How to Tell if that Influencer is Truly Influential?

The choice of influencer for your influencer marketing campaign will go a long way to determine what the outcome of the campaign is. Due to the level of importance, the influencer holds in the marketing strategy, the need to identify relevant influencers has become a major challenge. It is highly important to ensure each influencer you enter into an influencer marketing partnership with great expertise in your industry and niche; followed by a large number of people and trusted.

How then do we decipher whether a prospective influencer is influential or not?

A high number of followers is not the only indicator for identifying influential influencers. Other factors are as important as the number of followers. Finding the right influencers for a campaign requires a lot of efforts and stress. It is important you find someone who is relevant and influential enough to affect your influencer marketing campaign goals positively. You also need to be cautious when searching for influencers so as not to end up with an irrelevant and non-influential influencer.

This post will let you know what to check for to determine if an influencer is suitable for you or not. You will also be able to learn how to evaluate prospective influencers using the checklists.

What to evaluate?

Engagement

An influential with a large number of followers should have a good number of them who are actively engaged with his contents. You will find those engaged audience liking, sharing and commenting on their posts. All this leads to a high engagement rate which is evidence that the audience is enjoying and identifies with their content.

The ratio of the total number of followers to the number of engaged followers needs to be close. If the difference between the two is too vast, it is not a good indicator. This translates that the followers are not engaged with them and might also mean they are not organic followers.

Originality

Before followers can trust influencers, they have to be original. Their real passion and love for their niches need to be reflected in all their contents. All sponsored contents should sound natural and not like a sales copy such that it will be obvious they are paid ads.

Ensure your influencers’ content are original and well received by their followers. Originality is so important that it is what determines to a large extent which your influencer is/will be.

Leadership

An influencer is not regarded as such successive until they can motivate and inspire them with unique contents. Social media followers of an individual should not just be following an influencer. They should be confident enough to influence the choice of your competitions. A capable influencer must be able to produce quality contents. Capable individuals leave feedback, and a decent quantity of their followers reflect in their social media accounts.

Expertise

Irrespective the number of followers and the engagement rate of an influencer, they are of no benefit and advantage to you. To achieve the maximum results with your marketing strategy, it is a good idea to get an influencer who works on a maximum of two niches which are closely related to yours.

Activity

The signature of a successful influencer is in the impression that can be passed around. This is not only depend3ent of quality products and contents but also the frequency of usage. A very active influencer will make posts and take care of the frequency at which it is needed. It is also evidence of an influencer who is dedicated to spending his time and money into making his audience satisfied.

The above are the five basic things you should pay attention to when trying to evaluate whether an influencer is influential all not.

How to evaluate?

With the advent of generating inorganic follows and engagements, how do we identify who is a real influencer. The following evaluation steps will let you quickly identify who a real influencer is.

Make use of influencer marketing auditing and rating tools

In the process of carrying out your influencer marketing. The greatest stress involved is in choosing the right influencer for your brand and campaign. This naturally strenuous process is further worsened by the constant worry about the possibility of whether an influential fellow to make it thus.

To measure and assess all the parameters listed manually is like a suicide mission. You can, therefore, make use of automated tools which will analyze and give results which can be used to determine whether the influencer in question is influential or not. These tools are capable of making use of their YouTube analytics and YouTube stats to give you all you need to know about their engagement, audience and even demographics.

Study the engagement rates

When assessing influencers, the engagement rate should be paid more attention to tan even the number of followers. Make use of the most recent 15-25 posts from your prospective influencers and calculate the engagement rate for each one. You can then calculate the average engagement rate. Do not be surprised if an influencer has a meager engagement rate despite having a huge amount of followers. Therefore, you should ignore the numbers of followers and pay attention to the active ones among them.

Before calculating engagement, scrutinize the engagement markers, especially comments to know if they are real. If the comments are not in any way related to the question, are we allowed to correct them? Sometimes, we make sacrifices ourselves, but if the comments are filled up with gibberish and off point, they are probably inorganically generated location.

Google the YouTube ranking of your prospective influencer

Searching for your prospective influencer on google will let you see his YouTube ranking which is calculated by YouTube while putting all engagement marker use into consideration. The ranking of your prospective influencer is how influential he is. This is effective because it will bring everything that matters to evaluating your influencer.

An influencer without a huge social media following can be duly assessed by checking out the overall online presence. Their social media contents will show any past brand collaboration. You can then know whether what they promote is niche specific or not.

Pay utmost attention to accounts with an unusually large number of followers

Building a large number of organic followers takes several months and even years unless you are a popular celebrity.

Therefore, scrutinize accounts with a large number of followers gained over a short time frame. If you do not verify how real the number of followers and influencers claims, you might end up with a fake influencer who only boasts of spammy, inorganic follows and no engagement.

Check for any sharp increase in engagement rate

When assessing the engagement rates, watch out for any sharp spike in engagement rate. Although influencers who are operating the same niche and industry usually help engage each other’s posts. However, if an influencer who has about 50K followers gets a sudden rise in engagement rate amounting to 10K plus, it is a code red alert. Check out for spammy engagement rates in such situations.

The influencer you choose will go a long way to determine the victory of failure of your influencer marketing campaigns. Do not abandon your campaign goals and objectives while deciding on the choice of influencer too.

And remember, a huge amount of followings does not translate to engagement rates!