written by Janvi Singh & Amy Guo

Influencer marketing is the most important marketing strategy in today’s digital age. However, not everyone is the right fit for your brand. Therefore, the first and most important step in recruiting influencers is to curate an extensive list of influencers that you think would be the perfect fit. Here’s a quick list of green and red flags you can look out for, so that recruiting influencers becomes less of a hassle!

Green Flag #1 : They fit into the 3 R’s of Influence 

1. Relevance

A relevant influencer would share content that aligns with your brand and hits your target audience to a tee. The more relevant to your brand your influencer is, the more organic engagement your brand will get.

2. Reach

Your influencer should have enough of a following to reach a large part of your target audience. However, the number of followers is not what matters the most. The influencer should have a high engagement rate which means that their followers are interested in their content, which means that they will also be interested in your brand. We recommend going for influencers with engagement rates above 1%

3. Resonance 

Influencers whose followers highly resonate with their content would be the best pick for your influencer marketing strategy as they would also highly resonate with your product, as above, leading to more organic engagement. The resonance factor makes a massive difference as the influencer’s dedicated followers could be your future dedicated customers.

Green Flag #2: They Have a Well-Established Online Presence 

A great influencer always uses more than one platform as it is a way to grasp more followers across different platforms. Having only one platform could hinder them from exploring a whole new demographic of followers, which would also hinder your brand from reaching that demographic. A well-established online presence also builds their credibility which would lead to more of their followers buying your product.

Green Flag #3: They are Consistent with their Content

An influencer who is committed to their content and posts frequently naturally has more reach to their followers and non-followers as well. The more frequent they post, the more clicks and views their content gets which is great for your brand as it will get a large and consistent exposure to your potential customers.

Green Flag #4: If They are Passionate

Creating brand partnerships comes easier for influencers and your brand if the influencer believes in your product and is passionate about their role in marketing your product. This way, their posts come across as genuine and authentic, rather than an #ad post which followers can blatantly see through.

Red Flag #1: If They’re Problematic

Avoid problems with your campaign by spending some time researching your influencers. You wouldn’t want to recruiting influencers with lots of drama or controversies. Don’t work with someone who is #cancelled. 

Red Flag #2: If They have a Low Reach  

We don’t like fake people, and we also don’t like fake followers. Influencers with a huge following but little engagement rates (low number of likes, comments, saves and shares) could be a huge indicator of ghost followers who would not contribute to your marketing. Remember, the numbers in content engagement matter more than the numbers in a person’s follower count. 

Red Flag #3: If They Only Post Ads 

If an influencer’s feed is highly saturated with ads and paid partnerships, it could be a red flag that they are not personable enough to their followers, and it also makes your partnership less meaningful. Look for creators with a reasonable ratio between their regular content and paid ads!

We at Creator.co hope this was a helpful insight as you continue your influencer recruiting journey!