Have you ever heard about the process called influencer audit? Discover how it could help you identify the best partners for your brand here on Brybe.com!
Thanks to sophisticated, data-driven tools – like the ones available on Brybe.com – evaluation of influencers has become easier than ever before. Discovering the perfect influencer for your brand does not end with just finding the good one with Brybe's search tool – once you have identified potential partners, it is essential to perform a thorough review to ensure that your collaborations will generate the most impact.
Influencer discovery is only one element of the so-called "influencer audit" – the entire process is an important component of any influencer marketing strategy and will ensure that every stage of your campaign generates meaningful impact. Influencer audits allow you to review past success and make the best decisions moving forward. This article will highlight some of the different ways you can incorporate data-driven metrics into your influencer audit.
Influencer Audit – Why Do I Even Need It?
An influencer audit lets you ensure that your collaborations are impactful and your campaigns are running as efficiently as possible. Additionally, performing such a review will also help you identify past success and adjust future campaigns accordingly while ensuring that your partners align with your brand values.
Influencer audit should be performed by doing the following steps:
Verify the Quality and Authenticity of the Influencer's Audience
One of the most common mistakes when vetting an influencer is selecting an influencer based on the number of followers in their network. This is typically based on the misguided belief that the more followers a user has the more exposure their content will receive. Unfortunately, this notion has caused follower count to become one of the most popular influencer selection metrics, resulting in a false understanding of how to measure a user’s social media impact.
The truth is, follower count has more relative importance when vetting an influencer. One of the reasons this metric can be unreliable is due to fake followers and bots. Users will purchase followers to falsely boost the size of their network, or pay for bots to automatically comment on or like their content to give the illusion of impact. Performing an authenticity assessment will you to detect users who have used malicious practices, and ensure that you are collaborating with users that not only have real followers but have followers that want to engage with your content.
Assess the Influencer's Reach and Engagement Metrics
When preparing for an influencer campaign, it is important that everyone’s expectations are aligned. Whether you are an agency creating a campaign for clients on Brybe, or a large team working with important stakeholders, influence metrics are a great way to address this. This will help you anticipate the impact of a potential partner.
Fairly Compensate Influencers
Assessing influencer potential and audience authenticity are also great ways to ensure that you are properly compensating your influencers. Influencer rates can be mistakenly determined due to the size of an influencer’s network, which, as we addressed before, is not the best way to analyze impact. Additionally, measuring an audience impact metrics (engagement, true reach, influencer score) will gauge the type of influencer they are. Thus, allowing you to set rates that are fair and aligned with industry standards. Below you can see the rate card from Klear's report which should give you an insight into what should you expect:
Review the Demographics of your Audience
Identifying an influencer with an authentic audience that is generating real impact is only part of the process. Next, it is time to determine if the influencer is influencing and engaging with the correct audience. This is where audience demographics come into play. By analyzing your influencer’s audience demographics you are able to understand exactly who is in their network and ensure this supports the goals of your campaign. For example, if you are running a campaign aiming to spread brand awareness in France, but the majority of your influencer’s audience is located in the US, then your goal will not be achieved. Audience demographics plays one of the most important roles in a campaign and should not be ignored. It is one of the key demographics which will ensure that your campaign goals are achieved.
Perform the Risk Assessment of the Influencer
Once you have identified partners that have the ability to generate a strong and relevant impact, you should assess the safety of the partnership. This is typically done through an Influencer Risk Assessment, which is meant to analyze the alignment of an influencer’s values with your brand’s values. A Risk assessment will help you ensure brand reputation control, and guarantees your influencers are generating a positive impact.
Measure the ROI of Your Campaign and Influencer
An Instagram influencer audit is not just for before the campaign goes live but is a great way to assess the investment impact of your campaign. Earned Media Value (EMV) offers a great perspective, by showing a campaign and an influencer’s impact in relation to paid media standards. This allows you to understand the ROI of your campaign, and determine if your audit strategy should be altered to drive more monetary impact.
Having that all in mind, are you ready to perform your very first influencer audit? Log in to Brybe.com today and use all our tools to make this process as smooth as possible and we promise that your next influencer marketing campaign will be better than ever!