Influencer Qualities To Look For To Promote Your Brand
Working with an influencer can provide new possibilities for your brand and expose it to a wider audience. Finding an influencer to market your content isn’t the hard part. What’s hard is finding a good influencer with the right qualities who meshes with your brand culture. These marketing partners can have a positive impact on your business. In this article, we discuss topics like:
Why Should I Use an Influencer?
Influencer marketing can improve your brand’s reputation and increase content visibility. It can be a way to get more inbound links to your website, increase traffic, and create more conversions. Influencers already connect with your target audience on platforms where they spend time, making it easy to capture their attention.
People may also trust influencers more than they trust the brands themselves. Consumers may feel that a brand is just trying to sell them something and they’re not being honest about the quality of service. But an influencer, though paid, provides an honest opinion. People may also try to avoid direct advertising. If your audience voluntarily follows an influencer, they’re often exposed to your advertising without realizing it.
Related: Everything You Need To Know About Brand Influencer Marketing
12 Influencer Qualities To Look For in Partners
There is more to finding an influencer than running a social media search and contacting someone in the right niche or with many followers. Some influencer qualities that can be good for your brand include:
1. Likability
The best influencers are likable people. Look for someone who takes the time to build a positive personal reputation and brand. If they already do this for themselves, they’re more likely to use the same skills and approach when representing your company. Good influencers are pleasant. They get along with their followers and make the attraction of new ones look effortless. If you’d like to test a potential influencer for likeability, look at how they respond to negative feedback. Are they courteous? Are they sassy? Do they respond at all?
2. Passion
Good influencers genuinely like and care about their niches and markets. Do you want someone who represents your brand only for the money? Or would you rather have someone who uses your services in real life and likes them? Passionate influencers care about the background and growth of their niches. They know everything about the history and voluntarily stay up-to-date with the latest trends.
3. Engagement
The best influencers engage with their audience, no matter the size. They take time to answer questions and start conversations. They also stay active on their respective platforms and publish content consistently. Engaging influencers are valuable because they’re prepared to talk about your brand often. Look at how they respond to their community. Do they write thoughtful comments or provide likes? How quickly do they respond to business offers and their followers? Those who engage with empathy and sympathy may be more likable, which may increase their visibility.
4. Authenticity
Influencer passion and authenticity go together. Passionate influencers may feel more authentic to followers, and vice versa. This trait focuses on telling the truth and being honest with an audience. Authentic influencers tell their followers what they really think about a brand, product, or service, whether it’s positive or negative. These people may have larger followings because they tell the truth and people can trust their opinions. This can help your brand because if authentic influencers say something is worthwhile, their audience can believe it.
5. Mind for Marketing
It’s helpful when influencers are good self-marketers. They understand the skills and best practices to work in the promotion industry. If your influencer understands marketing principles, they’re not just taking your money and throwing together some low-quality content. Those with a marketing or sales background can more subtly promote and share your content with followers. They understand the tricks of digital marketing and terms you may ask them to use in your campaigns, like content creation and curation.
If you’ve found a great influencer for your brand who isn’t as confident in their marketing skills, educate them with some great resources from CopyPress. Our Content Marketing Pyramid eBook can help teach how different types of content work together to build a brand and help you or your influencers become better marketers and publishers. This can help them help you become the brands and accounts your target audience wants to follow.
“CopyPress gives us the ability to work with more dealership groups. We are able to provide unique and fresh content for an ever growing customer base. We know that when we need an influx of content to keep our clients ahead of the game in the automotive landscape, CopyPress can handle these requests with ease.”
Kevin Doory
Director of SEO at Auto Revo
6. Authority
Even if an influencer is passionate about their niche, they may not gather any followers if they don’t have authority. It’s important that they have accurate knowledge and expertise in their content area. People pay attention to authoritative influencers because they provide facts. Authority and authenticity work together to make the influencer appear truthful to the audience. This is good for brands because their authority becomes your authority through a partnership. Another way to test an influencer’s authority is by looking at their website. Clean, professional sites with minimal ads and no content and grammar mistakes may signal an authoritative influencer.
7. Popularity
Sometimes, even having authority isn’t enough to make someone a mega influencer in certain niches. They may know everything there is to know about a topic, but don’t have the same type of clout as a celebrity or other more established influencer to rack up many followers. Popularity for influencers is like popularity in high school or in social circles. Arbitrary factors like good looks, access to the right products, or working from a desirable location may affect an influencer’s popularity.
Luckily, influencers can become more popular by building their reputations and authority through research, strategy, and hard work. While this isn’t the most important trait for an influencer, it can be helpful if you’re looking to see quick returns for your partnership or reach a large audience.
8. Visibility
Good influencers understand the importance of being seen by the right people. They know how to draw a crowd, a large follower pool, and an audience. These people understand how to use social media to their advantage and guide people to the right content. They know the best times of day to publish content to reach their audience. Highly visible influencers also understand the balance of posting consistently to stay visible but without flooding their followers’ feeds with content.
9. Brand Persona Fit
One of the most important traits for a quality influencer is finding someone who fits with your brand. Even if there’s a person in your niche who’s great at what they do, if they don’t match with your brand, they might not be your influencer. Someone who’s a good fit already has followers who are part of your target audience. Their values and goals align with your company, and their style fits your products and services. For example, you may not choose to hire a content marketing influencer to work with your file-sharing software brand, because they wouldn’t mesh.
