The rise of social media in the last decade has led to the emergence of a group of individuals with a massive online reach, credibility, and authentic persuasive ability known as social media influencers.
Many of these social media influencers are experts in a specific industry, and they regularly share their knowledge in their posts while some have a considerable following due to their ability to share their life experiences comically.
Hiring a Social Media Influencer
Whether they are funny or not, one thing is for sure: this group of people is very influential with online crowds.
So much that it got the attention of some of the major brands in Singapore.
The brands eventually partnered with these social media influencers to promote new products and the company in general. The results were astounding!
This led to an influx of into the social media influencing space, even by celebrities. As such, there are several types of influencers that you should know about before you decide to hire one.
First, mega influencers: typically have a million or more followers on a social media platform. Celebrities are the best example of mega influencers.
A single post from a mega influencer could generate a lot of hits on your website.
However, there are also drawbacks of using mega influencers; they are expensive, have a distant relationship with their followers, and are not experts on the subjects they are posting.
Second, macro-influencers: usually have between 100,000 and one million followers.
Many macro-influencers earned their fame by producing top-notch content for internet users.
This type of influencer is right for your company if you want to target a specific demographic as well as reach many Singaporeans.
Lastly, micro-influencers: generally have between 1,000 to 100,000 followers on a social platform.
They are specialists in industries such as technology, food, fitness, home décor, and many other topics.
Brands love micro-influencers because they have a homogenous audience that generates a lot of interest and engagement in their posts.
Choosing the right influencer for your business is a lot more nuanced than going by the above information.
Fortunately, some tools can help you do this quickly.
Tools such as BuzzSumo, Hootsuite, Followerwonk, Upfluence, LittleBird, and HARO will help you identify influencers, analyse their data, and reach out to them.
There are several ways you can engage the influencers once you identified them.
Ways to Work With Social Media Influencers
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Promote Contests
Online contests are an excellent way of increasing your brand’s awareness, getting new customers and driving traffic to your website.
You can never go wrong with this move as people generally love free stuff.
The best part about this method is that influencers also love contests as it gives them the chance to get more engagements and increase their online influence.
You both get a win from an activity that is fun.
An example of a contest can be hiding a product on your website and then telling the social media influencers to give people clues as to the location of the product.
The person who finds the product gets it for free; you can also cover the shipping fee as a way of getting more people to participate.
A service company can promote a contest by telling the influencer to ask his/her followers to give compelling reasons as to why they deserve the service.
For example, a cleaning service can ask people to state the reasons why their houses should be cleaned free of charge.
Ask them to Add Your Website Link on their Bio
This method almost always goes hand in hand with the social media influencers using the profile picture of your company.
Their followers get intrigued by the change of profile picture and click on their social handles where they find your company’s link.
This influencer marketing method is especially effective for promoting a new product or service.
Instagram is a fantastic platform to try this type of marketing.
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Use Hashtags to Promote Your Brand
Hashtags enable you to bring all the content you are promoting under one roof.
This enables users who are interested in the posts to quickly find them and interact with the influencers who are driving the conversation.
Hashtags also enable people who are not following the influencers you are working with to find your content.
The influencers may not have many followers, but they can make your hashtag trend and expose your content to more people.
Lastly, hashtags enable you to monitor the conversation about your brand easily.
Sometimes users choose a brand’s hashtag to share a bad experience they had with the brand.
It is very easy for such a post to go viral. A hashtag will enable you to nip this in the bud.
The best way to use a hashtag to promote your brand is by getting several micro influencers to run with the hashtag.
This method is effective as the users often join in on the conversation using the same hashtag.
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Product Reviews
It is estimated that nearly 81% of shoppers do an online search before making a purchase.
They want to know if the product will meet their needs and how they can get the most use out of it.
YouTube is a popular social channel where users do this research.
Singaporeans are big consumers of video content on YouTube.
It is estimated that there are 4 million YouTube users in Singapore who watch an average of 2 hours of video content per day.
Getting your product to these consumers is a superb way of increasing sales.
You can do this by partnering with a vlogger (video blogger) who knows your products.
