You may have heard of influencer marketing as something that celebrities do. It is true, celebrities are first tier influencers. Their social media posts reach millions of followers. Devoted fans take their work on fashion, travel, lifestyle and even health like the Biblical truth. But these are not the only kinds of influencers. There are many others and you should learn how to identify them and forge collaborations with them. Thus, today we will show you how to find influencers in your niche and prepare a sweet deal for them.
Understanding Various Influencer Tiers
As stated above, celebrities make first tier influencers. They usually work with very large brands, which offer them free luxury products and free exclusive travel opportunities in exchange for tagged photos on Instagram and Facebook.
However, there are four more influencer tiers:
- Macro influencers (such as TV personalities) – over 100,000 followers
- Professionals (journalists, business people, experts in various fields) – over 20,000 followers
- Micro influencers (people who have a good professional and social standing) – over 1,000 followers
- Nano influencers (brand ambassadors who are very active on the social media) – under 1,000 followers.
As a small or medium sized enterprise, you move upwards along this scale, starting with nano influencers. They can be your best and most loyal customers. They may be people who enjoy telling other about their experiences with various products and services.
What Kind of Influencers Can Make the Difference for Your Marketing Strategy?
Your main aim in building an influencer marketing strategy is to reach out to professionals and micro influencers. A Like and share from them can make your posts go viral. An unboxing video of your product followed by a positive rating is the kind of endorsement many consumers look for before they decide to buy a product.
So, how can you find influencers in your niche? Here are a few things you can do:
1. Search for Relevant Hashtags on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
Hashtags are cleverly simple: you add # in front of a word and the social network algorithm displays all posts that contain this tagged word. For example, if your have a vegan store, a simple search for #veganfood or #veganlifestyle can get you thousands of posts by users of that social network.
All you have to do is identify users with the largest number of followers. Next, follow them and start building a relationship with them before asking them to collaborate with you.
2. Set Up Google Alerts
Google alerts are very useful to identify trending topics in your niche as well as the latest content on your chosen topic posted by industry leaders. All you have to do is use the main keyword for your business – “vegan food” in our example above – and check who wrote on this topic.
You will be able to create a list of relevant influencers in a very short time. These people are passionate about the topic they write about and are very active, both on their blog and on the social media.
3. Perform a Detailed Search on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the social media platform for professionals and business people. The platform has a very detailed system of filters for searches. You can find influencers people by:
- Geographical area
- Connections (of yours or of somebody in your network)
- Current and past company
- Niche within the industry
- Service category (what they specialize in).
For the keyword “vegan food” the types of influencers you should be looking for are bloggers as well as chefs. Many chefs are active on visual social media platforms such as Instagram and YouTube, posting step by step recipes.
4. Use Paid Tools to Find Influencers
If you want quick and refined results, you can use one of the many paid tools that do the work instead of you: find influencers in your niche. They scour the internet and display relevant influencers for your niche, including all the information you need about them:
- How many followers they have
- Their website
- What social media platforms they use
- What kind of traffic they generate each week/month on their website.
Some tools will help you find influencers who are already working with your competitors or who share a significant part of the audience of your social media pages.