Consider looking at the other brands an influencer represents. Do any of them contradict your values and goals? If so, this may be a point of discussion for your interviews and preliminary meetings before signing them to a deal.
10. Tech Knowledge
Though it might sound obvious, look for an influencer who’s tech-savvy. They know the best practices of their chosen social media platforms. They also know how to work a camera, edit photos and video, and have a grasp on automated posting. Having technical knowledge relates to authority and marketing insights. It benefits your brand because they also have authority in the marketing world. They know the importance of using high-quality images, video, and content.
11. Creativity
Creativity is a broad trait in influencer marketing that may mean something different to each company. Consider how the influencer edits their content. Do they use different methods of engagement to interact with followers? Do they take advantage of new technology like stories and live streams? Good hallmarks of creativity may show in original and interesting content. Humor may also be an important trait if your brand is relatable and human-focused.
12. Platform Presence
The type of platforms influencers use is another important trait. Consider influencers that use social media channels where your target audience spends time. For example, if you’re pursuing a younger generation of consumers, you may pick influencers from Instagram or TikTok. Business audiences may rely on influencers with heavy clout on LinkedIn.
You may consider influencers who use platforms where your company already has a powerful presence. This can allow for collaborations and cross-promotion among accounts. Another option is to find influencers on platforms where you have a smaller presence. This can help you gain followers and visibility through your partnership. Many influencers work on multiple channels, so you may find one who works well across platforms that can help with both options.
Influencer FAQs
Review these questions to learn more about influencers and their roles in content marketing:
What Is an Influencer?
Image via Unsplash by @erik_lucatero
Influencers are social media personalities, bloggers, vloggers, and other notable people who have sway or guidance over an audience. In the digital world, they usually have a specific set of followers in a niche. That audience views the influencers as an authority on what’s good, popular, or trendy in that area. An influencer can represent your brand and build a long- or short-term partnership with your business.
Related: Influencers: What They Are and How They Can Help Your Business
What Are the Different Types of Influencers?
You can understand what type of influencer may be best for your business by learning the categories into which they fall. Some influencers may span niches and categories based on their interests and expertise. Decide what type of audience you’re trying to reach to help decide in which categories to look for your influencers. We can break influencer groups down into two broad segments:
Follower Count
Grouping influencers by follower count is important if your focus is on customer reach. Follower count categories include:
Nano Influencers
Nano influencers typically have between 1,000 and 10,000 followers. They’re highly engaged with their audience and are vocal advocates for the brands, products, and services they love. These influencers can help businesses with limited marketing budgets. They’re also helpful for companies testing products or services in new or adjacent niches.
Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers may have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. They still engage with their audience like nano influencers, but they may specialize in a particular niche. These influencers are helpful for generating more focused leads and may have more marketing knowledge than those with fewer followers.
Macro Influencers
Macro influencers may have between 100,000 and one million followers. They have a broader appeal than some other influencers and may have a claim to fame, like being an internet celebrity or content creator. These influencers may engage less with their audience because of their volume of followers. Macro influencers can help bring widespread awareness to a product or brand. They can increase your company’s engagement and brand reputation.
Mega Influencers
Mega influencers have over one million followers. These people may be conventional celebrities, like sports stars, musicians, and actors. Your chances of collaborating with a mega influencer may be more likely if you have a large marketing budget.
Niches
Grouping influencers by niche can help you find ones that promote products and services like yours. Some popular influencer niches include:
Technology
Technology influencers make content for people interested in hardware devices and software programs. They may live stream on platforms like Twitch and YouTube to share product demos or reviews. In the B2B sector, these influencers may work with computer, mobile device, and software companies.
Bogging and Vlogging
While blogging and vlogging may not seem like a niche because they’re not specific topics, these influencers are some of the most popular with brands. Because their interests vary, they’re often visible to different curated audiences. They may be familiar with search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing tactics that can help you build brand awareness and improve your website referral traffic.
Photography
Photography influencers care about art and the technology they use to shoot their photos. They may work with camera and accessory companies. Local photographers may partner with nearby businesses to shoot their campaigns, or even with the visitors’ bureaus for towns to take their promotional photos.
Travel
Travel influencers spend their time jetting around the globe. They encourage people to travel to certain places or find “hidden spots” for things like photos and food around the world. There’s often a thin line between travel influencing and photography influencing. This is because both are popular on visual platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. Travel influencers may partner with hotel or residence chains, airlines and car services, luggage manufacturers, clothing brands, restaurants, and museums.
Where Can I Find Influencers?
There are multiple ways to find influencers for your brand online. Some of the most common include:
- Scouting social media channels like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and LinkedIn
- Searching social media platforms for specific hashtags, groups, or trending discussion topics in your niche
- Contacting influencers through social media direct messaging
- Using targeted Google searches to find influencers on specific platforms, in certain niches, or in your geographic location
- Browsing competitors’ social media feeds to find their influencers or people trying to get sponsored with them
- Following blogs and vlogs in your niche to vet creator content and see if they could be viable influencers
- Using influencer tools and databases to learn about available talent and secure their contact information
- Self-recruiting through your own website and social media pages that prompt applications
Many influencer qualities work together to help you find just the right ambassador for your brand. Need help creating content that will resonate with your audience? You’ve come to the right place! CopyPress has a team of expert writers, editors, and QA specialists who are able to create content that your audience will appreciate and that will give your brand greater visibility online so you can gain additional leads that convert. Start a call today to talk with us about your business needs and goals.
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