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ReturnSurprising levels of engagement, a constantly increasing earned media value: influencers have now become the most effective communication channels in terms of marketing.
It is not surprising that their presence on social networks is growing and this in all areas: fashion, lifestyle, travel, food, sport etc.
There is plenty of choice ! Perhaps too much choice when it comes to finding the perfect fit for your campaign, seeing the number of influencers on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. Nonetheless, the success of your influence campaign relies largely on the influencer you will choose!
So how do you find the influencer suited to your needs? By responding to two issues:
- Identifying influencers in keeping with your brand and target market.
- Identifying fake influencers
How do you identify the right influencers?
Faced with the growing number of influencers present on networks, it is becoming more difficult to know who to contact and how. The most common mistake by advertisers is to make the choice subjectively, by limiting it to their personal network and by observing influencers that possess the highest number of fans. But instead of quantity, it is better to favour quality!
Two aspects need to be taken into consideration when selecting your influencer: their consistency with your brand image and the relevance of their community.
1. Choosing an influencer in keeping with your brand image
When implementing your campaign, your first priority is to find a personality in keeping with your values. If your influencer does not share the values of your brand, their authenticity will be questioned, and your reputation compromised.
Real reflection must be undertaken in order to determine which personality best suits you.
To guarantee a strategic choice, it is highly recommended that you use an influence platform. These tools can be advantageous to you on numerous levels:
- They enable you to access the entire market of influencers and to compare them in an objective and exhaustive way.
- The data that they collect and analyse steers your research according to the themes influencer publications, and this within a few clicks.
- Their technology can direct you to influencers that you may not have considered. A message may sometimes be borne by influencers in a different sphere to that of the brand, but which shares the values of similar communities.
2. Choosing an influencer for their community
The very strength of the influencer is obviously based on the people that they influence: their audience, their community, their fans… That’s why it is necessary to determine the persona or personas that you want to engage with on social networks.
In the same way as for ensuring that the influencer is in keeping with your brand image, using an influence platform to analyse their community will be of great help to you.
Distribution by geographical location, by age group, by gender… It is possible to know the audience of each influencer to be sure that the message will reach the right people. In addition to the number of subscribers, the level of engagement of this community is also evaluated. This is essential for knowing if the target market is effectively active with the targeted influencer.
How do you identify fake influencers?
Thanks to the increasing power of digital influence, more and more users are tending to pass as Key Opinion Leaders on social networks.
By far the influencer’s favourite platform, Instagram attracts its fair share of crooks. With the goal of picking up partnerships with brands, some decide to buy followers. This scam becomes all the greater when the “fans” they have bought are in fact simply robots.
These scam artists profit from a lack of knowledge among advertisers on this subject, and from how difficult it is to detect this type of scam that seeks to get free travel and products of all kinds, or to be paid when photos are published.
The figures are staggering. It is estimated that 1 in 2 accounts on Instagram are fake accounts, the main cause of numerous campaigns that “do not work”. Knowing how to spot fake influencers has become a real expertise.
The Kolsquare platform has perfected algorithms making it possible to detect bots in order to help keep businesses from falling into their trap.
Several techniques, in particular, can help identify users that have resorted to buying fake accounts:
- Following changes in subscribers over recent months is the first method. The regularity of changes in the number of fans bears witness to the credibility of the influencer. Other than in the case of rapidly growing awareness due to a televised spot, the organisation of a competition etc., growth must be gradual otherwise there is a strong likelihood that the user is a fake account.
- The authority of the account is another criterion: is the user followed by other known influencers? If not, this is a very bad sign.
- The level of engagement is also a good indicator. It is simple to verify the ratio of likes/subscribers to a post. For example, if the user has 100,000 followers and only 100 likes, their authenticity will clearly be suspicious.
