Social media has given us many things.
The gift of influencers is something we may not have realized until recently. It’s something that can take your business to new heights.
They can help your business connect with a wider audience.
Influencers are people who have a large following and can help promote your brand, products or services to their followers. They are individuals with significant social reach and engagement. Often, they’re everyday people whom others trust, rather than big-name celebs.
For a successful marketing campaign, social media influencers are truly an invaluable asset. Because they can engage with their followers on a personal level. It leads to increased brand awareness and more sales.
How do social influencers really help, you ask?
Social media influencers can help you connect with new customers and boost your current followers. They are the perfect ambassadors for your brand and can spread the word about what you do in a fun, engaging way.
But how do you find social media influencers? And, what are some of the best digital marketing tools for finding them?
Fortunately, there are some great tools out there that can make the process easier. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the best digital marketing tools for finding social media influencers.
So, without further ado, let’s get started…
1. Trend IO
Trend IO is a creator marketplace that connects brands to creators.
When you sign up for Trend, you can upload your own content brief or choose from pre-made content packs, such as having a YouTuber create an explainer video for your brand or a series of still photographs.
Prices start at $100 and go up, based on what you want.
One downside of Trend is that creators don’t have to have a big social media presence to join the platform. So, if you want influencers with a considerable amount of influence, you may need to look elsewhere.
2. Collabstr
Collabstr lets you find Instagram influencers for free.
The marketplace also has influencers on YouTube and TikTok. You can search the platform to see who’s available and what their niches are.
Every influencer on Collabstr is vetted. So, you don’t have to worry about fakes. Since the search is free, it can be a good way to dip your toes into influencer marketing and see what’s out there.
While Collabstr is free to use, you do have to pay influencers if you decide to work with them. Influencers list their rates on the marketplace, so you can pick and choose based on your budget.
Collabstr holds your funds until after the project is finished, so you can feel confident that you don’t have to pay if the influencer doesn’t deliver. It makes finding and working with influencers easier and safe. You’ll feel more confident while making any payment on the platform.
3. Grin
Grin calls itself the number one creator management platform.
It goes beyond influencer marketing and also offers affiliate marketing, PR and ecommerce marketing. It makes finding influencers really easy.
With Grin, you can find influencers in your niche, then work on projects with them on the same platform. You can also track your campaign’s progress and analyze the results of each influencer post.
Grin isn’t free and pricing varies based on the size of your influencer marketing program. Overall, Grin is a great platform that will give you enough control and transparency over your influencer marketing campaigns.
4. Influencity
Influencity is another influencer marketing platform that handles all aspects of your campaign, from recruitment to analysis.
The platform’s search engine claims to have more than 70 million influencers. It streamlines the process of finding the right influencer by putting relevant stats and details at your fingertips.
Influencity allows you to design campaigns based on the results you want.
One drawback of the platform is its price, which ranges from around $150 per month for a basic plan to over $1,000 for a customized option.
If you’re new to influencer marketing, trying a free or less pricey option might be a better place to start. After all, you need to invest time and money to see results from your influencer marketing campaigns. It’s better to start small and gradually increase your budget as you see success.
5. Brandwatch
You gotta know yourself for an influencer marketing campaign to succeed. Brandwatch is a social listening tool that lets you know what’s going on with your brand’s social media and with social media in general.
Using Brandwatch, you can keep tabs on your brand across millions of sources. If someone starts praising you, you’ll know. You can then reach out to that person to explore a partnership.
Similarly, if someone starts trashing your brand, you know. You can then take action and do some damage control.
Brandwatch also offers social media management, which helps your company better engage with its followers and build a stronger social presence. The tool uses a tiered pricing structure based on the services you need, whether they’re social media management or consumer intelligence, or both.
6. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is a social listening tool and social media management platform. You can use it to keep tabs on the conversation surrounding your brand and to track customer response to your marketing campaigns.
While it’s not an influencer marketplace per se, the tool can help you connect with influencers. For example, you can use it to note who’s talking about your brand. You can then research those individuals to see if they’d be a good fit for promoting your company or participating in a campaign.
The tool uses a tiered pricing structure. The standard tier costs $89 per month per user and works with up to five social media profiles. The professional tier is $149 monthly per user and is designed for up to 10 social profiles.
The advanced tier gives your access to 10 social profiles plus automation tools. It’s $249 per user per month. So, decide how granular you want to be with your monitoring and tracking. And don’t forget about the 30-day free trial, which you can use to test out Sprout Social for a month.
