10 Yetis Insight Blog - 10 Ways To Crack Influencer Identification

To help make your digital PR agency create cracking campaigns that always smash coverage and keep those clients of yours happy, influencer identification is something you will need to master.

Getting influencers engaged in digital channels has become increasingly important for both consumer and B2B campaigns and influencer outreach is not something anyone working in the public relations industry should be ignoring. Times have changed and it’s about time we all learnt how to properly indentify the influencers that will be most beneficial for our campaigns so let’s explore 10 ways to get it on lockdown.

• 1. Pay attention

Have a quick read through some of their blog posts or watch a few of their videos and get a feel for what their niche is. You want to really familiarise yourself with what subjects influencers cover and where you believe most of their influence lies. I understand that reading someone’s blog or watching a few of their videos takes time, and it does take longer than just blindly emailing those who you have a feeling might be beneficial for your campaign, but actually it will be shorter in the long run as you won’t be waiting for emails from those who will actually never email you back as the subject matter just doesn’t interest them.

• 2. Utilise software available to you

There are multiple different programmes you can use to help search and narrow down influential people in certain niches, for example if your campaign centres on cake then search for those who write about cake. Bloggabase or Gorkana are two great examples of blogger discovery platforms for you to utilise in your search. For influential tweeters try Topsy. Most of these platforms work by you finding a link of something that is of interest to you (something similar to your product or your client) which you paste into the search bar. For Topsy it will then show you everyone who has talked about the link on Twitter. Topsy even has a very handy ‘influencer tab’ which enables you to see all those who are influential on Twitter that have shared the link.

• 3. Mastering, or not mastering SEO

Search engine optimisation may seem important to finding influencers and in a way, it is however as my boss and main honcho Yeti, Andy, found out at a panel recently, most bloggers don’t really care about SEO, definitely not as much as those in the PR universe do. This actually confuses how to find these influential people as many probably used Google as a default.

• 4. Communicate

This may seem obvious to some but talk to the people you believe could be helpful. Most bloggers and influencers won’t have a phone number on the web for you to call and have a chat about how their doing and whether their Nan is well but a lot of them do this for a reason, they don’t have time to talk to us PR lot so instead throw them an email. Let them know who you are and pitch to them a few ideas and just keep a nice communication going, see if it’s for them. If it’s not, then still stay in contact just in case another campaign you work on later on in your career might be more suited to them.

• 5. Stand out

Influencers will get email upon email asking if they want to collaborate on something or help with a campaign and you won’t be seen if you aren’t working for a brand they already love or aren’t offering bags of money. This means indentifying their niche via chit chat can be difficult, which means you need to stand out from the crowd. Try not to use usual PR jargon and instead just act like a real human being.

• 6. Look at the numbers

When you’re searching for influential people to help out on a campaign you do actually have to make sure they have influence. Check how many people their video or blog will reach; do they have a large amount of followers? Do their videos have the same large number of views with every upload? If the answer to these is yes then that’s a great start.

One thing to look out for though is accounts which have fake followers who will not engage with a person as they just exist to boost that persons numbers. You can check these easily using websites such as fakers.statuspeople.com.

• 7. Don’t be a creep

You might be tempted to begin stalking possible influencers to make sure they are perfect for your campaign; however becoming seemingly obsessed with a blogger will just make you seem a bit creepy and desperate. Of course you want to be thorough and keeping an eye on the subjects your influencer is talking about regularly is important but try to keep the likes and comments to a minimum. You want to be friendly but remember you are a professional, NOT someone trying to get them to date you!

• 8. Know what you want

Ensure you know what you want your influencer to do when you find them. Do you want them to just tweet about you or your client, or do you want an in depth blog post or 10 minute video? You need to make sure you know this because it will help you decide what influences are for you as some will be more inclined to do long videos or blog posts more than others.

• 9. #UseHashtags

Hashtags can be completely useless and often people tend to hashtag ridiculous things however they can also be incredibly helpful when having a search for influential people. If you search for example #pizza, you will see a live feed of those talking about pizza, most of these may be just the average joe enjoying their dinner of pizza but if you then look at the ‘top’ tweets it will only show you influential people who have been chatting about pizza.

• 10. Follow the leader

Sometimes finding people with power is simple and it can be as simple as clicking that follow button. Influential people tend to have a habit of just following other influential people, which are usually in the same niche as they are. This is great for us as it makes everything that little bit easier.