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How To Ensure Quality of Influencers
How do you really know if the commitment is genuine or if the followers are fake? A hot topic in influencer marketing is about just this – how you as a company should proceed to ensure the quality of influencers. In this blog post, we share 3 concrete tips on what to think about!
This quality assurance of influencers can be a jungle and it can be difficult to do on your own. It is important to remember that the following points are parts to take into account and often they give us an idea of which influencers are genuine and good or not. However, it is not possible to pull everyone over a comb and there are exceptions – a profile can sometimes deliver good results, even if their statistics go against our guidelines below. A lot is about experience and looking at historical data – the best you can do is to start from our tips and then test yourself. Good luck.
1. Where are the followers and who are they?
This is a question that you should have the answer to even before there are thoughts of starting a collaboration with an influencer. The fact that a profile’s follower must match the target group you want to reach is the basis for the influencer marketing investment to succeed. So, apart from the fact that you should make sure that you reach the right target group via the profile, it is a good question to ask to ensure quality. So look at where the followers are geographically; Are they from countries where the profile has no explanatory connection? If the answer is yes, be on your guard.
You can also go into the level of detail and ensure the credibility of the profile’s followers’ accounts. If the followers have odd usernames, no published pictures or follow far more in number than they have followers themselves – watch out!
2. Commitment – and what type?
Ensuring the type of commitment is another step in ensuring the quality of influencers. Here you should look at the quality of the profile’s commitment – what does the comments say and what kind of accounts comment? Pay attention if most of the comments consist of few and similar words, in other languages and sometimes completely irrelevant to the content, or for example just emojis.
However, purchased engagement is no longer just comments in another language from fake accounts but it is becoming more common nowadays with purchased engagement from real accounts with comments that look relevant. However, the alarm bells should ring if a profile with, for example, 20,000 followers receives more than 100 comments on their photos. This can of course happen in isolated cases (for example when the profile in question shares a funny news of life or something else that does not happen every day) but not every time.
3. How fast have the profiles grown?
Today, there are tools that can help you see a profile’s follower development. If it is a pike with new followers for a short time, it is good to go back in the profile feed to see if something special has happened that can explain the increase. An example of this is if the profile went out with a pregnancy, participated in a TV series or similar. If there is no clear reason for the increase, it can be good to be vigilant.
You can also see the actual range of the profile; is it relevant in relation to the number of followers? About 60-70% actual reach for posts in Instagrams Feed is a good reach for a profile in the middle segment that is around 10,000-50,000 followers, but it is also not uncommon for a profile with +100,000 followers to have about 30% actual reach due to old and inactive followers. It is good to keep in mind that these figures are a cut and of course can differ between profiles. Also keep in mind that content in Instagram Story is generally at a much lower actual reach compared to content in Instagram Feed.
So, how do you get the data you need?
As you can see, there are many factors to keep in mind to ensure the quality of influencers. Parts of the statistics we mentioned above such as actual range and follower geography are not open to anyone other than the profile itself. Instead, you must personally ask the profile to send the statistics to you via, for example, a screenshot. There is a lot of time and resources to save if you instead take the help of an influencer marketing agency with access to tools and this type of influencer data. They can streamline the process and give clear recommendations on whether a profile is of good quality or not. Good luck with more of your influencer marketing venture!
