The Ultimate Guide to Influencer Metrics: How to get picked for Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Summary

In this comprehensive Guide to Influencer Metrics, we’ll examine all that you need to know about commonly used Influencer Marketing terminologies, social media metrics, tips and tricks, and everything you can do to boost your social media profile. 

What do Influencer Metrics signify?

Brands need to go through a rigorous process of planning, execution, and analysis to achieve their marketing goals. The steps to choosing an influencer are very important, one that ultimately impacts the success factor for any Influencer marketing campaign. They need to make sure the influencer has good metrics and is a right fit for their campaign objective. 

Let’s examine some important social media metrics that brands review before shortlisting an influencer- 

  Engagement rate

An influencer’s engagement rate is one of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs). It serves as a powerful indication of the level of interaction between their online audience and the content they publish. Simply put, the higher the engagement rate of your profile, the better are your chances of getting shortlisted for campaigns. 

The engagement rate for Instagram is calculated as follows- Total engagement on any given number of posts (likes + comments + saves) / Total Followers * 100

The engagement rate for Youtube is calculated as follows- Total engagement (views + likes + comments +dislikes) / Total subscribers * 10

As an industry standard, the following are considered good engagement rates for each influencer bracket in Influencer Marketing – 

Tips to improve engagement rate: 

✔ Know your audience– Create and share valuable content ideas that are interesting to your audience. You should do a survey of your audience demographics to know more about which languages most resonate with them, the best times to post, and the content type they best engage with.

✔ Stay on-trend – Creating content around current events and ongoing trends instantly connects you with audiences in a timely way. Trending pop culture references, sporting events, viral memes, and viral reel ideas are some of the dynamically evolving topics that one must watch out for. 

✔ Focus on Content – Having a unique voice with your profile that resonates with your audiences is crucial. Try to focus on core areas like how you present your profile, creating consistent style patterns that keep your feeds looking fresh, delivering visually high-quality posts, and mastering the use of targeted hashtags.

✔ Actually engage with your followers – The easiest way to up your engagement is by, well, engaging more on social platforms. This means— Liking, pinning, and responding to comments, replying to DMs, hosting Q&A sessions, interactive stories/polls, and so on. Keeping the conversation flowing improves the relationships with your followers and leads to a more engaged community. 

✔ Be authentic – You can be the most intelligent, witty, or artistic content creator around, but nothing beats being authentic. Audiences appreciate it when their idols are real to them and they give authentic reviews about products or topics which they can trust. This also means sometimes taking them through your behind-the-scenes process, flops or bloopers, not-so-perfect images, etc, for the added relatability factor. 

  Audience information

Being informed about the audience demographics of prospective influencers is essential for the brand to figure out if the campaign will be targeted at the right user group. Both Instagram and YouTube have their own respective native analytics tool called “Insights” that lets users access data on their follower demographics, best post timings, profile visits, follower growth, and so on. Brands may ask creators to provide such information prior to campaign shortlisting, so they can make a more informed decision on the influencer list.

Evidently, it is important that you are completely up-to-date with which audience group you are targeting so you can better plan your content strategy. 

  Reach

An influencer’s reach is the measure of how many active and unique users will potentially see any given piece of their content or post. Reach is often a function of the Influencer’s total follower size in accordance with their average engagement rates. The higher the reach the more opportunities for viewers to come across their content and ultimately more brand awareness from the post. 

Instagram & YouTube influencers can view the average reach of their profile under Instagram Insights and YouTube Analytics respectively to get a better understanding of where they stand currently and the avenues they must explore for better engagement and ultimately higher reach. 

  Post frequency

How many posts do you upload on your primary social media account? Brands usually examine an influencer’s post frequency to get a general feel of their day-to-day online activity. If this value is too high, it might mean that the influencer’s audience is losing interest in their content and the engagement rate might take a nosedive. On the contrary, if this value is too low, it might mean that the influencer isn’t consistent with their content publishing and might not be committed when the collaboration starts. Hence, striking a balance is key.

It’s important to strategize, schedule your content and plan out exactly how many posts you want to share each week in advance. Try to keep it simple and set realistic weekly and monthly goals so that you know how to best manage your time and resources at hand. 

  Content quality

It’s evident that when brands partner up with influencers, they’re essentially giving them the creative license to create sponsored content around them, directly impacting the way their brand image would be perceived by their followers. Because your content will be representing them, they will surely check whether your content quality is on par with their brand image. An influencer’s profile will usually be examined to verify whether their content is clear in its tonality, well-made, unique, creative, consistent, and optimized for their respective social media platforms. 

Always focus on creating high-quality content with good audio-visual components, good editing, attractive aesthetics, and a consistent tone of voice across your overall influencer profile. Save up enough money to invest in good quality equipment for better production value, research ready-to-use templates and stock images, use free tools and resources to improve your design elements, and most importantly constantly strive to up your content game to strengthen your chances of getting more collab opportunities. 

Best practices that improve your chances of being picked for the next collab: 

✔ Say yes to Barter Collabs 

Barter collaborations are when brands reach out to Influencers for brand partnerships in exchange for free product samples, vouchers, etc instead of monetary payment. Doing barter collabs can be a huge stepping stone to success, especially for those who are just starting off. You get well-reputed brands to add to your collab portfolio, receive valuable products from the brands,  and most importantly, benefit from all the exposure you get by being featured on their official handles. Once you have worked with a few brands and gotten the feel of how things work, paid collaborations will automatically start flowing in. 

✔ Pick the right brands

The goal here is to choose collaboration partners that complement your brand and would be a natural fit for your influencer profile. You must ask yourself-

• Does their target audience fall under my followership? 
• Do I want to be associated with their brand image? 
• Would this collab add value to my feed?

✔ Maintain a professional attitude

Always strive to be a professional when working with brands and fulfill your influencer Marketing campaign deliverables in a consistent and timely manner. Brands do not wish to associate with influencers who show a lack of dependence and are not timely with their end of the agreement. 

It is important that you are aligned with clear objectives, deliverables, expectations, timelines, workflows, brand guidelines, do’s and don’ts, etc. from the get-go. Do this to improve your chances of being picked for recurring collab partnerships and improved brand relationships.

✔ Stay on top 

It’s important that you stay on top of the latest collaboration opportunities that are available for your relevant genre and brands that seek out influencers like you. Pro Tip –  Always be on the lookout for exciting campaigns dropping on the Kofluence app and don’t forget to opt-in to our WhatsApp Communications to get notified of relevant updates so you never miss out. We have handpicked influencer marketing campaigns with the right brands, tailored just for you to kickstart your Influencer journey. 

Conclusion

So what if you didn’t make the cut? There are plenty of other fishes in the sea. Remember that your journey as an Influencer makes up a unique path that’s often cut-throat with its own sets of demands and challenges. Follow these simple tips and tricks to improve your social media presence, work on it consistently and let us be your helping hand in the process. Download the Kofluence app and apply it to your favorite campaigns. After carefully going through all the applicant profiles, you will be shortlisted if your profile matches the campaign requirement. 

If you found this blog to be helpful browse through our website for other blogs on similar topics or get in touch with us for your next influencer marketing campaign! Download the Kofluence app and find relevant campaigns catering to your target audience! To opt-in, download the Kofluence app here: iOS users, Android users.