Friday, January 5, 2018

Finding the Perfect Brand Influencers

Social media is the most powerful tool when it comes to building brand awareness and gaining loyalty. With that, your “brand” is less of how you see yourself, and more of how others perceive your brand. You can, however, strategically guide your audience to perceive your brand in a way that corresponds to your overall vision for the brand. One way to guide this perception is through utilizing brand influencers on social channels to drive recognition and recommend the brand to their audiences. Here are some tips and recommendations for finding the perfect brand influencers on Instagram.

1. Make sure the potential influencers’ online presences align with your core values and target audience. The brand influencers you choose will be a reflection of your brand, and it is important that the partnership makes sense. For example, if your target audience is young, active couples, you wouldn’t choose a middle-aged suburban home-decor blogger. There are plenty of brand influencers out there across so many categories.

2. Check the engagement level of the influencers’ followers. While targeting brand influencers with high follower levels expands your reach, having engaged followers is more successful for your ROI. The number of likes, comments, and tagged photos is more important because your audience is actively engaging with your brand influencers and therefore engaging with your brand. 

3. Authenticity is key. The best and most successful brand influencers come across as friends, not as paid advertisements. Look for users who incorporate real-life, authentic moments of their lives in the foreground of their content and the products in the background. While it may seem like you could get more exposure with heavier, promotional-style posts from your influencers, followers respond more positively to authenticity.

Digital marketing today is a two-way street, where brands and consumers communicate with each other constantly. Brand influencers are amazing to create more conversation and stretch your reach into your target audience further than you could have imagined.

Story by: Clara Sims  

Content originally created for and published on Imagine Media Consulting blog.