One of the ways you can do this is by giving him/her free products immediately they are released.
The vlogger gets to use your product to produce content for his/her audience, and your company gets to reach more people.
However, this may not always be enough to guarantee coverage by an influencer, and in many instances, you will be required to give financial incentives.
Technology and makeup are examples of companies that leverage product reviews brilliantly.
Using the above-mentioned strategies can bring several benefits to your company. The following are some of the benefits you should expect:
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Access to Millennials
1 in 10 millennials in Singapore learns about a new product via online advertising.
This is crucial since 15-24-year-olds make up 16.5% of the population and 25-54-year-olds make up account for 50.5% of the population.
You, therefore, cannot afford to ignore this population.
Social media influencers will help you to advertise your products to this generation that predominantly spends their time online.
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High Return on Investment (ROI)
Studies done on the effect of influencer marketing have shown that the return on investment can be as high as six times the amount paid to influencers.
As a result, nearly 65% of brands have made plans to increase influencer marketing in 2019.
The competition in all the niches is only going to get stiffer.
Your company needs to adapt to maintain its competitive advantage in the market.
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Increased Reach and Visibility
Three social media influencers with 350,000 followers give you access to over one million people.
What is even better is that the people these influencers reach are not random followers; they follow them to consume their content.
Advertising through these influencers thus massively increases the visibility of your products.
You can use the statistics generated by this marketing method to create sales funnels and buyer personas that you will use well into the future after your contract with the influencers ends.
This remarketing to a group of people who have seen your products being endorsed by people who they trust is an excellent way of generating sales.
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Flexible Pricing
Influencer marketing does not have a fixed price.
You can pay influencers different amounts to do the same job.
This is because the payment made to a social media influencer typically depends on their negotiating ability.
However, mega influencers usually have a fixed amount per post.
Choosing to work with a mega influencer means you will have no choice but to pay the full amount.
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Influence on Purchase Decisions
40% of people have said that they have bought an item after seeing a social media personality use it while 50% say that a video has helped them decide the brand they wanted to buy from.
41% of Singaporeans currently shop online, and the number is steadily rising.
Using a social media influencer will ensure that your products take a big chunk of the people making online purchases.
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Use of Influencer Content in Future Marketing Endeavors
Many companies are increasingly signing contracts with influencers which allow them to use the content generated in their future marketing campaigns, even if the influencer will not be involved.
The contracts usually run for six months or one year.
This is excellent value for your money as a one-time payment allows you to use content for a long time.
Top 10 Influencer Marketing Tools Every Marketer Should Be Use Today
Applying the above tips will enable you to establish a cordial working relationship with the hired influencers.
The average ROI of a successful influencer marketing campaign is $5.20 for every $1 spent.
You must continuously monitor the results to know which influencers to keep in the team and who to expunge.
It’s impossible to monitor multiple influencer marketing campaigns manually.
Luckily, there are advanced tools that you can use to benchmark the campaigns.
The reports these tools generate will help you make decisions based on accurate market data and trends.
We spent the last five weeks scouring the internet and testing different influencer marketing tools.
Here is our review of the top 10 influencer marketing tools every marketer should use today.
- Upfluence
- AspireIQ
- NeoReach
- Mavrck
- Grin
- Creator.co
- CreatorIQ
- Post for Rent
- Klear
- Julius
Let’s dive into any look at how each of these influencer marketing tools works and why you should include them in your digital marketing tools arsenal.
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Upfluence Review
On top of our list is an influencer marketing tool featured in hundreds of listicle articles.
As the tagline states, “Grow your brand with the leading influencer marketing platform” Upfluence is designed to help you establish stronger collaborations with the right influencers.
It analyses and categorises more than 3 million influencers across different platforms. The influencers have a cumulative reach potential of more than 82 billion followers.
Profile updates are captured in real-time to enable you to monitor each post’s reach engagement level accurately.
If you are unsure which influencer to hire take advantage of Upfluence’s Live Capture feature.
This features works by scouring the database and provides recommendations of the possible ideal influencers that match your brand and objectives.
Don’t be surprised if it recommends loyal customers who have been posting positive testimonials about your brand.
