Audience

These days, many influencers specialize in specific content or audience niches. For example, there are fashion, travel, and fitness influencers.

When looking for someone to collaborate with, it’s smart to choose the one known for a niche that’s relevant to your business, or who reaches an overlapping audience.

By collaborating with a social media influencer with a relevant audience, you’ll be able to target consumers that may already be interested in the type of products or services you offer. Plus, the influencer’s content will better align with your messaging, creating a stronger campaign.

Values

You have to be careful with who you align with your brand. When you engage an influencer in a Marketing campaign, they represent your brand. As a result, you may want to avoid influencers who have openly expressed controversial opinions or don’t share your brand values.

We recommend familiarizing yourself with an influencer’s past content and public reputation before approaching them with a campaign opportunity.

Reach

As mentioned before, follower count shouldn’t be the main deciding factor when choosing an influencer. That said, you want to consider it along with average post reach and impressions to get a sense of how many people will potentially gain exposure to your brand because this can help generate more brand awareness

Here’s how influencers are classified based on their reach:

•Nano-influencer: Less than 10k followers

•Micro-influencer: 10k-100k followers

•Mid-range influencer: 100k-500k followers

•Macro-influencer: 500k+ followers

Don’t write someone off simply because they have a smaller following. Up-and-coming influencers may still have an engaged audience that could be very interested in what you have to offer.

Engagement rate

Having thousands of followers doesn’t mean much if that audience isn’t engaging with the influencer’s posts.

If you see a social influencer that you’d potentially like to work with, scroll through their posts and check out their comments section. Do they receive a high number of genuine comments on each post? Or does their comments section seem pretty barren or spammy?

Also, consider whether the influencer is taking time to respond to comments. That’s a good sign that the influencer prioritizes community engagement, which will bode well for a potential Marketing campaign.

Frequency

Another thing to look at is the influencer’s posts and sponsored content frequency. If you scroll through the feed to find that it primarily consists of sponsored posts, that’s not a good look. Your campaign could get lost in the shuffle or come across to the Influencer’s Audience as just another quick paycheck.

Instead, it’s better to work with someone who is more selective about the brands he or she promotes and is primarily focused on creating organic content.

The most successful influencers balance sponsored posts and their normal content. Anyone with an account filled with sponsorships could have their credibility questioned.

If you want your campaign to perform well, the Influencer’s Audience must take you seriously.

Quality content

Odds are, it was the influencer’s content that caught your eye in the first place. Quality content goes a long way, especially when creating an impactful Marketing campaign.

You want to work with a social media influencer that you know will produce something special. This applies to everything from the image and video quality to copywriting, post metadata, and even their overall enthusiasm for working with you as a partner.

Reliability

When collaborating with influencers, you need to be able to count on them. Each influencer you engage with needs to be dependable when responding to emails, posting content on time, and fulfilling other commitments. That’s why reliability is another essential trait when choosing an influencer for your campaign.

No one has time to chase influencers to post promotional content constantly. You want to be able to outline your requests and trust that they’ll be completed in a timely fashion.