Influencers, huh?
A group of active, diligent people whose specific lifestyle, aesthetics, will and knowledge to promote themselves got them into the influential circles.
Influencers are not just the people that spent most of their “working hours” posting viral photos on social media. No. They are a hard-working group of multitaskers that manage to juggle multiple chores daily. As you know, hard work always pays off, so much so that they managed to earn their followers’ respect and trust.
Nowadays, influencer marketing got to the point that for every dollar spent on influencer marketing, businesses are nowadays making $5,20 in earned media value.
For you, as an e-commerce site owner, this means only one thing: you need to collaborate with influencers if you don’t want your brand to go unnoticed.
Think about it. If you are investing all your efforts into creating “extraordinary” content on social media, but haven’t managed to build a large following, don’t fall into despair 一 you can increase those numbers by turning to the Ones that can help you build a name of your brand.
To become a part of the crème de la crème brands on social media, especially on Instagram, you need to find influencers that fit your brand the best, reach out to them, and maintain a long term, professional relationship, based on mutual trust, understanding and a phrase “quid pro quo”.
Note: Today, we chose to talk about IG influencers, since this platform is the number one most impactful channel, out of all the others.
So, the first step is finding influencers.
If you don’t know where to start, here’s a full-blown guide on how to find Instagram influencers:
Disclaimer: Themes Kingdom team is not affiliated with any of the mentioned tools in this post nor do we earn a commission if you end up using and/or purchasing any of the tools referral links in this blog post. We merely wanted to name some services that can help you find Instagram influencers.
Step #1 of How to find Instagram influencers 一 Define the goal of collaborating with influencers
Before you even think about finding and reaching out to influencers, you need to know what goal you are trying to achieve by collaborating with influencers.
Right now, you are probably thinking that the ultimate goal is to sell the products. And that’s true.
However, be sure to write down all the specific goals you need to complete to achieve the ultimate objective. For example, you can write down the top 5 uber specific goals, like increasing brand awareness, building a following base, improving brand advocacy, etc.
By doing these steps, you will be closer to defining which type of influencers you want to find and reach out to.
Step #2 of How to find Instagram influencers 一 Start with defining your “perfect influencer”
The second step of How to find Instagram influencers guide is defining the “perfect influencer” 一 the ones that are aesthetically aligned with your brand and whose followers are your target audience and can become your customers.
Think about it. If you are selling latest fashion, stylish purses and you reach out to an alternative, an edgy-looking tattoo artist with a large following (that couldn’t care less about your fancy bags), you are not going to manage to reach the right potential customers.
So, be sure to ask yourself what type of influencer you believe would represent your brand the best. Start by writing down some basic information, like location, age, aesthetics, and overall “vibe”.
Step #3 of How to find Instagram influencers 一 Determine the number of followers and influencers’ Engagement Rate you are pleased with
The key step of this How to find Instagram influencers guide is to think about particular numbers and do some calculation.
Should you reach out to influencers that have a large following, like over 200,000 followers, or should you choose the ones that have around 20,000.
It’s up to you to decide, but you have to know that, when it comes to choosing influencers, size does matter.
Budget-wise and keeping the mind the fact that you are building brand awareness, we would advise you to start small, choosing nano- (that have up to 10,000 followers) or micro-influencers (the ones that have up to 50,000 followers). Why? Because nowadays brands, apart from sending the products to the influencers, pay for each Instagram post an influencer shares (and they pay a lot!). Choosing nano- and micro-influencers is a wallet-friendly option 一 there is a chance you won’t have to pay anything at all, or at least not as much as you would a 200k-followers influencer.
There’s also one more reason why we suggest you opt for influencers that have a lower number of followers. These types of “people of influence” are the ones Instagram users trust the most and relate to, leaving more likes and comments.
Which brings us to another parameter we would like to discuss 一 engagement rate.
An engagement rate, “an influencer’s value” is the number you get when you divide the average number of likes and comments per post with the total number of followers, multiplied by 100. It can also be considered as influencer’s ability to stimulate conversation (and create word-of-mouth reactions) in the post comments section, posting interesting content users love to discuss and comment on.
When it comes to engagement rate, the higher the number, the better. That is, the higher the engagement rate, the higher the influencer’s potential to drive traffic to your website and encourage users to buy your products. Having all this in mind, we would, again, recommend you should choose micro-influencers since influencers that have a higher engagement rate are the ones that have a lower number of followers. Don’t believe us? Check out Kim Kardashian West’s engagement rate, which is around 2%, and she has 143 million followers. Mind-blowing!
Bonus knowledge: Luckily, you don’t have to calculate each influencer’s engagement rate on your own 一 some tools do it for you. Check out free tools like Instagram Money Calculator or Phlanx.
Super bonus knowledge: When it comes to engagement rate, be sure to keep your eyes open. Some influencers tend to buy likes and comments to fake their engagement. If you notice too many comments like “nice pic”, “love it”, “cool”, you should consider it as a red sign. So, be sure to skip these Instagram accounts.
Step #5 of How to find Instagram influencers 一 Find influencers
Aaaand, finally, you can move onto finding influencers.
Here are the ways you can do so:
- Scroll down the Explore page on IG, since this page contains all relevant posts that have more engagement than the average ones. Search for the content from people and check the quality of their IG photo and post description. If it matches the aesthetics you predefined, you can check out the rest of the posts, influencers’ bios, number of followers and engagement rate.
- Check out your followers, if you have a large following base. This tip may seem like a crazy one, but if you think about it 一 influencers that are already familiar with your brand will probably be more interested in collaborating.
- Use hashtags that are related to your products to find influencers. All you need to do is type the hashtag in the IG Search bar and click on the Tags tab to get long-tail hashtags that are related to the one you searched. Once you click on one of them, you’ll be able to see which accounts used that hashtag.
- Once you follow an influencer, a “Suggestions for You” feature slides on the screen. Use this feature to browse for some other influencers.
- If you haven’t found what you were looking for (we honestly doubt that!), you can simply google to find influencers in your industry. However, bear in mind that the results you are going to get would probably be unsatisfactory because you’ll end up with a list of influencers that have millions of followers.
Bonus knowledge: If you just starting to dip your toes into selling on Instagram, we would not advise you to use influencer platforms, since these types of platforms are built for industry moguls and agencies, meaning that the cost of using such a platform can go up to $600 per month or much, MUCH more. Trust your abilities and do some quality research on IG, and you won’t have any issues finding influencers.
Step #6 of How to find Instagram influencers 一 Make a spreadsheet
Not that you have found all the influencers that seem to go well with your brand, it’s time you write down all the information, organizing the data into one spreadsheet. We would suggest you use a Google spreadsheet because it is quickly shareable and can be downloaded as a .pdf or .xlsx sheet.
So, what information should you include in that sheet? Well, it’s totally up to you, but we advise you to create 7 columns 一 one for the links to IG profiles, one for the influencers’ first and last name, one for the engagement rate, then for the number of followers, cities (or countries?) influencers live in, email addresses and a column that shows whether you reached out to the specific influencer or not.
And that’s it! You have successfully found influencers for your next campaign!
Get to finding influencers!
Now that you know which steps you should take to find the perfect influencers, you can comfortably move onto doing some Instagram search.
We wish you good luck and be sure to let us know how it went.
Also, check our Blog section once in a while, since in one of our future blog posts, we’ll share tips on how to reach out to Instagram influencers and get a Yes!.
