Be immersed in the space. Being on trend is a significant aspect of influencer marketing. Brands need to understand what is happening within the vertical, keeping track of online communities and spikes in commentary. PepsiCo, for example, uses community managers to review the organic conversations that are happening around all of its brands. Look for natural alignment. Does the influencer’s content align with what the brand is looking for? The style and aesthetic of the influencer’s content needs to resonate with the brand; it must feel like a good, natural fit. The influencer needs to be an extension of the brand, and the partnership should be an authentic fit for the influencer and their audience. Assess the audience. Does the influencer speak to the demographic being targeting? A common mistake is to make incorrect assumptions about an influencer’s following. Brands should take a data-led approach to researching an influencer’s audience demographics to ensure they fit the desired brief. Assess the content. Does the influencer’s content stand out positively, and will it resonate with the target audience? These are important questions that brands need to ask and generally this can only be done via a manual review. Stephanie Hubbard, Senior Content Consultant at Brilliant Noise, shares that she will spend an intensive month reviewing the content of influencers shortlisted for a campaign, before casting them. The workload like this whatsapp number list allows both the vendor and the affiliate to focus on. Clicks are the number of clicks coming to your website’s URL from organic search results. Look for key content attributes. Consistency, quality and the originality of the content as well as its regulatory compliance (see Section 6 of Econsultancy’s Influencer Marketing Best Practice Guide), are some of the top attributes brands should be looking at, according to Sonsoles Piñeiro Kruik, VP Sales at SamyRoad. Consider the data Look at conversion metrics. When traffic and sales are the focus of the campaign, look at past conversion metrics to see how an influencer has converted for similar brands to gauge how they might perform in this campaign. Influencers should be prepared to share this data with brands. If the influencer has worked with the brand in question before, the brand will be able to benchmark its own data against previous campaign results. Look for above average engagement rates. Engagement rate is an important metric for gauging how an influencer’s content will perform across different platforms, and it can help a brand to decide whether an influencer is likely to deliver a good return on investment. An influencer’s engagement rate can also be used to set a benchmark against which campaign results can be measured. Request data on audience and past partnerships. It is important to ask for an influencer’s previous endorsement history and results. “Brands shouldn’t be afraid of asking influencers for detailed stats, since it can be easy to make wrong assumptions about an influencer,” says Lucy Loveridge, MD, Social at YMU. Due diligence