New to influencer marketing?
If you haven’t worked with influencers before, you’re probably wondering:
How do all these other brands even find social media influencers to promote their products?
If you are currently working with a few influencers, you probably have a different question on your mind:
How can I improve their effectiveness and generate more sales?
Today we’re answering both of those questions and more. If you’re ready to craft a successful influencer campaign, keep reading.
Here’s our full guide to finding relevant Facebook influencers.
Facebook Influencers Can Promote Your Business
Facebook influencers are quite adept at turning their followers into customers for your business. Whether they post visual or written content on their Facebook page, a strong influencer connects thousands with your brand.
And that can generate interest and excitement for your service or products. Which, in turn, can convert people into loyal customers, all based on the fact that they trust what the influencer has to say.
Influencers are affiliates, and affiliates are salespeople. Partnering with an influencer is sort of like hiring a new sales expert for your team.
But you don’t have to pay them a salary, provide benefits, or pay for sick time and vacation days. You only pay them when they generate a sale. It’s a strictly commission-based relationship.
How to Find Relevant Influencers
Not sure how to find relevant influencers for your brand?
There are a variety of ways to do it.
One method for conducting an influencer search is social listening. This is a tool that some brands use to find and analyze posts on a social network like Facebook. It’s a way to find public conversations that use your keywords or mention your brand. By identifying those posts, you can start to discover influencers that create content that is relevant to you.
This is a rather time-consuming method, as you’ll need to monitor the pages of a variety of influencers to ferret out the ones that can be beneficial to you.
Another method is to use influencer discovery tools. There are various applications you can use to identify influencers in your niche.
With discovery tools, you can also see how many followers they have and track how many times they’ve mentioned your keywords. With some discovery tools, you can also see who is engaging with the influencer and hone in on exactly what they’re talking about.
You can also find influencers by conducting your own keyword research. Start by creating a list of your own most relevant keywords. Then, look for influencers who are already using those keywords in their posts.
Social listening tools and discovery tools use this same technique. But if you want to do your own top-to-bottom research, you can search for keywords yourself.
Vet Your Influencers
Once you’ve identified a few influencers you want to work with, you’ll need to vet them. Make sure they have the right tone in their writing or in the photos and images they post. A good influencer is one whose values align with your own.
Next, make sure they produce the type of content you want. If they only post ads, but you prefer product images and photos, it may not be the right fit. Maybe you want Facebook influencer bloggers that post links to long-form content. Perhaps you want an influencer that does Facebook live video. You want affiliates that are already in the habit of sharing the type of content that resonates with your brand.
Knowing how many followers they have isn’t enough. You’ll also need to see if their followers engage. Someone that has 500,000 followers may look good on paper, but if only a handful of those followers are engaged and share content, it won’t matter. In fact, stats show that micro-influencers get more clicks and a better ROI.
Before you contact a potential influencer, do your research to make sure that they’re not already partnering with one of your competitors. If they are, proceed with caution. On one hand, that could mean that they understand your target audience. But on the other hand, their loyalty may lie with your competition.
Related: 25 Shocking Influencer Marketing Stats
Common Payment Methods for Influencer Partnerships
Once you’ve identified the right affiliates, you’ll need to decide upon a payment structure – and there are several that you can choose from.
Some brands provide their affiliates with free products or services. Depending on how influential your influencer already is, this may not be enough to create the partnership.
Some influencers, like those just getting started in the beauty or fashion niches, might be perfectly happy earning free products for their work. But other, more established influencers are probably going to expect some form of monetary payment.
If monetary compensation is the route you intend to go, you have a few options. Some brands pay per sale or per click or per lead. Others pay per engagement, such as how many newsletter subscriptions your influencer was able to provide.
Decide how you want to pay your influencers and set forth a clear payment method before you partner. You won’t find anyone to work for free, but what they’re willing to accept as payment will be up to the individual.
Be ready to negotiate!
Related: Should You Hire an Affiliate Marketing Agency?
Red Flags to Watch Out For
As with all marketing efforts, there are red flags to watch out for and be aware of. This is especially true when trying to identify the best influencers for your brand.
Pay special attention to superscript text <sup>low engagement rates</sup></p>. Just because someone has a million followers doesn’t mean that those followers are actually doing any day-to-day following. If your influencer can only show engagement on one out of every 50 posts, they might not be as influential as they seem.
Keep an eye out for a superscript text <sup>spike in followers</sup></p>. Legitimate influencers will grow their following incrementally. A sudden spike in the number of followers could mean that your influencer purchased fake followers. (And fake followers will never turn into customers).
Take a hard look at the number of followers versus the number of people your influencer is following. If it’s a 1:1 ratio (or close to it), that’s a red flag. A strong influencer will have considerably more followers than those that they are following.
Not confident that you can find the right influencers for your brand?
Related: What is Partner Channel Management (And How Can it Boost Profits?)
A successful Facebook influencer marketing campaign hinges on finding the right Facebook influencers.
- Use tools like social listening, influencer discovery tools, and keyword research
- Vet your influencers
- Choose a payment structure
- Be aware of social media marketing fraud
Ready to crush your competition? It’s time to hire an affiliate agency to identify relevant influencers and manage those relationships.
With high-profile clients such as Amazon, T-Mobile, and DoorDash, Streamline is perfectly poised to help you find the best influencers for your brand AND increase your ROI.