Top 10 Things to Consider When Hiring an Influencer

January 14, 2022

Influencer marketing has more than proven its effectiveness and has drawn the attention of countless brands and businesses. Considering that every dollar spent on an influencer marketing campaign earns $5.79, it’s easy to see why brands are eager to try influencer marketing.


Despite growing popularity, it can still be difficult to learn how to hire the right influencer as you work to build a successful long-term partnership. There’s no standardized process to follow, nor is there a direct method to hire influencers through social media platforms. 


You need to begin by learning how to hire an influencer in order to experience the impressive results that have made influencer marketing so popular. 


Let's discuss ten tips you should know about before hiring any influencers to help you put together an influencer marketing strategy that increases brand awareness,  audience engagement, traffic, and conversions.  

1. Create an Approximate Budget to Hire Influencers

How much does your brand want to invest in influencer marketing? You’ll need to begin by creating an approximate budget for this specific influencer campaign. Like other forms of digital marketing, it's important to set a budget. This let's you gauge campaign performance, determine your ROI, and gives you a foundation to build from.


Your budget also determines the level of influencer that you can reasonably approach. Influencers with millions of followers and high engagement metrics usually come at a higher price point.


However, you can hire social media influencers with smaller accounts, known as micro-influencers. They can be more affordable and still deliver excellent results, especially if you are looking for a niche audience or a specific geographic following.  

2. Understand Your Target Audience

You need to understand the exact audience that you’d like to reach with your sponsored content. Start by thinking about the audience you hope to reach and this will give you the insight needed to find your target influencer.


Note, there’s a difference between target audience and niche, but they do work together. The process of identifying your target audience takes your product’s consumers into consideration from age, location, interests and income. The more specific you can become about your target audience, the more effective your experience with influencer marketing will be. 


Keep in mind that the influencer is not responsible for helping you discover your target audience or even catering to your specific audience. 


What is an influencer’s job? Influencers build trust with their audience by creating authentic, high quality, and honest content for their followers, so their job is to use their knowledge of what resonates with their audience to promote your brand and products. It’s important to pick an influencer with an audience that matches your target customer.

3. Pick One Influencer Platform to Focus On

Brands with experience running influencer marketing campaigns can certainly focus on more than one influencer marketing platform. However, those new to influencer marketing should pick a single social media platform for all of their influencer campaigns. 


Every industry seems to have a dominant social media platform. Industries that lend themselves to engaging images, such as travel and fashion, do well on Instagram. However, more technical and data-driven industries, such as cryptocurrency and cybersecurity, are more dominant on Twitter. 


Understanding how to hire an Instagram influencer will be slightly different from hiring a Twitter influencer. Picking your influencer marketing channel should be done early on in your journey to finding an influencer. Also, ensuring your brand has a social presence on the platform you intend on promoting is vital. Owning your brand’s handle gives the influencer a place to direct traffic and encourages consumers to follow you to learn more about your brand journey, products, and sales.

4. Identify the Influencer’s Reach

Reach is defined as the number of people that see the content an influencer creates. So, don’t hyperfocus on a high follower count since high engagement is often far more valuable than the follower count.


Many businesses have hired social influencers with large followings only to discover that the followers are not engaged in the content. This results in the specific campaign failing to reach a positive ROI.


Followers, views, comments, subscribers — they can all be bought. Any type of social metric you can see on the front end is not an accurate representation of how engaged the audience is. Engagement is where you’ll make sales or enhance your brand’s image. Before hiring an influencer for a campaign, be sure to review their back end analytics to see the full scope of their account metrics and audience. 

5. Prioritize Influencers with High Engagement

Engagement is a measure of how much the influencer’s audience interacts with a social media post. Liking and commenting is how people engage on Instagram, with the addition of retweets on Twitter, and views on Youtube and TikTok. 


You want an engaged audience. However, it can be extremely difficult to understand an influencer’s engagement rate. There are a variety of influencer marketing tools out there that can help evaluate accounts in various ways to understand how engaged the audience is. 


Some of these tools are paid, but they’re worth investing in if you plan on regularly hiring Instagram influencers. Another benefit of working with an Influencer agency is they usually subscribe to a variety of tools they can access on your behalf during your campaign. 


6. Consider Potential for Improving Brand Lift

Brand lift is a term that describes the overall public opinion of your brand. It can be extremely hard to measure and analyze, and you don’t necessarily need to worry about doing that, but you should understand that working with influencers may be beneficial to your brand’s image. Check out our post to learn more about what influencer marketing can do for your brand


Improving brand lift is typically only a meaningful benefit when working with influencers with big followings in your industry. They need to be a respected authority in order to impact your brand’s image. Having your competition and business partners see your sponsored post will certainly improve brand lift. 

7. Research the Influencer’s Reputation 

It’s not uncommon for a social media personality to do something controversial. This controversy can often be harmful to brands that have worked with the influencer. 


If your business is looking to get into the influencer space, you should avoid relationships with any influencers that might become a public problem for your company. 


You can determine if they’ll be an issue by researching their reputation. A simple search with their name and username will likely find everything you need to know. Here are a few things to look for:


  • Have they already had a major controversy? 
  • Are they public about their political opinions or religious beliefs ? 
  • Does their account display content that would conflict with your brand messaging or image?
  • Do they support or oppose any social movements that could negatively reflect your brands?


Fully understand the influencer’s entire online presence before working with them. You don’t want to work with the wrong person and have it impact your business.

8. Get a Feel for the Influencer’s Voice

Ideally, the influencer’s voice will match the general voice of your brand. You want the message that you’re passing through the influencer’s posts to resonate with their audience in a similar way as organic posts. 


What is an influencer’s voice? It’s the overall tone and mood that their online presence conveys. Voice can be determined by the way the influencer interacts with their audience, the type of captions they write, and the overall sentiment of their feed. 


Aligning your brand’s voice with the right influencer will make the marketing message more powerful and positively impact your campaign goals. It will make the paid message appear organic and will connect more with the influencer’s audience, potentially converting followers to customers.

9. Reach Out With the Preferred Contact Method

Most influencers will have a small section in their bio that will reveal how they wish to be contacted. It may say something like, “for business inquiries.” The most common methods are a specific business email or a simple DM to the account. 


Keep in mind, lots of influencers have managers or agents and it’s best practice to reach out to those emails if they’re available before sending a DM or connecting through a personal email.


Do not leave comments on their posts asking to “collab” or otherwise work together. These comments come off as spam. Leave a positive comment on their post and reach out with the preferred method. 


It’s also a good idea to follow the creator and engage on their content for a few days or weeks before reaching out about a partnership as it builds a more trusted and authentic relationship when they can see you’re genuinely interested in their account. 

10. Look for Ambassadors with Long-Term Potential

Building a relationship with an influencer and your brand takes time. It’s important to work with an influencer that not only understands your brand and its products, but also is willing to grow with you over the long-term.


When you create long-term relationships with influencers, it’s that much easier to have them become loyal brand ambassadors for your company. They will better understand your products, what makes them special, and consistently create content that looks authentic and genuine.


The end result is a more consistent brand message and the ability to engage that influencer’s audience through authenticity and familiarity.

You Can Have Success with Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing can certainly be daunting and sometimes confusing. However, you can certainly find the right influencer to work with by following the above tips. Thoroughly research any potential influencers, fully understand any relevant metrics, and keep your brand’s goals in mind at all times.


You can also use our services to find the perfect influencers to help your brand reach the next level. We specialize in effectively managing every stage of influencer marketing, from influencer outreach to content creation. Contact us today to see how our services can work for you.

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