Loyal customers are the best brand ambassadors.
If you run an e-commerce store, go ahead and synchronise it with your Upfluence account to know which influencers frequent your website.
Reach out to them and bring them on board if their audience has the characteristics of your ideal customers.
The dashboard has an intuitive search bar that you can use to find influencers using keywords related to your products and services.
Upfluence doesn’t only focus on Facebook but all social media platforms such as Twitch, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
Formerly known as Revfluence, AspireIQ is an influencer marketing platform that you can use to do a host of tasks such as searching for influencers, managing campaigns, and relationships with the influencers.
The AspireIQ software is programmed to extensively research all high-performing influencers popular on different social media platforms.
It also goes the extra mile to analyse the data to recommend those whose characteristics match your campaign needs and preferences.
It also offers tools for easily re-purposing or converting content used to run the campaigns into paid ads.
This review wouldn’t be complete without the mention of AspireIQ social listening capabilities.
You can use it to monitor brand mentions and do competitor analysis.
“Run World-Class Influencer Marketing Campaigns” is the first thing you will see on the official NeoReach website. The website has a dedicated algorithm that searches social media platforms for the best influencers.
The software also uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyse the data and generate recommendations.
When writing this NeoReach review, its database has more than 3 million influencers from different sites, namely Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
One of the highlights is that pricing is customised for every client based on the campaign goals and objectives.
An array of information accompanies each influencer recommendation to help you decide whether to bring them on board or not.
The profile information is presented in a user-friendly report, so you don’t need prior experience to interpret them.
Mavrck is an all-in-one influencer marketing platform that houses an array of tools you can use to scale up your business.
Finding the best influencers doesn’t have to be time-consuming and stressful.
With Mavrck, you can locate top influences in your industry, your existing customer base, and employees’ social superstars.
You can limit the search for influencers to specific platforms your target customers frequent to get maximum ROI from the campaign. Mavrck also offers additional tools for managing multiple influencer marketing campaigns such as communication, contracts, syndication, and more.
All these tools are available on the dashboard and can be activated in just one click.
Mavrck also goes the extra mile to offer tools for capturing reviews and ratings from brand ambassadors and influencers for purposes of e-commerce syndication.
It also allows you to syndicate videos and photos from retail partners and influencers to your e-commerce website and other digital marketing campaigns.
Grin allows brands to connect with genuine influencers who are reputable and professional in what they do.
One of the guiding mantras of the company is that brands need to build a trusting relationship with potential influencers to achieve success.
The pricing plans are customisable, so feel free to contact the support team for a custom plan that matches your needs and budget.
The software is ideal for not only big e-commerce stores and brands but also small businesses that are just starting.
One feature that gives it an upper hand is its compatibility with all major shopping platforms such as Magento, WooCommerce, and Shopify.
To foster seamless communication, you can synchronise it with email providers such as Outlook and Gmail. You can also synchronise it with other essential communication and project management tools such as Slack, SMS, Office 365, and Google Drive.
The software has all the features that any top-tier management software in the market offers.
Use it to manage workflows and monitor your influencer marketing campaigns seamlessly.
Creator.co focuses on connecting brands with content creators with substantial followers on various social media platforms.
The company’s primary target is small and medium-sized businesses that want to work with micro and nano-influencers.
At the time of writing this Creator.com review, the company offers two different plans.
The first plan is the Self-Serve, where all features are provided, and you manage the campaign processes yourself – with no help from the support team.
The second plan is the community-driven plan that allows brands to set up the campaign and delegate everything else to the software.
The software will conduct various processes, such as identifying and reaching out to ideal influencers.
However, you will get to review every influencer before they are added to the campaign.
One unique feature we like about Creator.com is the deep insights reports of every influencer hired for the campaign.
The reports are detailed and exportable in PDF documents for sharing with other digital marketing experts in your team.
CreatorIQ is an end-to-end platform that is powered by advanced software.
The software is wired to help you grow, manage, scale, and measure the success of your influencer marketing campaigns.
To achieve this objective, CreatorIQ scours the different social networking sites to identify potential influencers who can contribute positively to your influencer marketing campaigns.
