In an age of influencer fraud it can be tricky to know how to choose the right influencer for your brand and, to know how to protect yourself so things don’t go wrong. Anthony Richardson, director at Q-83, a platform that authenticates Influencers, shares his top tips.
True Reach > Followers
Just like any publisher, influencers have an audience that you are trying to advertise to. Like in print, you pay for circulation, not print run. In influencer marketing it’s no different. Forget paying for the amount of followers someone has and instead, look to the number of people that they actually reach. That way you’ll know how many people will actually see your content, just like a billboard or television ad.
Know your audience
If you’re an Australian bikini brand, chances are you want to advertise to people who are likely to buy your product. That supermodel with a male following based in Brazil probably won’t do you bottom line any good. Look at an influencers geographical, age and gender demographics and match them to your target audience. This is a great way to explore new audiences and strengthen relationships with those you already have.
Identify red flags
We are all well aware of influencer fraud, it’s dominated headlines for a while now. Truth is, it doesn’t really matter. Unusual spikes in follower growth and engagement can happen for a lot of reasons, often completely unrelated to the platform itself – Like when @bondilifeguards show Bondi Rescue aired on Netflix and their account grew by over 8000. When we focus on ‘true reach’ instead, we are focussing on an audience that is actually valuable to a brand instead of those who are not. It always pays to ask the question when they pop up though.
Do they shop around?
We all know those influencers who post advocating one brand, only to post a picture loving the competitor a week later. Search their past media to see if they have ever mentioned competitors or see if the competitor has mentioned them.
Know where your data comes from
Since Instagram made restrictions to its privacy policy last year, 100’s of platforms lost access to first-party data. Instead, they’ve had to find other, far less ethical ways to get that information to keep their businesses afloat. Platforms that use ‘AI’ or machine learning do a lot of guesswork. Taking a piece of public information, like a profile picture or bio and run it through a series of algorithms and facial recognition to make assumptions about a user and their audience. It’s important to use a platform with access to first-party API data like Q-83 to ensure the data you’re using to make spending decisions on is 100% accurate.
Curate & Track content
Campaign content is generally curated in line with brand guidelines and the objectives of the campaign but going the extra step to curate content specific to each influencer’s audience has a huge impact on the campaign’s success. This can be as basic as using photo content instead of video or editing a black and white version of the same image as an influencer’s audience doesn’t engage with colour, this information can also be found within the influencers Q-83.
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