Influencer outreach is a difficult task. You need to craft a plan, figure out what tools to use, make a list of influencers you’re going to target, reach out to them and then keep track of your efforts. Plus, most of the influencers you want to reach out to are likely to have anywhere between 1,000 to 1 million followers, and if you’re like me, you become a pessimist who thinks, “Why bother even reaching out? They’re not going to respond to little old me who only has a couple hundred followers.”
Don’t be a pessimist. Working with social media influencers is a proven way to better connect your brand with millions of highly-engaged millennials. So don’t give up before you start—it’s totally possible to get influential Instagrammers on your brand’s side.
Why Instagram
Instagram has approximately 400 million active accounts, and more than 40,000 influencers covering nearly every vertical, from fashion to food and everything in between. It’s a great platform for making your brand instantly recognizable through visual storytelling and product promotion.
Partnering with the right Instagram influencers is the best way to showcase all your brand has to offer, all while increasing your brand awareness, audience reach, search engine ranking and bottom line. Like retailer Lord & Taylor who partnered with 50 Instagramming fashionistas, had each post a photo of them wearing the same dress and by the weekend, that dress was sold out. As you can see, a little upfront effort goes a long way for your brand.
Tools to Measure Your Outreach Efforts
The right tools help you get the job done right. When you need to change your tire, a jack and wrench help you get it done. When you want to hang some pictures in your home, a hammer and nails allow you to do so.
The same is true with Instagram influencer outreach. With the right influencer marketing tools, you’re able to develop a good strategy and measure your (hopefully successful) efforts.
BuzzSumo was designed to support and accelerate your influencer outreach process; saving you time that in turn saves you money. Here are some ways this tool helps you outreach:
- Find content that’s been abundantly shared.
- Discover influencers within your industry.
- Filter influencers by location, reach, authority and engagement.
- Follow and get to know influencers.
- Build an outreach list.
- Engage and build relationships with influencers.
BuzzSumo is a powerful tool for outreach and influencer marketing, and it’s especially useful for content marketers as it brings together influencer identities and content sharing data into one easy-to-read dashboard.
If you use Hootsuite, then you need to take advantage of this free tool. You already have tabs on your dashboard, now you just need to add streams to your tabs. These search streams allow you to organize influencers into lists, monitor what they share and discover the influencers you want to partner with.
TrendSpottr does what its name alludes to—it spots emerging trends, viral content and what you’re really interested in, key influencers. It does so in real-time and for whatever topic you need. TrendSpottr for Instagram, a Hootsuite app, also finds quality Instagram influencers to work with as well as trending photos and videos for whatever hashtag, topic, industry or campaign you’re looking for. The app is $4.99 a month, unless you’re a Hootsuite Enterprise user and then it’s free.
Geopiq for Instagram is a great way to find Instagrammers in your local area or areas you wish to target. It lets you monitor posts by location, username, hashtags, keywords by themselves or keywords in a location. You can save all your searches for quicker access as well as combine two or more of your saved searches into one Super search. Geopiq gives the ability to save needed items to Evernote, Onenote or Pocket if you use those, and if your brand has a Hootsuite account, you can assign items out to team members. The Vidpiq for the Instagram app in Hootsuite also lets you monitor and easily engage with Instagrammers posting in your area or one of your other selected locations.
This platform allows you to find new content relevant to your brand and interests and search through related industry conversations. Right Relevance also has a feature to find influential people and organizations, follow them, see their top followers and search through any of their relevant conversations. And again, for all you Hootsuite users, download the Right Relevance Pro app to better engage and measure your social audience as well as your outreach and effectiveness.
Another way to find influential Instagrammers and build relationships with them is finding their particular community and then getting involved with it. Genuinely participate and make your presence known. Because with anything in life, you have to give a little in order to receive.
Whether you’re looking for a one-off product placement relationship or an Instagramming brand spokesperson, don’t be afraid to reach out to influencers. It’s totally the right move. And with the right tools at your disposal, you’ll more easily be able to develop your Instagram influencer outreach strategy and measure your efforts.
About The Author: Greg Shuey is a co-founder and COO of Stryde, an audience driven content marketing agency.
