Make More Sales with the Ultimate Social Proof: 10 Powerful Tools for Connecting With Influencers

Influencer marketing is en vogue right now. Chances are, you've picked up on the fact that people are talking about it.

From community discussions on Reddit, to blog posts from top publishers like the Moz Blog and Hubspot Blog, it's caught the attention of the digital marketing community in a big way.

And there's a reason for that: it works.

An influencer is someone with a significant following online, usually on social media.

These people exist on several different scales. Some influencers have 10,000 fans, others have as many as 1 million.

And they have a lot of klout with their fans and followers.

Influencer marketing involves paying these people — Instagram beauty bloggers, YouTube stars, popular bloggers, and similar figures — to promote your product.

Part celebrity endorsement, part social proof, influencer marketing is a brave new world that brands of all sizes are just beginning to explore.

As we've mentioned, this is new to most of us. It's been around for a while — probably close to a decade — but it's really starting to hit its peak right now.

If you're working on finding ways to leverage the power of influencer marketing for your own online business, these ten tools are a great place to start.

10 influencer marketing tools

A list of influencer marketing tools to help you find influential people to partner with, and track the success of your campaigns.

1. Influencer strategy template

Stop chasing online personalities that have little sway over your target audience. This template will help you map out your influencer marketing strategy and inform partner decisions.

2. Followerwonk (free tool)

This tool by Moz makes it easy to find relevant influencers on Twitter by topic and location. Use it to build a list of potential influencers to engage and partner with. Pro tip:create a Twitter list for these individuals for easy reference.

3. Hootsuite (free tool)

You can use Hootsuite search streams to discover social media influencers by monitoring conversations relevant to your industry. Who is your target audience engaging with? Whose content are they sharing? These people have clout that can help your brand expand it’s reach.

Once you have a set of influencers to follow, you can add them to a Twitter list and save it as a stream to easily track what they share and who they engage with—learn from the best.

4. Demographics Pro for Twitter (free tool)

Use this tool to determine whether an influencer’s audience is right for your brand. The app will give you relevant data on a user’s following, including average age, income, location, likes, interests, and profession.

[Image Source: Hootsuite]

5. TrendSpottr for Instagram app

Find the top trending photos, videos, and influencers for any tag or topic with TrendSpottr for Instagram. The app also makes it easy to engage with key influencers, view trending hashtags, select from a list of popular tags, and easily share trending posts to your social networks.

[Image Source: Hootsuite]

6. Streamview for Instagram

Find local Instagram influencers posting in your area (or an area you choose to follow). You can monitor for locations and hashtags, or combine search terms for advanced listening.

7. UTM parameters (free tool)

These short text codes can be added to a URL to track important data about website visitors and traffic sources. Create them for your influencers to use when they share content on social media so you can track how much engagement the campaign is receiving.

Use the Hootsuite dashboard to create UTM parameters in a few simple steps. Then you can share the links with your social media influencer or easily add it to your posts.

Check out our guide, How to Use UTM Parameters to Track Social Media Success and learn more about this invaluable tool.

8. Facebook’s Pixel (free tool)

As we explain in our post, The Facebook Pixel: What It Is and How to Use It, this tool makes it easy to track conversions from a Facebook ad, optimize ads based on data collected, build targeted audiences for future ads, and remarket to qualified leads (people who have already taken some kind of action on your website).

If your influencer marketing strategy includes a Facebook ad component, you can use a pixel’s remarketing capabilities to expand an influencer’s reach and connect with a new and relevant audience. Check out our step-by-step guide to learn how to put the tactic to work in your next campaign.

9. Right Relevance Pro

This app identifies and ranks industry influencers and uses their inherent trust to discover content relevant to your audience. This makes it easy for you to find and share content that will help expand your businesses’ reach on social media.

[Image Source: Hootsuite]

10. Insightpool

Do your busy @mention streams make it more difficult to engage with influencers? InsightPool’s single-click response interface makes it easy to cut through the noise and connect with key individuals.

For a full rundown of what influencer marketing is, how it works, and how you can incorporate it into your own campaigns, check out the full article over at Hootsuite.