10 Yetis Insight Blog - How To Identify Influencers Using Social Media

Influencer identification is and will continue to play a major part in any PR campaign. Influencers have become any digital PR agency’s bread and butter; we need them to get our message out there for us, so identifying them properly will make or break the success of our campaigns. There is no better place to find influencers than on the huge platform that is social media, where they are usually most present and available.

Social media influencers are everywhere and they could be talking about your campaign if you pull the right strings. This is why PR agencies are now always talking about influencers and how valuable a strong social media following is. Due to their importance, let’s cover a few tips to help you smash social media influencer identification so you don’t end up looking like a wally or rubbing these invaluable people up the wrong way.

• Are they relevant?

While hunting for the perfect influencers on social media for your purposes you need to make sure that they are relevant or you risk looking like a fool. If your campaign revolves around fashion, for instance, you will need to ensure that the influencer you’re reaching out to is a leading voice on the topic in question. Not only will this make them more likely to co-operate and talk about your campaign, but it will also mean those who are following them will be interested in the topic.

• Consider the numbers

An influencer with a large number of followers is obviously very beneficial, as your campaign’s reach will be massive; however sometimes a smaller niche audience can be just as beneficial, if not more. The influencers may be more active on the platform or more influential within their tight circles, due to the niche nature. This can result in shares and likes which, in turn, can actually result in a far greater bottom line hit than you originally thought. This follows nicely into the next tip...

• Engagement

While searching for the perfect social media influencers, you also have to take a peek at their followers. Have a look at how active they are in response to the influencers posts: do they comment a lot? Are there a number of shares and likes? This engaging audience could lead to your campaign trending or being picked up by publications without even having to send out a press release!

• Search influencers easily

Trawling through multiple social media sites, searching key words and pin pointing who is ideal for your campaign is time consuming and often very difficult. Luckily there are multiple different platforms to help make the process that little bit easier. One great tool for this is Topsy. You go on Topsy, put a link that’s related to your client or campaign in the search bar and then voila, you can see all the tweeters that have tweeted about that particular subject. They also have a very handy ‘Influencers’ tab which you will soon realise is a lifesaver.

These tools will make searching for influential social media-ites ridiculously easy and will eat up a fraction of your time.

• #hashtag

Hashtags are a very useful tool on twitter. You can find anyone talking about a topic just by searching by that #topic and, similar to topsy, Twitter has its own in-built influencer identification by showing the ‘top tweets’ when you search these hashtags. Now this search function isn’t as accurate as Topsy but it’s still worth considering. Utilise both of these tools and then you’ll be laughing.

• Influencers are friends

When you find yourself someone influential on social media, there is a high chance that they follow a myriad of other influencers for you to check out.

Simply look at their followers and you’ll notice what I am talking about. Many influencers only follow a tiny fraction of people compared to how many people follow them. They follow those that are also influential so they can keep in the loop with upcoming trends while also creating useful contacts.

• Keep updated

Follow your potential influencers and read their posts. This will better help you understand what they are interested in and who they are as a person which in turn will help you tailor your approach when speaking to them.

It will also impress them more when you know what they’ve been talking about recently and show that you’re tailoring your news specifically to them. Of course the approach about the key message is the end game but don’t rush into this, it could put them off from talking to you at all.