7. Upfluence
Upfluence is a one-stop-shop influencer marketing tool. You can use it to identify potential influencers. You can also contact influencers directly through the platform using Gmail or Outlook app integrations. A creator-matching feature streamlines the process of finding the right influencers.
Once you’ve made contact with an influencer, you can get to work on collaborating with them. You can create campaigns on the platform and the influencer can give their input and share ideas with you.
After a campaign launches, you can track its performance in Upfluence. The platform also lets you manage payments to influencers, so you don’t have to worry about currency conversions or that the check has gotten lost in the mail.
Upfluence uses a tiered pricing structure.
But isn’t upfront about the cost of each option. To find out about the cost, you need to reach out to the company directly.
Overall, Upfluence is a good fit for promoting your company or participating in a social campaign. It has cool features that help you track and measure social campaign performance, so you can see the impact of your efforts. The pricing structure is flexible, so it’s affordable for smaller businesses too.
8. CreatorIQ
There’s a lot of money to be made in influencer marketing, which also means there’s a lot of fraud. A common type of influencer fraud is buying followers. It happens at all levels, from micro-influencers to mega-influencers.
Fraud takes other forms, and it can be hard to sort through. Luckily, you don’t have to. CreatorIQ is an artificial intelligence-enabled platform that does the sifting for you. The tool has a database of over 17 million influencers.
The profiles on CreatorIQ are data enriched and go beyond the basics. You can easily find influencers who meet your brand’s needs and can review their details to make sure they’re the real deal.
The tool’s recommendation algorithms cut through the noise for you, making it a lot easier to find the influencers who will have the biggest impact for your brand. Well, CreatorIQ isn’t free. Pricing is available upon request and is based on your brand’s specific needs.
9. Activate
Activate is an influencer marketplace that lets you search for influencers based on your unique requirements. You can also browse a list of carefully selected and curated influencers to see if one might be a good fit for your project. It’s easy to contact the influencers and set up a collaboration.
While it’s nice to choose for yourself, sometimes you want someone else to make the decisions for you. Once you have an idea of who you want, Activate makes it easy to connect with them and get started.
The marketplace also lets you set your own filters, such as engagement level or audience, allowing you to find the perfect influencer.
Activate realizes that some brands are into influencer marketing for the long run. It has an influencer relationship management tool that focuses on developing deep and long-lasting connections with the influencers. You can log your top performers and use the tool to engage with them for projects again and again. So, working on a long -term campaign with the right influencers becomes much easier with Activate.
A survey feature helps you get a look inside influencers’ minds to see what they want from brand partnerships and what ideas they may have.
Once you’ve found influencers and put out a campaign, you can use Activitate to track its results. You can learn more about Activate and its pricing by requesting a demo. Overall, it’s a great platform even for larger brands who want to make the most of their influencers.
10. Brand24
What do people think about your brand? Are they talking about you? Brand24 gives you the answers. This social listening tool has several features that help you determine if your brand is the talk of the town or not.
An Influencer Score shows you if influential individuals have been talking about you while a mentions feed shows you where your brand has been mentioned. A volume chart lets you see if interest in your brand has suddenly spiked. A sentiment chart keeps your finger on the pulse of public sentiment. Do people love you, hate you or feel neutral?
Brand24 uses a tiered structure, with services available for individuals or very small brands for $39 per month and services for enterprise-level companies for $249 monthly. The pricing structure is quite reasonable and it offers a ton of features for social media monitoring. If you want to know what people are saying about your brand, Brand24 is the tool for you. It’s affordable, has a lot of features and can be customized to fit your needs.
Here’s What You Need to Keep in Mind When Looking for Influencers
Influencers: You know you need them, but you’re not sure how to find them. The top social media influencers aren’t going to come to your brand. Instead, it’s up to you to go to them. These following tips will help.
1. Don’t Get Caught up With Follower Counts
Here’s the not-so-secret secret of the influencer marketing world:
Follower counts can lie.
In the worst cases, influencers buy followers to make their profiles look better. In the other cases, an influencer might have a lot of followers, but the followers are little more than numbers on a screen.
Look deeper when looking for Instagram influencers.
Pay attention to a user’s engagement stats, rather than their followers. The best influencers will have high rates of engagement, meaning people are clicking on and interacting with their posts with frequency.
