Social media has taken the world by storm. It has become a brand’s valuable tool for reaching millions of audiences and getting their message across. The growth of these trends has introduced the concept of what is known as influencers in today’s lingo. They are social media personalities with a large or devoted group of followers who because of their following have the ability to get a message across to many people at once. Reports say that almost 81% of marketers that tried influencer marketing say that it is an effective channel. Also, with more and more brands looking to advertise their products through influencers, all the social media platforms have witnessed a rise in the number of people choosing to become bloggers and vloggers in all parts of the world.

But with the large number of influencers on social media, it’s become very important to keep some basics in mind while choosing influencers for your brand.

1. Category or Genre of Content: Each Influencer has its own specialisation of content genre and it’s important to pick influencers who have affinity to your target group or product category. Choosing the right category is the key to success for your influencer marketing and significant effort should be spent in analyzing the predominant content themes of influencer you are planning to work with
2. Location and Audience Affinity: Though Internet is a big leveler of geography, however each influencer has certain location and audience affinity in terms of state, language and age group. It’s important to analyse the same to pick the influencers who share location, language and age affinity with your target Group.
3. Reach and Authenticity: One of the major things to keep in mind is the influencer’s follower count. Simultaneously, what also needs to be checked is the authenticity of these followers. It’s become easy to buy followers so a quick check on an influencer’s follower list is necessary. It is easy to pin point fake followers most of them has no connection to the influencer. Having said that, brands should remember that the larger the subscriber base, more chances of the brand getting noticed. It ensures that the brand message goes across to a greater number of people which in turn increases probability for returns.
4. Engagement Statistics: Are people interacting with your influencer on his/her platforms? Are they commenting and liking their posts? These are some points to keep in check while choosing the right influencer for your brand since engagement is directly related to returns. If the content is engaging, then it might spark interest in your message or brand and get you the attention you want for your campaign
5. Consistency and Content: Make sure the influencer you are looking to collaborate with is consistent with their content and posts. Do they post regularly? What kind of content? And on which all platforms? These are significant towards gaining a loyal followership so it’s a relative way to assess if the content and consistency will give you good results on their social media. If the content doesn’t suit your brand, then switch!
6. Value and Quality: This is important to consider since the values associated with the influencer will also reflect on your brand and product, therefore you need to do a little research before selecting the right influencer. Content quality is seen through how witty, informative and engaging their content is and how they will display or inform the target audience about your brand/product. Value assessment should be made based on your campaign objectives. For example, if you’re promoting a health drink, then you need to make sure you select influencers who are popular amongst health freaks, people who like exercising and eating healthy, those looking to lose weight etc. Depending on what is your key objective you will decide on the influencer and how he/she can use their platform to boost your presence amongst your target audience. Going for popular influencers might get you a larger audience but it will also downplay the probability of your message actually affecting anybody.