10 Yetis Insight Blog – How To Identify Influencers Suited For Your Campaign

Influencer outreach is becoming more and more relevant as bloggers and vloggers grow in popularity. A perfect example of this growth is well known YouTuber, Pewdiepie being named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people just earlier this year.

With this in mind, identifying influencers that you can utilise in your consumer-facing campaigns has never been more important. It’s a huge thing to overlook if you choose not to even humour the idea of getting influencers involved in some shape or form.

To help all of those out there who are scratching their heads, wondering how it is you go about identifying such a person, fear not, below are some tips to follow so you nail your influencer outreach.

Use Software

There are many different platforms out there which have been built specifically with you finding key influencers in mind. These programmes will help you search and really hone in on certain niches e.g. gaming or horse riding.

Some examples of top dollar platforms which will help aid your search for suitable influencers include Gorkana, Response Source and Bloggabase.

Be Attentive

Ensure, before you get in touch with influencers, that you have actually spent time reading through their website or watching their video content from recent weeks and months. This is so you can get a feel for their vibe, what they like to talk about and further understand their niche.

This can be time consuming of course; it’s far more time consumer then just firing away emails to a general list, but spending some time getting to know influencers content in the short run will actually save you time in the long run.

It’s A Numbers Game

It’s all well and good getting an influencer to write about your client but if they have only 70 people following them, it really isn’t worth your time.

When searching for the perfect influencers for your campaign ensure you check the reach on all of their social media channels. If they create video content, it’s also wise to check out how many views each one of their videos gets and how many subscribers they have to their channel. If they are receiving the same amount of views for every upload and that number is large then you know they are legit.

Some influencers will have fake followers; bots who will not engage with a person and exist only to boost their follower count. The best way to make sure your influencer is legit is to use websites such as fakers.statuspeople.com.

Communication Is Key

Keeping the conversation flowing with your targeted influencers will help you better understand them and their demographic. Most bloggers will not list their phone number on their page; this could be due to a number of reasons but its key to remember those with a large audience will be hearing from multiple PR agencies about their clients so you have to make sure you stand out in your emails.

Ensure you let them know who your client is, talk about their work and maybe pitch them a few ideas. From this you’ll be able to figure out quite quickly if their audience is suited for your client or not; if it’s not make sure you keep in touch with influencers anyway as you never know when you might need them or they might need you in the future!

It’s also wise to try to ditch PR jargon as this can put off bloggers from replying.

Flattery

Another way to ensure you hear back from influencers quickly so you can get a list of influencers that are suited for your campaign sorted is to flatter them. By this I don’t mean complimenting their teeth or hair but more their writing or video style.

This is where doing some homework and watching or reading their material is incredibly important because bluffing your way through this could lead to awkward interactions and them calling you out for not knowing what it is they concentrate on with every post.

If you notice that the influencer that you’re approaching had recently had a baby or brought a new house, congratulate them, ask them questions and make them want to engage with you!

Know What You Want

Before you contact anyone, ensure you actually know what you want out of the campaign. Talk it through with your client and discuss the demographic they want to target. From that you can find influencers with a similar audience and start approaching.

It is also important to find out from your client what they are looking for from their desired influencers; it could be a video, a blog post or even just a mention on social media channels.

Prepare yourself and your client that many influencers now charge for any activity with clients; the prices range and completely depend on what you want from them and whether the campaign interests them.