The Evolution of the Influencer

By now we all know that influencers are not defined solely the number of Instagram followers they have. Instead, it’s about the impact or influence they have on their followers to encourage purchase decisions. What’s the ROI? How do you know if you’re choosing the right creators to speak to your brand?

Here are a few points to consider:

For some brands, it may be better to work with micro-influencers or those creators that have a smaller following who are all from a concentrated geographic area rather than someone with a million followers who live globally.

Micro Influencers are people with 10-30K followers and 10% engagement is considered good.
For a larger following, 3% is considered good engagement.
Depending on the campaign, influencers that focus on niche topics (ie. Beauty or Tech) may move the needle further as the campaign resonates better with their followers.

When it comes to which platform to focus your content on, ask yourself these two questions:

What channel are you looking to drive additional traffic to?
What is your key measuring metric as some platforms favour click-throughs over others?

Audit your influencer list based on the following criteria:

What is their engagement rate?
What is their average growth rate?
How often to they engage with their followers?
What type of followers do they have?
Are they transparent about other brands they work with and paid collaborations?
What does their content ratio look like; paid VS. organic?

Track your success:

Supply your influencer with a bit.ly link so you can track specific click-throughs
Implement pixel tracking for paid blog content
Monitor owned channel followers to track growth
Focus on proxy metrics over vanity metrics (clicks VS. likes)
We recommend having a vision for all influencer programs and consider what the client wants the influencer’s content to look like. Develop a creative brief and parameters for your influencer to play within. It’s important that what they create not only fits within their own branding but also speaks to your clients’.

For more tips and takeaways on how to build impactful digital plans for clients check out our round-up of The Top Social Media Trends to Know in 2018.