Influencer marketing can do wonders for your brand.
A good word from a niche authority that people trust is a very, very valuable form of social proof.
But despite its effectiveness, some influencer marketing campaigns end up falling flat.
Usually — though not always — this isn't because influencer marketing isn't a good fit for the brand.
It's basically an issue of human error.
And most of the time, it comes down to vanity metrics.
They're just so enticing, those big follower numbers. *That's* the guy for you, the one with a six figure following… right?
Actually, maybe not.
Sometimes influencers who have a smaller following, but are more relevant in their niche, are actually a better choice for influencer marketing campaigns.
In a recent blog post, MarketingProfs talks about one of the biggest mistakes people make.
Focusing on the Numbers Instead of the Quality
One of the biggest and most common mistakes made with social media influencers is focusing on numbers and other vanity metrics to choose influencers, rather than their quality.
The idea seems sound: The more followers an influencer has, the bigger they are, right?
It means that they can reach a much larger audience, which, in theory, means that you should also get more results, simply because the message will be heard by more people.
But, the harsh truth is, that is not necessarily the case; just because someone has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media doesn't necessarily make them a true influencer.
In fact, many marketers and businesses are now gravitating more toward micro-influencers(influencers with under 100,000 followers or fans) because, even though they don't have many followers, and therefore that big of a reach, they can actually be more effective than using someone who has a large following but whose followers aren't engaged.
Engagement should be the focus when researching influencers, and not the amounts of followers they have.
It's actually a bit of a paradox, but studies have found that engagement often goes down with influencers that have a lot of followers;
Once they reach a certain point, engagement drops dramatically, most likely because it's close to impossible to engage and interact with such a large audience.
When looking to find and connect with influencers, try to forget about how many followers they have, and look instead into how much they are actually engaging—and how much their audience engages in return.
The more engagement, the better, increasing the chances that when the influencer promotes your product or service, for example, followers will trust the influencer's opinion and actually go and check it out for themselves.
You can read more about influencer marketing mistakes and mishaps over at MarketingProf.
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