Brands need to collaborate with influencers this is nothing new today. Following influencer marketing strategies allows them to reach their target audience. And it helps to gain credibility through it. But to build such relationships with influencers it is not enough just to add them to your channel. Also just send out press releases, so. It is important to create a timely bond between influencers and brands with that goal in mind.
Either because you work for a brand or an agency, you probably have several influencers in your sights within your communication strategy. Each one specialized in a specific topic of interest and a different “power of influence”. To help you develop a successful relationship with your key influencers and avoid wasting your time and budget on campaigns that will not give you the expected results, we propose Influencer Marketing. Here, we are going to focus on the last phase: measuring the performance of influencers.
How To Measure Real Influence?
We have the word influencer even in the soup, and we usually associate it with profiles on social networks with many followers. But is that enough to decide if a person can influence others?
Now, following new and changing communication parameters to connect with the public, influencer marketing is gaining ground. The criteria that companies use to choose influencers as ambassadors for their brands can be very varied. Among the main ones is the number of followers. Especially on platforms such as Instagram or Twitter, which at first glance we can say that they are based on the “follow” and the “follow back”.
If it is about particular profiles, perhaps this is not more important than following close people and little else. But if we talk about professional accounts, it is interesting (and very much) to take into account the TFF Ratio (Twitter followers – following). This parameter is the simplest and most obvious to have a clear idea of the real influence that an account, a profile, or a person can have.
It’s simple: it’s about dividing the number of followers by the number of followers. Based on the result, we will know the level of influence.
<1: If the index is less than 1, the influence is low and surely the vast majority of the followers are there because they are also followed.
= 1: If it is equal to 1, we are faced with a person who is both a follower and a leader and it is most likely that, as in the previous case, it is due to reciprocity.
> 1: If it is greater than 1, that account can be considered the leader in its field. The content arouses interest and people want to hear it.
How to know the ROI of the Influencers?
We can know the ROI within influencer marketing through various KPIs that we will obtain in different ways:
- Direct sale: providing our influencer with a unique code that your audience will use to pay, thus benefiting from a small discount. This way we will know to what extent the recommendation of this influencer influences the direct sale of a product. These redeemed coupons will serve as KPIs for further analysis.
- Audience: perhaps it is the most common objective, but not for that reason the most important, this will provide us with another KPI that we will know as impressions. That is, the number of times our publication has been viewed.
- Potential customers: leads generated as a result of the publication.
- Content generated by the influencer for your brand.
- User reactions to posts related to our brand.
- The number of followers achieved in our social networks as a result of the work of our ambassador.
Last year a report carried out by the IAB in its “Internet Communication Investment Study 2018” calculated an increase of 34% in the investment of strategies with influencers in publications. For this reason, there are sectors where the work of the influencer is felt, and a lot, in the evolution and performance of brands. The reader surely comes to mind the fashion and beauty sector, and without a doubt, it is the main one. But today the extension of the influencer’s strategy too many other impulse consumer sectors and even to others is evident. Here the purchase decision is much longer, such as that of the car.
How to find the perfect influencer?
That said, how can we know which person is the best to become an influencer for a specific brand? The term “popularity” is very broad. Therefore, you have to look at certain nuances that help fine-tune your strategy.
- Quality of followers
We have seen that the popularity of an account depends largely (but not only) on the number of followers. But you also have to look at the quality of these. Many profiles, to improve their image, buy fake followers and accounts, or they may have inactive followers. Therefore, your TFF ratio would be false. There are applications to detect this type of action, such as Follower Check or Social Blade.
- Interaction
It is important to see if that person has interaction with their followers on social networks. For example, through “likes” or comments, but today only what it receives, if not what it does?
- Unique content on each social network
As is inevitable, social networks are trending. Depending on the type of activity, some are more recommended than others. But in the case of influencers, they tend to have profiles created in many of them. This is not necessarily good either. If that influencer is dedicated to inserting the same content (without adaptation) in all their profiles, they are not making a real effort to win over the audience of a specific network.
- Frequency of publications
Of course, that chosen influencer will have to be frequent and constant on their social networks. It is the way to avoid, for example, being forgotten or giving way to new characters. However, it is not about permanently invading feeds with useless and pointless content. All in perspective.
- Values of the profile as a whole
Last but not least, when choosing an influencer it is vital to value them as a whole. Their values, the lifestyle they lead and the image they convey has to be related to the company, the product, or whatever they prescribe.
Author Bio:
Martin brown is a professional digital marketer and blogger at Jocial for several years. He serves and contributes to a lot of brands. His managing capacity helps many marketers to develop their business and online presents.
