Influencer marketing can be a major digital marketing pillar. However, social media audiences expect influencer trust and credibility. That means not every creator with a huge following will be a good match for your business. For the best results, there is a need for brands to choose creators who resonate with their brand, delivering a deeper ROI. In this article, we guide you on choosing a credible influencer who will build your brand's trust.
Why You Need To Choose A Good Influencer
One of the misconceptions that brands have when choosing an influencer is that the one with a huge following is better. While working with a mega celebrity influencer with over 10 million followers may look good on paper, they will not bring the desired result if their audience is different from your demographic.
For the real impact on an influencer marketing campaign, you need to partner with an influencer whose community is interested in your product offer. This can ensure that your campaigns bring genuine connections rather than some vanity metrics.
Studies indicate that nano and micro influencers can have an engagement rate 60% higher than mega influencers. When you work with a micro influencer with 10,000 subscribers in your industry, they drive higher engagement and conversion than a celebrity with many passive scrollers. This can be attributed to the fact that they are trusted by their audiences, as they see them as a peer rather than a brand promoter. This is important and plays a crucial role in driving conversion.
Steps in Selecting an Influencer to Drive Credibility
To pick a good influencer for driving credibility, you can use the following steps:
Determine Your Goals
A key step when choosing an influencer is to determine your goal. Do you want to drive brand awareness, create scroll-stopping Instagram content, increase conversions, and be seen as credible in your industry? Do you have an upcoming product launch? Your choice of influencer will depend on the kind of creator and the partnership strategy.
For example, if you are a SaaS software company and you want to reach CTOs, a travel creator on Instagram will not work. Instead, a good idea would be to choose creators who create thought leadership LinkedIn content. Context matters in everything, and your goal should be a key determinant of your choice of influencer.
You can make it even better by establishing your KPIs ahead of time. Consider what you want to achieve, whether 1000 landing page clicks, 100 qualified leads, or even 20,000 impressions. When you have a good understanding of your metrics, it becomes easier to track the ROI instead of relying on guesswork.
Determine Your Audience
Remember that every creator has a different target audience and therefore, you will need to choose a creator whose target demographic aligns with yours. The target audience should involve more than just the age and the location. Look deeper into the audience's psychographic data to determine the pain points of your customers. Consider the type of content they consume and the platform where they spend more time.
To enable you to have a detailed persona, you need to ask yourself several questions, such as:
- Where is your audience hanging out online?
- What are the habits of your target demographic? Do they scroll passively on TikTok, check the industry news on LinkedIn, or check out buying inspiration on a platform like Pinterest? This information will help guide your choice of a platform and the type of content to create.
After understanding your audience's aspirations and pain points, you can now identify the influencers who speak that language. A good collaboration is one that happens when there is an overlap between your target audience and an influencer audience.
Consider if the Alignment is Authentic
You can have an influencer feed consisting of beautiful visuals matching the color palette of your brand. However, when you have some top-level aesthetics, these may not guarantee an authentic partnership. Instead, you need to ensure that you align well with the influencer on audience messaging and values.
Consider if the influencer is genuinely concerned about the topic related to the industry. Are there some similar services or products they have previously mentioned organically? Are their personal values aligning with the mission of your brand? It is not possible to fake authenticity, and if a creator is promoting an item that feels forced, this will make their followers take note, and this will erode their trust.
Look at the influencer's previous brand partnerships. If you notice that every week they are promoting different brands, that may be a red flag. A good influencer should be choosy about the brands they would like to collaborate with so as not to impact their credibility.
Influencer Platform and Their Demographic
The different social media platforms associate different audience demographics. Instagram leans more toward lifestyle and visuals, LinkedIn toward B2B and professional content. TikTok is a good choice for reaching the Gen Z audience, while YouTube excels in providing in-depth content.
