Tools for finding and managing key influencers online

Since the rise of social media advertising, influencers have been playing a huge part in marketing campaigns for brands. Providing reliable word-of-mouth advertising for companies, influencers command a huge level of respect among consumers, and can often be the catalyst in selling a large volume of product. Leading influencers have the power to sell out an item of clothing within a matter of hours, so it is unsurprising that they have become an integral aspect of marketing campaigns. As soon as you decide to enlist influencers to help you market yourself, you need to find exactly the right people to match with your brand. This isn’t always as simple as it may seem, so we’ve taken a closer look at tools you can use to find and manage your influencers.

Selecting influencers

The first step in the process is deciding on the influencers you’d like to connect with. Tools like Influence.co provide access to influencers, allowing you to shortlist exactly who you’re interested in. The site is completely free for contacting up to 30 influencers per month, there is only a need to pay if you require more than 30 influencers. Influence.co boasts an easily navigable interface, allowing you to select your industry and browse influencers that may be suitable. You will then be able to have a look at all of the influencers who have signed up and who fall into your chosen category. The search options allow you to sort them by age, follower count, location and their engagement rate. This is especially useful if you are looking for an influencer who already achieves high levels of engagement.

Checking engagement level

When selecting an influencer, it is important to aim for someone who doesn’t have less than a 5% engagement rate on their content. Anyone can invest money into purchasing fake followers, but a good engagement rate indicates that the influencer’s followers are actually paying close attention to their content. To vet your shortlist further, you can use Social Blade to have a look at even more detailed analytics. Taking a look at an account’s follower growth over time is another good indicator for seeing if an influencer’s followers are genuine. A sudden jump in followers can reveal that the user has, in fact, purchased their followers. Through our example below you can see that bigcat is gradually waning in popularity.

Getting in touch with influencers

A great tool for engaging with influencers across social channels is Zoho Social. The platform provides you with an overview of your stats, your posts and any incoming mentions. You can respond through the platform and can view key details about those who contact you, including their follower count and any previous conversations with them. This provides context and allows you to spot those who regularly post positively about your brand. You can also add notes to a particular profile to allow you to build a lasting relationship. Zoho Social also offers a variety of other capabilities, including post scheduling and in-depth analytics.

Keeping written notes about an individual enables you to keep track of influencers who post positive content around your brand. In this day and age, with so many users out there, it is almost impossible to remember an individual without written notes. Your notes will allow you to keep track of exactly who your biggest fans are and who has the most influence and will enable you to reach out to them more often. Through this, you can keep in contact with influencers who support you, and encourage more support in future by responding to their posts.

With the right tools, it is much easier to establish and retain a meaningful relationship with influencers and benefit as a result. By looking closely at analytics it is easy to establish the most profitable influencers to connect with and build a mutually beneficial, long-lasting relationship with them. Influencers are one of the major keys to an effective online marketing strategy, so don’t forget to make the most of their potential in helping your brand to really flourish.