Written By: Irene Fatyanova
Strong online presence is essential for business success, which isn’t a bad idea because digital marketing is cost-effective, but it yields numerous benefits. Before, internet marketing revolved around ads, but according to some estimates, about 32% of internet users will use ad blockers in 2017. Think that’s a meaningless number? This will make you think again, of this 32 %, about 77.1 million desktop users or 28.5% will use ad blockers while 11% or 29.7 million accounts for smartphone users. Still, think there’s nothing to worry about? If your internet marketing strategy revolves around ads, it is time to put some effort in other strategies such as influencer marketing. Micro-influencers have the potential to get your brand “out there”, make it visible to a larger group of people, and drive the traffic to your website. To get the most out of this strategy, here are seven useful tips and tricks to find influencers in social media.
Instagram is, by far, the most popular social media platform to look for influencers. Millions of people use Instagram not only to upload their own photos but also to check someone else’s updates. That is why influencers on Instagram have thousands of followers and great engagement. However, finding an ideal micro-influencer for your campaign is not the easiest task in the world. How to find the right person among so many people who post content on a daily basis? Here are simple tips that you can use:
- Narrow keyword search on Google by entering something relevant to your niche e.g. top fitness accounts Instagram
- Look for fans who already follow your company’s Instagram profile, this is particularly useful because micro-influencers who already follow you will be more than happy to collaborate
- Search hashtags that are associated with your niche
- Use analytics tools and platforms
Comparing to Instagram and other social media websites, it is a bit trickier to find micro-influencers on Facebook, but not impossible. Facebook focuses on connecting people with someone they already know. Most people have privacy settings that prevent those who aren’t among their group of friends from seeing the content. That said, you can find micro-influencers on the most popular social media platform as well.
Facebook groups are wonderful for this purpose. Recently, Facebook modified this feature to make it easier for users to find the groups based on their interests. So, search for groups from your niche, join, and go to the member’s section. This will help you find members that interact the most, most respected or influential users and so on. It is not uncommon for them to post links to their blogs or websites, which you can use to see how they work and engage followers. Once you find an ideal micro-influencer, move on to contact that person.
As you already know, Twitter encourages you to follow and be followed just like Instagram. It’s not just a social media platform where people write about things they do during the day and retweet all those memes. This social website allows you to connect with micro-influencers in your niche as well. Not only that, Twitter also suggests some people to follow based on the profiles you currently have on the following list. To find and connect with micro-influencers on this website, these tips can help:
- Search for some specific niche or word and narrow down the list of tweets with Advanced search option which allows you to filter results based on location or languages
- Analyze potential influencers by visiting their profile and ensuring that besides a decent number of followers they also have the ability to engage them. Expand their tweets and see whether the influencer succeeded in engaging the audience, check the number of retweets and likes
- Create a private list where you can follow tweets of influencers easily, without having to scroll down your news feed all the time
Klout
Klout is a website which analyzes data from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts and rates users with 1 to 100 influence score. The website measures 35 variables from Twitter and Facebook in order to evaluate factors such as network score, amplification probability, and true reach. It is important to mention that more than 620 million users have a Klout score. The average score is 40. All users with score 63 or higher are considered in the top 5% of social media users. How can Klout help you find social media influencers? It does so by allowing you to search for profiles from a particular niche. What’s useful about this website is that you can see how influential someone is and determine whether that micro-influencer would be a right fit for your campaign.
Keyhole
Keyhole accurately measures real-time and historical social media data, illustrates metrics in easy-to-read graphs and layouts. You can use this website to track hashtags, URLs, keywords, and usernames on Twitter and Instagram. Keyhole is quite practical and it enables you to track influencers or focus on specific individuals that might do a great job of promoting your brand. With this website, you can also identify topic authorities ideal for the influencer campaign. Here, influencers are ranked by factors like follower engagement, impressions, exposure towards some particular hashtag, and other parameters.
LinkedIn is one of the most powerful social media websites that allows you to search for micro-influencers, but it is usually overlooked. What makes LinkedIn practical? The answer is simple; it’s the overall purpose of this platform. LinkedIn is created to allow people to connect with other people within the same industry. Begin by typing the name of some specific niche in the search bar and add 1st and 2nd-degree connections. The platform also allows you to filter results to narrow down your search.
Inkybee
Inkybee is a set of social media outreach tools specially created to help you manage digital outreach process from finding influencers to measuring outreach campaigns. The platform has plenty of features to offer such as research and discovery tools, blog search, influence review, list management, Twitter bio search, Twitter influencer analysis, outreach tools, Google analytics, among many others. Basically, this website not only helps you find micro-influencers, but it also features multiple tools that help you carry out your campaign in the best possible way.
Conclusion
Influencer marketing is IN right now and you should definitely try it out. The success of influencer campaign depends on micro-influencers you choose and this article posted seven easy ways to do just that. Good luck.
About Irene Fatyanova:
Irene Fatyanova is a content writer, working with TechnicalMindsWeb.Com. She loves reporting on the latest web design and online marketing trends, WordPress and eCommerce solutions. Apart from writing tech articles, she’s keen on photography and has a couple of cool Photoshop image retouching tricks up her sleeve.