Some brands will have more luck with micro-influencers, who have a few thousand followers or fewer, than with big-time influencers. Micro-influencers often have a specific niche and a dedicated audience. Look for people who have lots of comments and likes on their posts.
2. Go Where Your Audience Goes
Which brings us to tip #2: You’ll find micro-influencers and others if you go where your audience goes. If your primary audience is on TikTok, don’t try to reach them through Instagram or Twitter.
How do you find your audience? You can ask them.
Don’t underestimate the value of surveys for marketing. You need to know who your audience is, what they care about and where they hang out. The best way to get the details is to ask them what’s up.
3. Consider Your Customers
Word of mouth is one of the best types of marketing there is. Influencer marketing is word-of-mouth marketing on steroids. So, it makes sense to find influencers among your current customers.
The odds are likely your brand has some eager cheerleaders with decent social media stats who are just waiting for the chance to promote your products or services to their friends and followers. Ask them if they want to use one of your products and make a post about it.
4. Do Your Research
There’s a wide range of quality in the influencer marketing world. When you link up with an influencer, your brand becomes associated with their brand. So you need to ensure that their brand isn’t tarnished.
Take a peek at their past posts and find out what other partnerships they’ve had. You don’t want to work with someone who has a lot of offensive posts or with an influencer who’s criticized or bashed your brand or industry.
Since some influencers are represented by agencies or managers, do your research and make sure you know who to connect with when you reach out to the influencer. You don’t want to waste your time or theirs.
When you’re looking for the perfect influencer, make sure you consider their following and their tone. Will they make a fun post about your product? Or will they have more serious opinions? Do some research before reaching out to an influencer; it’ll save both of you a lot of time and hassle!
5. Be Friendly in Your Approach
Remember, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
When it’s time to connect with influencers, be direct but polite. Let them know what you want and what’s in it for them.
Show interest in them, perhaps by mentioning a recent post.
Don’t harass influencers.
Some might respond with a yes, some with a no thanks and others might not respond at all. Whatever the case may be, stay patient. If an influencer declines your offer, don’t get offended. Just move on and find someone else to work with. There are plenty of great influencers out there!
6. Be Persistent in Your Approach
Influencers are busy people.
They have a lot of followers, many of whom expect them to respond quickly to requests for collaboration or endorsement.
So make your offer quick and clear, then be patient while you wait for a response. If you don’t hear back from an influencer after a reasonable amount of time (usually 24-48 hours), reach out again politely and let them know why you think they would be the perfect fit for your brand or product.
You want your influencer collaboration to be a win-win for both of you. It’s the best way to get great coverage and increase your brand’s reach.
Keep in mind that some influencers might not be available for every sponsored post. So it’s important to ask if they’re interested in working with your brand on a regular basis or just for a limited time period.
7. Be Respectful of Their Time and Attention Spans
Influencers have busy lives, too! They don’t want to feel like they are always being asked to do things they don’t want to do. So when you reach out, be respectful of their time and attention spans.
Make sure you understand what type of work is possible before contacting them so you don’t waste their time. And once you have a proposal in hand, make sure to keep it concise and organized so that the influencer can quickly understand what you are asking for.
Lastly, always be aware of the fact that some influencers might charge high for their services. This is common among high-level bloggers and Instagrammers who have built up a following of loyal followers. So, be prepared to pay if your request is approved and you want to work with them.
Final Words and Thoughts
As you can see, there are lots of great digital marketing tools that can help you find the right influencers for your brand. Just keep in mind the pros and cons of each tool so that you can choose one that’s suitable for your business.
With so many digital marketing tools and software available these days, picking the right one can be a tough task. I’ve listed some of the best ones out there to get you started with influencer marketing. So, don’t hesitate to check them out and see which one is the best fit for your business needs!
When you’re just starting out, free option is best.
Once you’ve given influencer marketing a try and have seen how it works, you can try out a paid, feature-rich tool.
Trying before you commit to a tool is always a smart move. Ask to see a demo and for a free trial. You want to make sure the tool suits your needs and is easy to use. The best influencer marketing tool is the one you use.
Finally, it all depends on what kind of goals you have for your business. Still, I think these social marketing platforms have distinct features that will help with specific goals. You truly can’t go wrong with any of these tools.
No matter how good your product or service is, without the right social media marketing strategies, it might not take off.
So, what are you waiting for?
Start using these tools and find influencers today!
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