“Find the right influencers for your brand!” is one of the most common pieces of advice passed around in the influencer marketing world. But how do you actually hunt for relevant creators? What factors should you examine? Hardly any advice is actionable.

This article will answer:

• When should you start your hunt for influencers
• Which factors should you look at while evaluating influencers
• How much time should you spend examining a creator’s account
• How to extract influencer performance data to vet an influencer’s profile

When should you start searching for influencers?

At what stage should you begin reviewing influencer profiles? There’s no one right answer (sorry). But, depending on your current influencer marketing strategy, I might be able to provide some direction.

When you’re running a specific campaign, start searching after solidifying campaign details

If your organization uses influencer marketing on a campaign-by-campaign basis, it makes sense to start searching for influencers after solidifying your campaign details.

For example, have you set campaign goals and KPIs? Have you determined how many influencers you must partner with to meet your aim and stay within budget? Have you decided on the terms and conditions of this campaign (exclusivity, usage rights, etc.)?

Having crystal-clear clarity on your influencer marketing campaigns will help you in three ways:

• You’ll have answers to any questions creators may have
• You’ll know exactly which criteria you care about in potential influencer partners
• You won’t waste any time or resources talking & evaluating influencers who are great, but aren’t a good fit for your campaign needs
  

Nearly 80% of marketers in our influencer profile review survey fall under this camp. They begin finding, shortlisting, and outreaching after confirming all campaign requirements. Take Megan Wilson, Influencer & Affiliate Marketing Executive at Trtl Travel:

Megan Wilson

Influencer & Affiliate Marketing Executive, Trtl Travel

Once we have our campaign details nailed down, we work on what we want from influencers, such as the kind of content we want them to post, the demographic, the objectives of the campaign, etc. From there, we assign a budget and start discovery to find the perfect people!

Search for creators when you need inspiration or want to jump on a trend

Maybe you want to let your campaign guide your influencer search instead of the other way around. Sometimes, mature and experimental influencer marketing strategies can benefit from jumping on trends and letting influencers take the reins.

Victor Wiśniowski, Influencer Marketing Specialist at Amerpharma, says selecting the influencers and then forming a campaign around them can often lead to more authentic creator collaborations.

Victor Wiśniowski

Founder and Influencer Marketing Specialist, Amerpharma

Every campaign that includes influencers should be tailored to the specific influencers that you wish to "use". Why? It has to be authentic and it's easier to make a campaign fit in with an influencer than the other way around.

It makes sense: since you aren’t trying to pigeonhole multiple creators into your campaign requirements, there’d be more of the influencer’s authentic voice in the content they create.

⚠️ Note: one situation isn’t necessarily superior to another. Both have their time and place in a wholesome strategy. Sometimes you need to run campaigns to improve your bottom line and prove influencer marketing ROI. Other times, you can experiment, get inspired by influencers, and let things take their course.

Lee Drysdale, Influencer Marketing Lead, also adds that a good place to find inspiration is to look at creators who have already been posting about your brand organically, without any type of influencer collaboration.

Lee Drysdale

Influencer Marketing Lead,

I also love to get talent involved who have organically been posting about the brand for a while, as the audience already associates the influencer with the brand it's perfect for them to be able to monetize on their content.

Have an always-on recruitment strategy if you’re running long-term campaigns

If you’re running long-term creator partnerships and/or when you have a fluid influencer marketing strategy, you want to have an always-on influencer recruitment strategy.

For example, let’s say you’re working on a year-long influencer marketing campaign. Instead of finding influencers for it in a single sitting (or even multiple), it’s better to maintain a steady flow of evaluation and recruitment.

This way, influencers keep coming in through the door without a lot of heavy lifting. You’re essentially building the plane while flying it. And you also reduce the risk of signing a 12-month contract that’s not working out after a quarter.

This method also makes sense when you’re a small team with big goals. Nailing down your exact needs might be difficult for each individual campaign. A more sustainable approach is to always be on the lookout for relevant influencers, add them to the roster when possible, and reactivate the collab as needed.

Tamara Torrecillas Gutiérrez, Influencer Marketing Manager at Dialect Fragrances, agrees:

Tamara Torrecillas Gutiérrez

Influencer Marketing Manager, Dialect Fragrances

We've been testing influencers since we started – the ones that work and perform well are reactivated, and with the rest of the budget, we find new profiles on the go by ourselves or with help from external agencies we work with. We try to fit all profiles within the budget of each month, but if we don't, we are still flexible to use that budget the month after.

