Credibility: This word plays a significant role in influencer marketing campaigns.
Carefully consider the credibility of the influencers you choose to work with for your marketing campaigns.
Because their reputation and perceived expertise can significantly impact the campaign’s success and perception of your brand.
Let’s dive in.
Why Is Influencer Credibility Important?
You run influencer marketing campaigns because this form has proved effective.
Imagine running a full-fledged campaign without considering the influencer’s credibility.
It’s a NIGHTMARE.
All your effort, time, and money invested in a place where your brand isn’t getting valid reach, engagement, sale, or conversion the way you expected.
This instance is a heads-up of why influencer credibility is vital during the shortlisting phase.
Potential Problems in Campaigns Without Verifying Influencer Credibility
Influencers May Not Align With Your Brand Values
There’s a risk of low-quality content when working with influencers without checking their credibility.
Shortlisting influencers who rely on their brand and image to attract followers and secure partnerships can sometimes lead to the creation of superficial or shallow content.
This can be especially problematic for your brand seeking to promote a specific product or message, as the influencer may not accurately represent your brand or its values.
Fake Engagement and Followers Take Over
Few influencers may inflate their follower count or engage in other activities to appear more popular and attractive to brands.
Shortlisting such influencers can lead to your brand investing time and resources into partnerships with individuals who do not have a genuine following or influence.
Cannot Drive the Brand Engagement
Imagine you shortlisted an influencer who has a high influence in the fashion category for your food brand without checking their credibility, and the campaign goes live.
You either get an engagement that’s irrelevant to your brand (from fashion lovers) or no engagement.
Now that there’s no engagement eventually leads to no conversion and no sales, and your effort, time, and money invested in the campaign get wasted.
How to Find Influencer Credibility?
Finding influencer credibility involves a combination of evaluating their social media presence, checking their previous collaborations, considering their level of expertise and knowledge on the topic or industry, and looking into their engagement and interaction with followers.
By taking the time to research and vet potential influencers thoroughly, you can reduce the risks associated with partnering with individuals who may not be credible or trustworthy.
Explore Their Social Media Account
The first and safest step is exploring the influencer’s social media accounts.
You’ll get a fair idea of the follower-following ratio.
You may have to go through every profile in the influencers following list to figure out the number of fake followers there.
Few influencers might take up services to increase their follower count just to increase their followers.
Anyway, these followers are not going to benefit your business.
Instead of manually skimming through the influencer’s profile for a fake following list, you can use an influencer marketing platform to see the following growth rate.
How do you figure out with this graph about the follower rate? The influencer follower growth rate shows 1 million followers in the last 30 days.
If the influencer collaborated for a brand campaign or a photo shoot, the chances of increasing the follower count are acceptable.
On the other hand, an influencer who hasn’t engaged for the whole month but receiving so many followers is debatable.
Research About Their Previous Brand Collaborations
Researching an influencer’s previous brand collaborations can give you an idea of the type of brands they have worked with and the content they have created.
It’s best to shortlist influencers with a track record of creating high-quality content that aligns with the values and message of the brands they have collaborated with.
Researching previous brand collaborations takes most of your time; consider trying influencer marketing platforms to research them within a click.
Here you can see the percentage of brands the influencer usually collaborates with.
If your brand doesn’t belong to the top 6 categories the influencer influences, then they are not the right one for your brand.
You can select this influencer for a Hotel influencer campaign, but their influence in this category is only 0.97%. Hence it is best to consider a different influencer who tops the hotel category.
Diving deep into the previous collaborations of the influencer is one of the best ways to consider shortlisting the influencer for your marketing campaign.
You can take a step ahead in seeing the number of brands mentions to understand the influencer credibility towards your brand category.
Read Their Content
Read their previous collaboration’s content to analyze whether the influencer produces informative, well-researched, and thought-provoking content.
Or is their content superficial or shallow?
Paying attention to the quality and depth of an influencer’s content can give you a good indication of their credibility.
Instead of finding every single brand post on the influencer’s profile, you can leverage the power of an influencer marketing platform to see the type of content an influencer produces.
As shown in the screenshot above, the content section will redirect you to the social media account, saving most of your research time while helping you understand whether the influencer is credible for your brand.
Analyze the Rewards And Recognition
Analyzing rewards and recognition can be an effective way to gauge an influencer’s credibility because it can give you an idea of their expertise and influence within their field.
An influencer may have received several different types of rewards and recognition. Some examples could include the following:
- Industry awards: An influencer who has won a fashion industry award for their style or fashion content is considered more credible within that industry.
- Media recognition: An influencer featured in reputable media outlets, magazines, newspapers, or online publications.
- Professional accolades: An influencer certified as a nutritionist may be seen as more credible when discussing health and wellness topics.
Being rewarded or featured often requires a certain level of expertise or authority on a subject proving influencer credibility.
Qoruz Score
One tool that can help verify an influencer’s credibility is Qoruz Score.
Qoruz score uses data and analytics to measure an influencer’s influence, reach, and engagement on social media.
By using Qoruz Score, you can get a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of an influencer’s credibility.
You can find curated lists on the website when shortlisting influencers for your marketing campaign.
Qoruz score takes into account a variety of metrics, including
- Influencer’s number of followers
- Level of engagement on their social media posts
- Quality and relevance of their content
- Reach of their social media presence
It also considers factors such as the influencer’s industry, location, language, and overall performance of their social media channels.
Qoruz score gives you the confidence in shortlisting the right influencer for your marketing campaign.
Conclusion
It’s essential to be mindful of the influencer selection process and consider the credibility of individual influencers to ensure that your message is being communicated effectively to a genuine, engaged, and to your target audience.
It’s also worth noting that not all influencers are created equal, and some may be more credible than others for your brand. It’s important to do your research and due diligence when determining whether an influencer is credible.
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