Social Media Influencers – How Influential Are They Really?
We hear the word influencer being thrown more now than ever because the popularity of influencer marketing has grown rapidly but how influential are social media influencers really? Do they have as much influence and impact on their followers as everybody says?
When you’ve just found an influencer that is suitable for your page, you should investigate the soon-to-be partner’s page to see how influential they really are so you know what you can expect.
But how can you actually measure influence? How do you know if an influencer has an impact on their followers and how do you know if they only have a lot of followers and nothing more?
Social Media Influencers – How Influential Are They Really?
Audit the influencer
The total follower amount that you see on an influencer’s page isn’t what you should count on and it is certainly not the number of people that the influencer marketing campaign will help you reach. This is something that most brands do not understand. Follower count is not the same as influence.
For example, you have to remove fake followers and ghost followers from the calculation.
Removing this will help you get a better understanding of how influential the influencer really is.
Take a look at the influencer’s comments to see how big of an impact they leave on their followers. If their comment section is packed with comments like “nice”, then they aren’t really having a big impact on people, or even worse, it can mean they are using fake comments.
Comments can really be a great way of seeing how the marketing campaign will perform and if the influencer’s recommendation of your product will make people buy it or not. If their followers leave thoughtful comments that show the followers have actually consumed the content and become impacted by it, then you know you are onto something. Here’s an example of what I mean:
Ghost followers
Apart from fake followers, you should also have in mind that all accounts have ghost followers. Some accounts have few, some have more.
Ghost followers are followers that never have engaged with any of the influencer’s content. An account that is a ghost follower is usually an account that is inactive, meaning they will never see or engage with the influencer’s posts anyway.
Think about…
Many influencers are setting their rates based on their follower count but as we can conclude from the information below, this isn’t an accurate number of people your campaign will reach.
Instead, ask your influencer to send you statistics on things such as total reach per week or total reach per post. And, as mentioned, because their engagement is the single most important thing for an influencer marketing campaign, you may also want to ask for statistics connected to their engagement. This will protect you from failing and also help you better predict the results of your influencer marketing campaign better and set goals based on the real numbers that the influencer is generating.
With the help of these simple tricks, you can get a better understanding of how influential your influencers really are.
Let us know about your experiences with influencer marketing and who you are measuring how influential your influencers really are.
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