Ensure that the platform the influencer is using matches the platform where your audience is mostly located. If your target audience is primarily on LinkedIn, there is no point in investing in Instagram campaigns. Therefore, before you hire an influencer, request a breakdown of their audience demographics, including factors such as age range, gender splits, geographical location, and peak engagement activity. With this data, you can tell if there is an overlap between an influencer and their target audience.
If the influencer has a presence on different platforms, this may be beneficial, but if they prove to be an expert on a particular platform, that is more powerful. If the influencer has a deep understanding of the TikTok algorithm, they will be a better choice than another who only curates content on Instagram.
Check the Quality of Engagement
We noted earlier that a common mistake is that follower count is no longer as important as engagement. A creator with 1 million followers and an engagement rate of 0.3% will not be as valuable as another influencer with 20K followers but with an engagement rate of 3%.
However, ensure that you look at more than just the absolute number. Check the comment sections to see if people are truly engaging in some useful conversations or are responding using bot-like and generic emojis. Quality engagement often consists of personal stories, thoughtful questions, and even genuine dialogues.
Quality of Content and Posting Frequency
Remember that an influencer will be associated with your products and brand, and how people perceive them is the same way they will perceive your brand once they start promoting it. Their social media content is the tool the influencer will use to reach your audience, and therefore, you need to ensure they are creating quality content. Look at their recent posts, videos, stories, and content. Consider their experience in creating content that matches your content quality needs.
Check if the influencer uses compelling and clear messaging. How consistent are they in posting? Are they making one post and then disappearing for two months? When you see a creator who posts consistently, this is a sign of reliability and professionalism. Consider how good the influencer is at storytelling. A good influencer should do more than post some beautiful images. Instead, they should create a great narrative that resonates emotionally with the target audience. The influencer should also understand how to add their brand message into your content in a manner that makes the message fit in rather than feel forced.
Consider the versatility of the content format and whether the audience can create different content formats, such as:
- Captivating long-form videos for YouTube.
- Thought leadership LinkedIn text posts.
- Outstanding Instagram Stories.
- Snappy TikToks.
An influencer who can create a wide range of post formats will offer more benefit than another who can only create one post format.
Level of Professionalism
An influencer collaboration is a kind of business relationship, and this is why you need an influencer who shows a level of professionalism when it comes to honoring contracts, clear communication, and respecting deadlines. Check how fast they will respond after you have connected with them. Does the influencer respond in a prompt, clear, and professional way, highlighting their deliverables and rates? Are they ready to provide a rate card or media kit? If yes, this will be a clear indication that they act as professionals.
Consider if the influencer asks some thoughtful queries about your product, brand, and its campaign goals. Does the influencer have testimonials or case studies from their past collaborations? Having answers to these questions will provide important insights into what it will be like working with the influencer.
Also understand the red flags to watch for in brand partnerships, such as:
- Vague or low responses.
- Not ready to sign the contracts long enough.
- Providing unrealistic promises.
- Not willing to share FTC disclosures.
A good and professional influencer should understand the ethical and legal requirements of sharing sponsored content.
Past Performance of Their Campaigns
A good and experienced influencer should be ready to share the metrics from their previous brand collaborations. Check the engagement they got from their sponsored post and whether they got measured conversions or traffic for the other brands they previously worked with. While past good performance will not guarantee future good results, this can provide important context. Work with creators who are able to articulate the successes of their previous campaign and the lessons they learned from the successful ones.
Also, ask questions about the engagement you got on the last three posts. Are you willing to share the analytics from the screenshot? Has the influencer worked with other brands in your industry, and what results did they get? If the influencer is unable to provide performance data, you need to be cautious, as transparency is important in a collaboration.
Final Thoughts
One of the factors that will impact the success of an influencer marketing campaign is the choice of an influencer. When you choose a credible and trustworthy influencer, social media users will start to see your brand as credible, and you will easily drive social media conversion. Therefore, use the tips outlined in this guide to choose credible influencers.
