1. Know your target audience and define your campaign objectives

Before you start looking for influencers to work with, create marketing personae for your target audience. Determine what your audience wants. Consider your audience demographics, psychographics (i.e. their opinions, interests, values and attitudes) and online behaviour. Understanding your target audience will lead you to working with the right influencers.

The second important thing before you start your search is to identify your campaign objective so that you can more reliably match the ideal influencer to help you achieve these goals. An example of this might be to increase social media followers or brand awareness - it all depends on what you care most about at the time.

2. search by topic

The influencer's general area of interest doesn't have to coincide exactly with your brand, but it should at least be related enough to reach an audience that is interested in the campaign topic. It would be appropriate for the influencer to promote a brand at least somewhat close to their content. Searching using hashtags or keywords is helpful in this case.

3. Check the followers and engagement rates

When you are choosing an influencer to work with, one important factor you should consider is the interaction rate. This is a measure of how often an influencer's followers engage with their content. This engagement involves analysing the number of impressions compared to the number of likes, comments and shares - if it appears that an influencer's audience is not responding to regular content, this may indicate that the creator is not currently as popular as their high follower count suggests.

4. highlight creators with a real interest in the brand

If you already have fans of your own brand, this is the best option to seek partnerships among them. Influencers who praise your brand and are genuinely happy with it will provide the greatest credibility and authenticity to your campaign and audience. A partnership with such an influencer is a treasure beyond reproach.

5. Risk assessment - influencer controversy

A key issue before finalising a collaboration is to know the influencer's past to minimise risk. This is because it is important to investigate whether there has been any controversy or criticism involving the influencer in the past years. Look into the history as far as possible and decide whether this collaboration is worth it.

6. Create a strong influencer message (encouraging message)

It is crucial to know the influencer's past before finalising a collaboration in order to minimise risk. This is because it is important to investigate whether there has been any controversy or criticism involving the influencer in the past years. Look into the history as far as possible and decide whether this collaboration is worth it.

Choosing the right influencer is crucial when it comes to raising brand awareness and reaching your target consumers. Done right, this can make a big difference to the success of your brand. All that's left now is to stick to these key principles when choosing the right influencer to work with, and your marketing campaign will be a success.

Mistakes in influencer marketing to avoid

Unfortunately, some brands make common mistakes when rushing into an influencer marketing strategy. Here are the six most common mistakes to avoid in influencer marketing projects.

No specific campaign objective

Every marketing campaign needs to have a defined objective. Some marketers make the mistake of starting an influencer marketing campaign without a defined idea. Decide what you want to achieve through influencer marketing and who you want to reach so that you can design your activities in line with these objectives.

Failure to define the goal of your campaign can prevent the successful implementation of the next steps. Without defined goals, you may not know what influencers to look for or what kind of campaign to run.

2. treating influencer partnerships as the only source of promotion

The truth is that we realistically have no control over the response of customers to influencer promotions. A brand should also build its own communication channels, maintain a company profile, create content of interest to potential customers and invest in advertising. By acting on several levels simultaneously, we will get much better results in terms of perception.

Many brands make the mistake of seeing influencer marketing as a one-off campaign, whereas the most successful influencer programmes use it on an ongoing basis. The more often a consumer hears a brand recommendation from an influencer, the more trust they have in the brand.

3. overlooking micro-influencers due to the number of followers

When choosing the right influencer, you might think that the bigger the audience, the better the results. However, this is not always the case. Influencers have several levels, each with different benefits:

• Nanoinfluencer: 1,000-10,000 followers
• Microinfluencer: 10,000-100,000 followers
• Macroinfluencer: 100,000-1 million followers
• Megainfluencer/ celebrity: more than 1 million followers

Many brands, especially those just starting out, do not have the resources to work with celebrities - this is perfectly normal. In fact, while mega-influencers are able to increase brand awareness, they often lack the real engagement that smaller content creators have, and this is crucial to building brand affinity and encouraging purchases. What's more, when influencers have a lot of followers, only some of them fit the target audience.

Smaller creators have the time to build a real relationship with their followers, which often leads to greater trust and the impact they have on purchasing decisions.

4. Staying with one form of communication

Pay attention to the forms of promotional content that the influencer uses. Sometimes an influencer sticks to one form of message, while presenting the product in the broadest possible way is far more convincing than labelling the collaboration in a single post.

Photos and videos should always present the product as it is. Multiple options for content presentation, such as unboxing and tutorials, will allow influencers to show the product from all sides and engage the audience. The creator's creativity, originality and temperament are very important in this case. There are many platforms on which an influencer can prove themselves. Just inserting a post, a testimonial and recording a single tiktok are enough to create an interesting and concrete marketing campaign message.

5. imposing their own criteria - limiting the freedom of influencers

Sometimes companies provide influencers with a marketing campaign content script to follow and expect them not to make any changes to the message. An example would be to present a product and list its specific benefits. In this way, the creator does not have the opportunity to show creativity and loses authenticity.

It is important to give some guidance to the influencers you are working with, but if the brand is too restrictive in terms of content creation, this may result in the influencer not continuing to work with the brand - the large number of influencers the criteria imposed may not suit.

6. breaking contact after the campaign

As a brand, you should maintain and develop your relationship with influencers. Try to keep in touch with them, especially if the promotion has been successful. If you think you and the influencer are a good match, try to keep them.

When you find that you are not seeing results, you have no choice but to contact another influencer who you think will match certain expectations.

By avoiding the mistakes mentioned earlier, you will make your marketing campaign successful and the reception of your content more effective, delivering the results you expect.