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You know how when you are cooking you add that one ingredient that turns your entire dish into something magnificent? But add the wrong ingredient and your whole dish is ruined.
That’s the role influencers play when it comes to social media marketing. They can either make or break your social media strategy. This is why it is important to choose the right one for your brand, and a good way to do that is to know how to find influencers by topic or theme.
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What Are The Different Types of Influencers?
Influencers can either be categorized by their niche or the number of followers they have. When it comes to niche, you will find several types of influencers for each one. For example: the fashion niche might have general fashion influencers, sustainable fashion influencers, influencers who focus only on Black-owned brands, and so on.
When categorized by the number of followers, there are 5 different types of influencers:
- Nano influencers: >10k followersMicro influencers: 10k to 100k followersMacro influencers: 100k to 500k followersMega influencers: 500k to 1M followersCelebrities: <1M followers
When you want to hyper-target a certain group of people, micro and nano influencers work the best since they tend to focus on a specific niche and have very specialized audiences. Which means a ready-made target group for you!
It is important to find an influencer that aligns with your topic or theme because only then will their content resonate with your brand. This turns the sponsored posts into more of an authentic recommendation than an advertisement.
Here is a step by step guide on how to find influencers for your brand by topic or theme:
#1 Define you campaign’s objectives and target audience
Each niche has several sub niches. If you want to hyper target particular audiences, you need to first define what your campaign’s goals are and who you want to target.
For example, let’s say you are launching a new line of vegan shoes geared specifically towards men aged 18-35. Your target demographic is set. Now you should decide what your goals are – spreading awareness? Increasing sales?
Once this is done, you will understand that working with an influencer who focuses specifically on vegan shoes is more likely to have the same target demographic as your campaign. This will help you go about finding the right influencer.
#2 Search for your niche’s keywords on social media platforms
In this case, your keywords would be something like “vegan shoes,” or “men’s vegan shoes.” Open the platform you want to target – such as Instagram or LinkedIn – and type the keywords in the search bar. You will find a list of results.
You can also click on “see all results” and sort by account name or hashtags.
You can click on the hashtags or accounts that seem to resonate with your campaign and check out the posts! You just might find your influencer.
#3 Look for people who have talked about your topic on YouTube or Google
A simple Google search will give you tons of results. For the above example, you can search for something like “vegan shoe bloggers/ YouTubers.” Go through a couple of results that look promising and shortlist a few influencers.
Bloggers and YouTubers are also most likely to have an online presence on various social media platforms, so don’t forget to check out their “contact me” page.
Alternatively, you can also search for influencers who have used and reviewed your products specifically. Searching for “ABC’s vegan shoes reviews” will pull up results of people who have used your brand previously. If the reviews are good, they are most likely a fan, so working with them would be a win-win for the both of you!
#4 Use influencer marketing platforms
There are several influencer marketing platforms – both paid and free – that allow you to find influencers by topic or theme.
All you have to do is sign up to the platform, enter details such as your budget and the topic you are looking for, and the platform will pair you with some influencers. Check out one of the sections below for some free tools that will let you know how to find influencers for your brand.
#5 Ask your followers for recommendations
This is one of the easiest ways to find influencers in your niche. Your audience obviously has an interest in your brand/ topic. It is highly probable that they follow other brands and influencers in your niche. Even better, you might already find influencers amongst your followers.
So, just put up a post or story asking your followers for recommendations. Ask them to spread the word and wait for the recommendations to pour in.
Let’s say you have followed the above methods and shortlisted a couple of influencers. But which one among those will be the best fit for you?
Features Brands Look For When Finding Influencers
As I mentioned above, an influencer can make or break your campaign. So before you choose one, here are some of the features you should look for in them:
- Passionate about your brand/ topic. Has built a trustworthy relationship with their audience.Mixes up organic content with sponsored posts. If their feed is simply filled with sponsored posts, their audience is not likely to trust their recommendations.Their target audience and goals align with yours.Their posts have a good number of engagement. They don’t compromise on quality.
If you don’t have a lot of money to spend on paid platforms, here are a few free tools that can help you out:
- BuzzSumo. This tool helps you find the most shared content around a certain topic and even lets you know who shared them!Upfluence. This platform not only helps you sift through numerous influencers to find your fit, it also helps you create marketing campaigns.Post for Rent. With this platform, you can find influencers by topic as well as read their reviews! On the flip side, influencers also get to read brand’s reviews.
I hope this article has answered your question on “how to find influencers in my niche.” There is a final bonus section below for anyone who is thinking of becoming an influencer.
What Type of Influencer Should I Be?
Influencers come in all types and niches. The type of influencer you want to be should be determined based on your passion. This is going to be your career and you are going to spend a considerable amount of time creating and promoting your own content first.
So you need to ask yourself, “what thing can I do for hours without getting bored?” For example, if you spend hours gaming, you can become a gaming influencer. If you are a makeup enthusiast, you can become a beauty influencer, and so on. Also make sure that you will be able to create enough content in that niche!
Karina Gandola was born and raised outside the city of Charleston, in the beautiful mountain state of West Virginia. Karina loves writing about the influencer marketing space and an area she is passionate about. She considers her faith and family to be most important to her. If she isn’t spending time with her friends and family, you can almost always find her around her sweet yellow Labrador retriever, Poshna.
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