Top 7 factors should you look at while evaluating influencers

In our survey, we nailed down the top seven criteria influencer marketers should examine while conducting a creator profile review: 

Let’s examine each factor one by one.

1: Brand fit

Brand fit is essentially examining whether your ‘vibes’ match. For example, if your brand’s voice is cool and casual, but the creator’s stuffy and formal, it’s not a good fit. Similarly, if one of your company values is sustainability and a creator doesn’t match it, the partnership isn’t the best match.

Take Old Spice. Their brand voice is cheeky, funny, and entertaining. So when they collaborated with Dustin Poynter – who is equally humorous – the collab post felt authentic, genuine, and on-brand.

Abdullah Khan, Influencer Marketing Manager at Physician’s Choice, says a brand fit helps ensure that your collaboration is authentic and successful:

Abdullah Khan

Influencer Marketing Manager, Physician’s Choice

Ensuring that the influencer’s values, style, and content align with our brand’s identity and goals is crucial for a successful partnership. When an influencer genuinely resonates with our brand, their endorsement is more authentic and effective, leading to a more impactful collaboration.

2: Previous content

Another thing you should look at is an influencer’s already published content. Is the production quality up to the mark? Are they comfortable speaking on camera? Do they know how to sell?

Checking an influencer’s past content – organic and sponsored posts – will help you gauge their content creation and selling abilities. It’ll also give you a good idea of the kind of influencer content you can expect when collaborating with them.

For example, if a creator often embeds products naturally into their post’s concept instead of explicitly calling the collab out as an ad, you can expect this is how they’ll create sponsored posts for you, too.

3: Engagement rate

Engagement rate is one of the most crucial aspects of an influencer profile review. Why?

• Engagement rate helps you weed out creators who are buying fake followers. Creators can fool with an inflated follower count, but their low engagement rate will be a giveaway.
  
  
• Engagement rate helps you understand the involvement of a creator’s audience. If an influencer’s posts have quality comments and shares, you can rest knowing the follower count number isn’t an empty metric.
  

When someone says “engagement rate,” they usually mean a quantitative number – calculated as the median number of likes, comments, & shares divided by total number of followers.

(Psst…if you need a free Instagram engagement rate calculator, here you go.)

But that’s not all there is to engagement: The comments also determine the quality of engagement an influencer has. In our survey, 89.7% of marketers said they manually review post comments before choosing an influencer.

And monitoring comments has become an essential practice. Why? With the advent of click farms and bot services, many creators also resort to buying fake engagement – whether that’s by getting bots to comment on their posts randomly or artificially enhancing their reach/view count.

How do you evaluate the quality of comments? An anonymous participant in our survey said:

“If followers are interested in the content, they would ask questions or leave a positive comment – not just emojis. When looking at previous sponsored content, we review comments asking about the products.”

Here are a few red flags to look for when evaluating the quality of comments:

• Too many comments filled with only emojis
• Comments that are unrelated to the post topic
• Comments having generic compliments like “nice post”
  

In general, you’ll be able to spot the spammy comments at a glance. But ensure you review multiple posts – especially the ones with the most engagement. Another way to check if a creator’s bought engagement is to review if their engagement rate has steadily increased over time. There might be a viral post here and there, but the graph shouldn’t have suspicious fluctuations that can’t be accounted for.

⚠️ Note: sometimes a creator might get attacked by bots, leading to a spike in engagement due to no fault of their own. Don’t dismiss a creator with an irregular graph right away. Ask about the sudden boost in engagement and give them a chance to explain.

4: Audience demographics

Your target customer base should overlap with an influencer’s audience demographics. For example, if your potential consumers live in the U.S. and are between the ages of 22 – 45, a creator partner should be reaching the same ICP. Because if they don’t, any engagement or website visits an influencer brings are futile.

It’s not possible to have a complete overlapping circle with any influencer, but you want to aim for as close as possible.

5: Creator personality

By evaluating a creator’s past content, you can have a rough idea of their personality. For example, maybe you can pick up on the fact that they’re soft-spoken and professional. Or funny and light-hearted.

Notice how a creator speaks to their community and how they appear in your interactions. This will help you get a good idea of whether or not they’re pleasant to work with. Michael Todner, Influencer Marketing Lead at Gear4Music agrees:

Michael Todner

Influencer Marketing Lead, Gear4Music

We value creators who are easy to work with and get excited about the work. Whilst you can't get a definitive answer to this by simply watching someone's content, I do believe you can get a good idea.

These factors will give you a spidey sense of whether or not an influencer is the right cultural fit for your team.

