Blog

Find the right influencers for your brand with social listening

Written by Zsófia Antal | May 16, 2024 2:09:54 PM

If your brand has decided to work with influencers, social listening is the best way to identify potential candidates, measure their activity and then monitor the results of collaboration.

The landscape of influencers is changing all the time, as new players pop up and enter the market: the global influencer marketing value has quadrupled over the last five years, reaching 24 billion US dollars this year, according to Statista.

 

Growth in value and number of influencers isn’t the only thing that’s changing. Market players who have been around for years often shift between platforms or change directions with their content, too. Since positions on this market vary so much year to year, it’s not easy to follow exactly what is happening, and who’s worth approaching for your brand specifically.

 

 

This is where social listening comes in. Neticle Media Intelligence shows who’s creating content related to any given topic, and it also evaluates whether that content is popular or not. It’s also important to see who shares your views and values and who doesn’t. Lots of content creators may be relevant on some level, but social listening helps you select the best fitting ones.

 

Measuring engagement and polarity

Once you understand who creates content that matches your brand’s messaging, there’s more to think about. An uncomfortable truth that all content strategists must face sooner or later is that simply posting a ton or having lots of followers isn’t quite enough. To turn followers into customers, you need to get them to interact with your content. In other words, you must engage them.

 

Engagement is usually measured by likes/reactions, comments, shares, or the number of views in case of video content. Neticle Media Intelligence breaks down all this data for you, for each potential influencer. It also analyzes the polarity and content of comments as well, to understand whether engagement was due to enthusiasm, rage, surprise, or any other factor.

 

 

Engagement numbers of different influencers mentioning Samsung on Instagram (comments are lighter pink)

 

Creating a map of the web with all these metrics, you’ll see who it is that’s worth approaching with a collaboration offer. Our expert analyst team will also create the right keywords to search the web with, which is essential in finding truly relevant candidates.

 

Following up on goals

Selecting influencers to work with isn’t the last step. To make sure you’re both still on the same page months later and results are being delivered, you should monitor the cooperation with social listening.

 

Instead of only asking ‘how many posts have my partners created?’, ask whether your influencers are creating posts that followers can’t just scroll by. This is crucial, as in the influencer world, quality beats quantity. It is possible to drive more engagement from a single post that users are loving than from twenty that don’t really resonate with followers.

 

 

The most engaging individual posts mentioning Samsung on the Hungarian web across platforms

 

Comments and shares are also more valuable than reactions, so it’s worth creating content that prompts conversations. Keeping engagement in mind, you’ll form a much better content creation strategy with your partners. Then, Neticle Media Intelligence will show you exactly how the strategy is paying off on each platform.

 

How many influencers should you work with?

While the most well-known influencers with millions of followers might be a good choice for some brands, putting all your eggs in one basket isn’t the way to go for everyone. The truth is, there are many nano (below 10k followers) and micro (between 10-100k) influencers on the rise who have a closer, more direct connection with their followers. They are naturally also more affordable, and you can work with several of them to create a more diverse campaign.

 

Neticle Media Intelligence can identify good candidates for you, as it searches around all the nooks and crannies of the internet. Embracing smaller influencers is a proven strategy to engage Gen Z customers, who don’t enjoy staged content and value a more genuine approach. As we’ve seen, small influencers can also have posts with high reach and engagement, so we recommend considering this route, too.

 

Ready to connect with the right influencers? Click here to begin.