How to find influencers online?
In this article, we will discuss the techniques used by companies to choose influencers and to secure their participation in influencer marketing campaigns. Researching, choosing and approaching influencers allows companies to move from strategy to action. Companies’ approach to influencer marketing must be smart, i.e. effective, simple, intuitive and secure, especially with a view to generating results on online campaigns by engaging influencers to promote their products or services.
How to contact influencers on Instagram
If a company wants to start a marketing campaign with a small group of influencers to advertise its brand, it can certainly contact them directly on Instagram. Searching influencers is not easy, because finding the right one takes time.
However, if this is the first time you are approaching this type of sponsorship, just follow a few simple steps to achieve effective results:
Step one: It is important to create a system for saving influencers. Using a spreadsheet is the best thing, requires no special tools or investment, and can be really easy to create a database to save for later campaigns. Names and Instagram profile links for all the influencers you want to contact should be saved in the file.
Step two: after narrowing down your choice to a list of influencers, you can send messages directly from Instagram or get their e-mail from the contact section of their profile, or possibly from Bio, and then send a collaboration proposal by e-mail.
Step three: they can mark the date and time when the influencers were contacted, so that they can be contacted again a few days later if no response was received.
How to find influencers online
If an influencer is not suitable to promote a company’s brand, the company and that influencer are wasting valuable time. It is necessary to do some research on likely influencers. How? hard to say. Today, there are 3 types of ways to search for influencers online:
1 type – By hand: searching for an influencer, be it on instagram or any other type of platform is always very difficult. There are not many filters, and searching for the right influencer by hand takes time and effort. One could try searching by hashtags, or by location, or even by category, or by topic (phrase) below are some examples.
On instagram you can do these researches but only from the mobile app, so it takes time and patience. On other socials it is more complicated because they are not so advanced and times are longer.
2 type – databases/platforms: here with a small expense you can really achieve great results. Online platforms collect large databases of influencers and do the work you would have to do by hand. The costs are really low and on the other hand you do not go crazy choosing competent and skilled influencers for your business.
3 type – agency/freelance: agencies may have contacts with influencers. Surely this would save you not only the search for them, but also the management of the advertising campaign. In this case the costs go up because you would have to pay not only for the professionalism of the people who are working to bring sales or traffic to your store or business, but also possibly the use by these companies/freelancers of tools or platforms.
How to tell if an influencer is professional?
When making a selection, it is crucial to ensure that these influencers have already worked with other companies in the past, or that they are in some sense professionals who know how to produce engaging content. Lately, it is common for a link like this to appear in influencers’ bios linktr.ee/.
1 – Use links to your own site or disambiguation links
Linktree is a digital tool that is used by influencers to create customised QR codes and aggregate links. These links allow you to land on the influencer’s site or their other social, or collaboration links. This type of link helps you learn more about the influencer’s potential and shows how active the influencer is on social media.
2 – He has a professional account that allows you to see his profile statistics
An influencer should always use a professional account that allows those who choose it to actually know what results their campaign has generated. A professional account is activated on Instagram and also on TikTok.
One should therefore always ask an influencer if he or she has a professional account in order to be able to measure the results obtained, and delete it if the partnership with him or her does not generate results.
Alternatively, platforms can certify this type of data, accurately signalling the professionalism of these content creators.
Hopefully, this article has shed some light and helped you understand how choosing an influencer works and what are the main elements to consider when choosing an influencer.
