This year’s annual Edelman Trust Barometer confirmed something many businesses already knew: consumer trust is plummeting. The survey shows sharp declines of trust in businesses, government, NGOs and media – a phenomenon not witnessed since Edelman started its report in 2012.
Apologies for beginning on such a low note. But, there’s light of the end of the metaphorical tunnel, and it takes the form of influencer marketing.
People trust people
In The State of Influencer Marketing report from Linqia, an overwhelming 94% of brands that have teamed up with influencers believe the tactic is effective. Influencer marketing is nothing new – brands have been relying on people for promotion for years. It’s just that the rise of social media has given it second wind, so to speak.
Ultimately, people trust people more than they do companies – don’t take it to heart. Instead, take advantage of it by partnering with people who will build trust in your brand and help communicate to consumers why they should choose your products and services over everyone else’s.
Influencer marketing can help brands rein-in overall spend and it can deliver outstanding ROI (11 x higher than traditional digital campaigns, says TapInfluence). So, whether you’re new to the game or find your current process a tad time-consuming, here are five tools that’ll help you to source the right influencers, and track just how well they’re influencing.
Kred
Kred calls itself the ‘home of influence’, with the website enabling brands to track and improve their own influence online, as well as find and connect with relevant influencers through Kred communities. It features a handy inbound marketing platform to organise customers into focused groups, monitor results and encourage engagement.
Klout
Again, Klout is a handy tool for monitoring your own activity across your social channels, including responses to your posts, articles and links. Garnering data from multiple sources, the tool assigns you an influential score between 1-100 (the higher, the better), and it even recommends content it knows your audience will love. The great thing about Klout is that you can spy on other people’s scores, helping you to find top dogs in your industry.
Buzzstream
A great tool for streamlined sourcing, Buzzstream allows you to search for, prioritise and get contact information for top influencers in any area and topic. It keeps track of all of your conversations (so no more sifting through your inbox) and lets you set reminders to follow-up on. The tool encourages collaboration through providing a single, centralised database to work from, where people can share notes and keep projects organised.
GroupHigh
There are over 15 million active bloggers on GroupHigh, with its powerful search criteria enabling brands to filter results to create high-targeted influencer lists. When you’ve pinpointed who you’d like to pair up with, you can easily locate their contact details, conduct outreach and later down the line, monitor the impact of the campaigns they get involved with.
Takumi
Takumi is different from the standard influencer database tools. It manages the entire campaign, letting creators – aka influencers – pick what they want to get involved with. Takumi delivers a whole service and essentially does all the hard work for you. You work with their in-house experts to create a brief with directions and a series of mood photos to engage potential creators.
Tools like these can help brands to find the right influencers faster and get them on board to deliver more targeted, effective marketing campaigns. Alternatively, you can rely on the trusted team here at M2 to manage your influencers for you – give us a call today.