It also solves this industry’s hurdles, such as inflated reach metrics, follower fraud, and fake influencers.
It’s compatible with virtually all social media platform APIs and uses its artificial intelligence-powered algorithm to analyse more than 1 billion social accounts in seconds.
The analysis takes a deep look at the content shared by the users, engagement levels, and the number of followers accrued.
So far, the platform has close to over 15 million content creator accounts.
You don’t have to review the accounts; CreatorIQ will do the analysis and present influencers who’re most relevant to your brand and campaign.
Using AI, every influencer is assigned a score dubbed integrity quotient to enable you to determine their credibility and suitability before hiring them.
As the name suggests, Post For Rent is an intuitive marketplace software that you can count on to guide your influencer marketing campaign in the right direction.
The software doesn’t just connect brands with influencers who are suitable for the campaign but also provides additional campaign management tools.
Currently, its database has more than 230,000 verified influencers and 8,700+ advertisers with a cumulative reach of 38.6 billion. The brand offers two different plans.
They do it by yourself plan that comes with an influencer marketer’s toolkit.
Simply put, this plan offers an extensive database of potential influencers you can hire for different campaigns. You will handle all the campaign processes independently.
The second plan, dubbed “Let us handle it for you,” is a managed influencer marketing service whereby the team handles all aspects of the campaign.
With Post For Rent, you can create global campaigns and monitor the results on your computer.
The software also shows the potential of recommended influencers to help you decide whether to add him or them to the campaign or not.
Other features that place this influencer marketing tool ahead of the competition are the automated payouts system, team management, administration, and reporting tools.
You can export the reports in either PPT or PDF for further analysis in just two clicks.
Klear is another worthy influencer marketing tool you should consider when running digital marketing campaigns on social media platforms.
The team behind this tool strongly believes that online customers trust influencers more than ads.
These tools offer various influencer marketing services for brands of all sizes and industries.
One aspect that gives it a higher cutting edge is the quality of data it provides about different potential influencers.
At first, it focused only on Twitter, but soon after upgraded to offer influencer recommendations from other popular social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook.
The data has more than 900 million influencers from across the globe.
Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Klear accurately groups the influencers based on 60,000 categories/niches.
The deep analytics of each influencer and their respective audience demographics and psychographics will enable you to run successful influencer marketers on any platform.
Klear also has an in-built tool called Monitor – a social listening and analytics tool that will enable you to monitor the number of times your brand is mentioned in social media conversations.
You can also use it to track your competitor’s mentions to gauge the performance of your brand awareness campaigns.
Carefully review the information of each influencer recommended by Klear to achieve the highest results possible.
More importantly, use its reporting tools to gauge the influencers’ performance after hiring to know if they should continue being part of the campaign.
Don’t get it twisted; Julius is not a person’s name but rather an influencer marketing tool that has proven its ability to help businesses scale up through social media marketing.
Its database has more than 120,000 influencers, and they are grouped in different categories for easier comparison.
You can narrow your search using 50+ criteria such as audience size and psychographic and demographic data.
Take the time to compare and contrast the data to select the ideal influencer for your campaign.
Because Julius is a SASS (software-as-a-service), you will be prompted to pay a one-time annual fee to access all the features.
The price is calculated based on the number of team members using the software.
Once you subscribe, you will get full access to the entire platform, custom influencer lists that are updated regularly, unlimited messaging possibilities, and a dedicated account manager for exceptional support.
You will also get prompt notifications of new influencers added to the platform and a curated feed of all news related to your industry.
Posting content related to the news feed will enable you to create a buzz on not only social media but also other platforms that you use for marketing.
Wrap Up
These are the top 10 influencer marketing tools you can use to unlock the full potential of your business.
They automate the process of finding the right influencers for the campaigns and also make it easy to monitor the results.
Go the extra mile to hire a digital marketing agency that knows everything about social media marketing.
We have been offering professional guidance on influencer marketing for more than five years.
Our track record speaks volumes about the quality of our services and unrelenting attention to detail.
Call us today at +65 6789 9852 to book a non-obligatory consultation session.