November 21, 2016
Influencers are all the rage these days – whether it’s a YouTube star, an Instagram model, or a renowned blogger, majority of brands are or would like to work with one. We have worked with a few of them and while the number on their subscription bar might be impressive, it’s usually not the only thing you should care about.
To make your life easier, here are the three things you should look at when choosing an influencer to work with.
It’s not all about subscribers
While the subscription or a follower number is a good indication of the audience size, there are still many questions to ask. For example, is it really an audience you want to talk to? A lot of YouTube influencers have quite a young audience and looking at their most engaged demographic will help you decide whether to spend your time and money on working with a star, or if your efforts should be focused somewhere else. If you are working with a good influencer, they will be happy to share some top level stats so don’t be afraid to ask.
Average Engagement
So you have found your dream Instagram or YouTube star that has thousands of subscribers and is even willing to give you a discount. Marvelous. What’s the catch? It usually lies within the average engagement/view numbers. The number of times when agencies start working with an influencer who has millions of subscribers just to realise their video got only 10,000 or so views is higher than it should be. All it takes is to look at the person’s most recent videos or posts to find out what the outcome of your cooperation might be.
Start Small
There are still YouTubers who are happy to work with brands, even for free. They usually have smaller audiences (we are talking around 50k here) but the upside is that a larger proportion of that audience is active and that the influencer is very eager to work on something they relate to. Plus, if you get there early, you can create a relationship with outstanding influencers from the the start of their careers and nurture it as they grow. I have done this with several YouTubers a few years ago. Back then they has only about 30k subscribers and now they are around the 0.5mil mark and get loads of offers.