6: Influencer demographics

An influencer’s demographics are things like their age, city, gender, niche, etc. You want these to be in close vicinity to your expectations. For example, if you sell jewelry and primarily market to women, you want your influencer partner to be a woman, too. It’s just more likely that your target audience will resonate with them.

Similarly, if you’re selling to the U.S. market., it’s preferable to have the creator in the same location. They’ll know the trends, cultural references, values, etc. Your influencer partner is the face of your brand – so ensure you’re happy with the demographics you’re valuing.

7: Follower count

Last but not least, you should evaluate whether a creator has your desired follower count. There’s no right or wrong answer here. Nano and micro-influencers have a tight-knit niche community, but low reach. Macro-influencers might have better production quality, but low engagement rates.

Valerija Somi, Influencer Manager at Qure Skincare, adds that follower count shouldn’t be evaluated in a silo. You need to examine how the follower count in relation to everything else:

Valerija Somi

Influencer Manager, Qure Skincare

The follower count matters to a point. If the follower count is not followed by good engagement and average reach, then the follower count is not that important. In terms of success, smaller accounts may bring the same results as the bigger accounts, especially when it comes to ROI.

Follower count is also a metric because it influences how much you’ll pay influencers to a certain degree. More followers usually means a higher price.

How much time should you spend examining a creator’s account?

In our survey, influencer marketers spend an average of four minutes checking an influencer’s profile, while 68.6% of marketers spend less than five minutes.

Initially, it might take longer to vet an influencer on all the important criteria. But as you develop the muscle, you’ll become faster and more efficient at gauging whether or not an influencer is the right fit for your brand.

My advice? Don’t rush the vetting process. If you spend more time properly examining an influencer’s profile today, you save time and money tomorrow.

2 primary ways to get influencer performance data

How do you get the performance data of influencers? In our survey, we found marketers either use the following methods:

a) ask for screenshots directly from the creator

b) an influencer analysis software 

c) a mix of both

Let’s evaluate the pros and cons of each method.

1: Asking creators for screenshots

You can ask creators for their performance metrics directly. They can send a media kit containing their follower count, audience demographics, engagement rate, past work, etc.

The pros of this method are you get all the info directly from the horse’s mouth, and you don’t have to do a lot of work – except asking for the numbers. The disadvantage is creators can make stuff up and there might be a delay in getting started while the creator responds to you.

Not to mention: you only see the performance metrics the creator chooses to show you. You might be in the dark about some sponsored content that didn’t perform well because the influencer decided not to share the downers with you.

2: Using influencer analysis tools

Influencer analysis tools give you the freedom to enter a creator’s username and get all the info you need to know about them in one place.

For example, in Modash, the influencer analysis reports contain not just the basics of follower count, engagement rate, and fake followers, but also:

• Detailed breakdown of followers’ demographics
• Past sponsored content and its performance
• Most used hashtags and mentions
• Audience reachability
• Popular posts
• …And so much more

‍Try Modash for free. No credit card needed. Just sign up and start analyzing.

The advantage of using a software is it’s quick, efficient, and accurate. You can analyze a lot more influencer profiles in much less time. No more waiting around for influencers to send screenshots. And you aren’t relying on the creator to be 100% honest with you about their performance numbers.

The disadvantage is using software alone might not be enough – especially for high-value campaigns. You also want to run a manual qualitative check of their profile to examine comment sentiment, authenticity, and overall personality. Victor said it best:

Victor Wiśniowski

Founder and Influencer Marketing Specialist, Amerpharma

Software is great for measuring the measurables – follower count, engagement rate, fake follower count, etc., but when it comes to the "feel" of the influencer's profile and their personality as a whole, you have to do that manually. Every influencer marketer has his own set of data points tailor made for their specific brand or campaign, which may differ between different marketing campaigns, budget scopes etc.

The best way to get an influencer’s metrics is to use a software in conjunction with manual vetting.

1. Find the creators who match your quantitative needs – such as engagement rate, follower count, audience demographics, etc.

2. Shortlist these creators and vet their profiles manually for your campaign/brand requirements.

3. Start outreaching to those who meet your quantitative and qualitative criteria

Don’t skimp on thorough influencer vetting

Conducting an influencer profile review is one of those tedious tasks that’s also easy to skimp on. It can get a bit exhausting to check metrics, comments, and influencer accounts every day.

But without proper vetting, you risk your campaign's success. Selecting the wrong influencers can have a domino effect on reducing the ROI of your influencer marketing efforts.

And luckily, with influencer analysis software like Modash, it’s easier than ever to reduce the dull parts of vetting and increase your efficiency at the same time. Even better? Your first 14 days are free. Go, start vetting.

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