He Said She Said – The Power of Influencers

He Said/She Said… Influencers – Does it even matter who is talking about my brand?

The use of influential people to spread a brand’s message is not a new phenomenon. However, social media has broken down the previously existing geographic boundaries and has created a powerful digital influencer that can potentially impact consumers across the globe. Working with the right influencers can catapult your sales, but working with the wrong influencers can at best waste your money, and at worst badly damage the brand you have invested so much in.  Often the problem lies in knowing which influencer is the best fit for your brand to collaborate with. Here are three key things to look out for when researching an influencer to work with:

1. (ENGAGED) Audience – Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the influencer with the largest following will benefit your brand the most. Focus in on the engagement measures – comments, likes, shares. Don’t discount influencers with a smaller following if their niche audience matches your target consumer. Collaborating with an influencer with a smaller following will be cheaper and they will often have an audience with a higher percentage of engaged and loyal followers. If you plan on working with more than one influencer, make sure that their audiences don’t entirely overlap, or else you’ll be paying to hit the same audience (and you might even be annoying people by spamming their social media feeds with your product).
2. Credibility –  What are people saying about the influencer in online forums and groups? Are they trusted? Have their followers made purchases based on their recommendation before? If the influencer isn’t trusted, it will be difficult for them to make their audience believe in your product.
3. Brand Fit – The collaboration needs to make sense, for the influencer and for the brand. Your product or service needs to be something that the influencer would organically use or that fits with their image or life stage. Recently you might have seen a fairly odd collaboration between a lighter brand and a former Miss Universe Ireland? Such an odd brand fit! When the influencer chats about your collaboration to their audience the last thing you want them to be thinking is ‘That’s a strange one’.

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