Influencer Marketing: Who are influencers and how to find them?

Remember when you are out with your friends and deciding on where for dinner, or what movie to watch? Your friends and you would come out with suggestions, right? Then justifying it with “I saw this review about…”, “The parody on this….on Youtube…”, or “my friend told me that…”.

All these information influenced your decisions. But what about influencer
marketing?

Influencers (in the context of influencer marketing) are individuals who have the reach, relevance and sound engagement rate with their audience with the intention to monetize (either in-kind or monetary).

And the geeky side of me would like to show it to you in a math formula:

Influеnсе = Audiеnсе Rеасh (# оf fоllоwеrѕ) x Relevance (Brаnd Affinitу — expertise and credibility) x Engagement Rate (Strength оf Rеlаtiоnѕhiр with Fоllоwеrѕ)

Mаrkеtеrѕ I know of use influеnсеr mаrkеting tо еѕtаbliѕh сrеdibilitу in thе mаrkеt, сrеаtе ѕосiаl соnvеrѕаtiоnѕ аrоund thеir brаnd, and drivе оnlinе оr in-ѕtоrе ѕаlеѕ оf thеir рrоduсtѕ.

Regardless of your marketing objective when using influencer as a marketing channel, here are few ways commonly used to measure its performance: Eаrnеd Mеdiа Vаluе, Content Reach, Content Engagement аnd Cоѕt Pеr Engagement.

Hоw dо уоu find thеm
Thе firѕt ѕtер in influеnсеr mаrkеting iѕ to find them. There are few ways of going about this:

1. Find them on search engines, and social media platforms
2. Ask friends for recommendations
3. Built an excel sheet of their name, email, reach, relevance and engagement rate. And update this regularly.

Finding influencers in the ways above will get you missing out on many more that are relevant to your brand because they may not be searchable for many reasons. One being their username is not their real name. Another is they don’t optimize their websites for SEO. Same goes with recommendation from friends because there is only so many names our friends can remember.

Posting on relevant Facebook groups is another good way to find your influencers as they are responsive to work collaborations. Get yourself acquainted with the groups and be their members :)

Then it leads to excel sheet to profile influencers you found. While you may get generic information such as username, contact details (hopefully reachable), their reach on the social media channels, etc. Here are information that are important in selecting your influencers:
- Demographics of influencer’s audience
- Their Facebook page monthly impressions
- What are their engagement rate for their social media and blogs

Yes, that’s how most marketers would start their influencer marketing. Or rather outsource it to agencies knowing these are the steps they would be doing. And if you’re client of agencies, would you rather be billed for them to update excel sheets or really working on your campaign.

Information collected are often out-of-date and inaccurate.

Or you can find them easily CatJira. Each influencer profile comes with all the information you need to make hiring decision. Head to our homepage to discover how we make it easier for you to find the right influencers for your brand!