding the perfect influencer for your business.

Know their values and beliefs

With so many influencers to choose from, you want to make sure you’re working with someone whose values align with yours. Understanding your potential influencer’s messaging and values starts with taking a peek at their social media feeds. Check for messaging that doesn’t match up with your own.

For example, if one of your key messages is to support local, you can connect with influencers that specifically support this message, like my own local travel account on Instagram.

If you aren’t sure what you’re watching for, I would recommend reviewing your company’s mission and values before adding influencer marketing to the mix. It’s important to know what message you are looking to deliver, and what values you’ll be looking for.

What are their metrics like?

Of course, you’ll want to know what kind of numbers they have on their various plaforms. Make sure to check how many followers they have, and if they have a good mix of organic and paid content.

Aside from the followers, it’s important to look at what other companies this influencer has worked with and what type of content they normally share. How often are they doing paid posts vs organic? You can discover this by simply scrolling through each influencer’s feed to get a feel for the kind of campaign they’d create for you.

Also important to check various platforms—not just the one you’re looking to develop a campaign on. Are you comfortable associating your brand/business with that influencer’s posts? Is their current content creating engagement and conversation or does it just look pretty?

Engagement

It’s important to look at influencers posts (paid and non-paid) and see if there is a difference in engagement. Are the comments legit or are they just emojis? Is there a big difference in engagement when an influencer is sharing a sponsored post vs a non-sponsored post?

These details will give you more of a real impression of the influencer and what their work consists of. It’s best to look for influencers that are similar to your brand and that talk about issues that you also value as a company.

Audience

Check the followers list of any influencer you’re looking to work with. This is a manual process but it will let you see past the excitement of potentially reaching 50k new people and allow you to see if these followers will actually buy from you. It’s better to work with a smaller influencer who has 2,000 engaged followers who comment, share and buy than work with a bigger influencer who has 20,000 followers who aren’t engaged with their content.

This is especially vital if you’re a local business looking to reach a local audience. If you aren’t checking your potential influencer’s audience, you might end up working with someone who’s mostly followed by people in the US or overseas.

Do your homework and if it doesn’t match who you are trying to target then move on to someone else.

The risks of working with Influencer Marketing

Buying followers

The biggest risk in working with influencers is ending up with an influencer with a fake audience. You wouldn’t want to associate yourself with someone who buys fake followers and doesn’t practice what they preach right?

Do your research, ask around if anyone knows the influencer, and check programs that will tell you the influencer's engagement rates and if they bought followers or not.

Wrong audience

As mentioned above in this article, there is a chance of working with someone who doesn’t match your ideal audience. Make sure you do your research!

What to do once you’ve found a potential influencer?

Once you’ve found the right match for your campaign, it’s time to discuss budget, expectations and a media kit!

Set your budget or ask for a rate sheet

If you’re looking to work with an influencer who is going to put effort into your marketing, be ready to come into the arrangement with a budget. The days of getting quality content posted on your behalf in exchange for free products or services are coming to an end as more influencers realize how time-consuming it is to create the kind of content that converts.

Many influencers have set prices, so you’ll be able to pick and choose what kind of content you want to include. Come prepared with your lowest and highest budget to discuss options.

Set expectations

Get these in writing! Your expectations will include how many/what kind of posts you’ll receive. For example, you might get an exclusive blog post, a single Instagram Reel, and a single story for your budget, or you might get a single reel and 5 story posts over 5 weeks. It all depends on your budget and how many sponsored posts the influencer has available.

Generally, they will have a rate sheet available so you can choose what works with your budget. As well, discuss if the content needs to be pre-approved before it’s posted, who needs to be tagged, what hashtags are to be used, etc. so you can get it in writing before starting your campaign.

Ask for their media kit

Media kits are like an influencer’s resume—it includes a short bio, social stats and examples of past work with accompanying performance metrics. Ask for one of these along with their rate sheet.

Influencers are a great way to reach new people and reach a different demographic than you have in the past! If your business doesn’t include influencer marketing, it should! Summer is coming and influencers experiencing your business is a great way to get the word out.

Wondering how influencers could help your business and want local ideas? Let’s chat!

How to find the right Influencer for your brand