Today it is easy to have a quarter of an hour of fame on the Web. A quality YouTube video, tweet, or clever social media comment is enough to grab people’s attention and go viral. This success is however short-lived and can quickly be forgotten.
The real challenge today is to make a name for yourself by using your network contacts to establish yourself in the long term as a thought leader.
It is not uncommon for active social media users to become role models for others in politics and fashion. The latter holds a significant power: these influencers are in the crosshairs of companies and brands.
What Is An Influencer In Marketing?
The term marketing influencer has long been on the rise among marketers. This essential discipline of the marketing mix was born from the cross between traditional press relations, referral marketing, and that concerning social media.
The main job of an influencer in marketing is to identify who are the potential influencers that would be suitable for a company or brand, to contact them, and to start a relationship with them.
This is how companies want to integrate influencers into their communication strategy and use them as an ambassador for their business. Before discussing the responsibilities as well as the mechanisms of an influencer in marketing, we give you the first definition.
What Is An Influencer?
Influencers are personalities who act as opinion leaders. They usually have a lot of followers/subscribers either as bloggers or as users of social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter.
The main added value of an influencer is their ability to reach a community of fans/readers while knowing how to influence their opinion or their way of consuming.
In principle, everyone has the possibility of creating such a network whether one is a journalist, blogger, YouTuber, politician, artist, or even an average character.
How Can A Business Benefit From Influencers?
The media topography has transformed over the past ten years. Traditional media such as newspapers influence opinions less and less and in particular those of the generation born after 1980 for whom the information has been digitized.
For the latter, the experts are above all those who have a YouTube account or a blog. These personalities dominate their areas of expertise with millions of subscribers and followers. Each influencer has their own field of interest, which leaves companies spoiled for choice to reach their target customers.
A community of fans can clearly be impacted by the recommendations and tips of an influencer on a particular product, service, or even brand.
This group of people trusts the celebrity they follow, try to emulate them, and subconsciously copy their drinking behavior. Companies can leverage this existing link and increase their sales through these influencers.
Bloggers and even artists thus become intermediaries because of their proximity to the target group that the company wishes to reach. They allow them to attract the attention of Internet users on social networks to their products and brands.
But which influencer is right for your business and how do you start a collaboration?
Identify The Influencer
First of all, companies need to ask themselves two fundamental questions: when does a blogger or YouTuber become an influencer and when is a collaboration relevant to your marketing strategy? It is easy for companies to find the ideal partner based on the areas in which they work.
The important factors to find your influencer is:
Activity:
What are the communication channels used by the influencer? Where is it active and where do the exchanges with its subscribers take place? It is necessary not to slant the numbers. Indeed, with regard to niche themes, a geomorphology blog for example which is followed by a hundred senior scientists will probably have more effect than a fashion blog followed by thousands of amateurs.
Reach Within A Target Group:
Is the influencer speaking directly to the community you want to reach to sell your products? Profiles and channels followed by thousands of people can seem overwhelming.
However, this is not to overestimate them as these subscribers may be passive. In this case, it is necessary to analyze the activity of these subscribers to see what impact the influencer has on them.
Expert Status:
what are the main subjects on which your company should communicate? Who are the experts in this field? Who is suitable for the themes of your company? Are there already renowned influencers who present this area of expertise?
Commitment:
It goes without saying that statistics are not decisive and that not all popular social media profiles are ideal candidates. The most important thing is to take into account the interaction with the users and the engagement of the community.
Retweets, comments, shares, ” likes ” (translation of likes ) are also indicators to take into account. They provide information about the relationship between influencers and their communities. If fans share and exchange, then the impact is obvious.
Marketing Tools Or Influencers
Communication and personal research are essential aspects of the influencer in marketing. The good functioning of a relationship between a company and its influencer cannot be reduced to simple numbers.
No machine is able to measure the quality of content or even its adequacy with the philosophy of a brand. For this, it is up to the company to form its own idea. We can therefore say that data and statistics are good criteria for making the first selection.
When it comes to coverage – the number of subscribers and the interaction rate – some tools can be valuable. The list of these tools for marketing influencers is long. Here is a selection:
Klout
Klout is one of the most popular influencer marketing tools. The best-known notion is the Klout score, an indicator ranging from 1 to 100 which aims to measure the influence of a user on the Web thanks to various data coming from social media.
The Klout score remains controversial, however, given the possible manipulations. On the other hand, Klout is a good first indicator for evaluating contacts.
Buzzsumo
The Buzzsumo tool is internationally known. Among other things, it evaluates data from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google+. There are several filters that allow you to properly segment your results.
Klear
Klear is a simple but very effective tool for identifying influencers within a network. This free offer also makes it possible to clearly differentiate the types of users and influencers.
For Successful Relationships With Influencers
The reputation and reach of a blogger’s or YouTuber’s speech aren’t the only factors to consider in your search for influencers. The relevance of the subject tackled is the keystone of successful cooperation. Companies shouldn’t confuse influencers with traditional service providers. Money is indeed not their only point of interest. Their only guarantee of success in this field is their reputation and it is essential for them to choose their collaborator well so as not to tarnish their image on the Web. The more cordial or even friendly the contact, the more your chances of collaboration increase.
