How to find and contact Instagram influencers?

You’ve probably heard all about the benefits of influencer marketing and the boost it can give to your marketing ROI.

Maybe you’ve already decided to give it a go, but are still wondering how can you contact influencers and get them promoting your brand.

Here's an idea: What if, instead of contacting them, you let the influencers contact you?

If you want to start small and only try partnering with a few influencers, it's easy to contact them yourself. Search for influencers that fit your campaign, draft a message and hit send. There are tons of templates and guides that show you how to contact Instagram influencers yourself.

However, influencers tend to get a lot of reach outs through Instagram and emails from brands wanting to collaborate with them. Therefore, your message can easily get lost in the clutter.

Additionally, contacting Instagram influencers is just the first step of the process. You often overlook how much time actually goes into briefing, managing and paying the influencers - not to mention the influencer has to accept your proposal in the first place!

This is why we recommend using an influencer marketing platform or an influencer search tool for finding, contacting and managing your influencers relationships. It's way easier to reach out to influencers when you use a platform that is already known and trusted among them. And not to mention how much easier it is to scale the process for managing 10, 50, or even 100 influencers.

Instead of contacting multiple Instagram influencers one at a time, using a platform like Boksi allows you to create an influencer campaign and share it with a diverse network of influencers. After a suitable application period, where influencers submit their applications and price requests, you can begin negotiations and selecting the best Instagram influencers for your campaign.

But what should you look for when evaluating applications?

Boksi makes finding the right influencers easy.

How to choose the best Instagram influencers for your campaign

There are many opinions and perspectives on how you should choose your influencers. However, according to Business Insider’s annual report, influencers can be reviewed based on their reach and niche.

The reach of an influencer campaign is determined by:

• The follower base of the influencers

• The impression total of the content shared

• The traffic generated by the posts

It's possible to measure this yourself, but it's far easier to use an influencer platform to measure this.

In terms of niche, well, niche is subjective. But most likely you don't have to be told whether or not your product is niche within a market or industry, and the influencers likely reflect that.

Therefore, when choosing influencers, you should first determine your campaign goals. Do you want to maximize the reach of your campaign or do you want to target a specific group of people? In either case, you need specific information and statistics about the influencers in order to meet your goals.

For example, influencers are commonly grouped based on their follower size. The rule of thumb is a larger follower base means more reach, but less engagement.

Here are some average engagement stats for the different groups of influencers:

• Under 15k followers: 3.86%

• 15k-50k followers: 2.39%

• 50k-100k followers: 1.87%

• 100k-500k followers: 1.62%

• 500k-1M followers: 1.36%

• Over 1M followers: 1.21%

So the goals of your campaign will dictate the optimal influencers. Want pure reach and awareness? Influencers with tons of followers can be your best bet. But if you're looking for strong engagement, working with smaller influencers could be much more effective.

However, the follower count is only one part - you also need to understand where their followers are. Having influencers with huge follower bases can feel great, but if you're selling localized products in Europe, and the follower base is mostly in US or Australia, your effective reach will be low.

Beyond that, using influencers who have many followers in the wrong age range or gender for your product will also hamper your campaign ROI.

The old-fashioned way to gather all this information would be to collect media kits or screenshots of the influencers social media statistics, which naturally requires a lot of manual work.

However, any influencer marketing platform worth their salt will be able to provide you with detailed information about the influencer's follower base, engagement rates, and much more, freeing you from the manual labour and allowing you make more informed decisions on who to work with.

Boksi's intuitive interface makes it easy to find and communicate with the right participants.

Using an influencer marketing platform also provides you with non-numeric, undisclosed data that can’t be found by simply looking at an Instagram profile. If you want to start a campaign that has a specific criteria, e.g. the influencer has to be moving or thinking about starting investing, it can be hard to find suitable influencers from their Instagram profile alone.

That's why creating an open campaign and letting influencers contact you is so powerful. Instead of guessing who could be moving soon, or hoping to get into investing, you can add that to your campaign as a requirement, and influencers who match that criteria can apply. And since influencers make a bid as they apply, you can evaluate each influencer according to their profile, performance, and price before you get too far into negotiations.

In addition to the numeric and non-numeric data, it is important to pay attention to a good match between influencer and brand. At the end of the day, the influencers are also representing your brand and if them partnering with your brand arouses controversy, it can reflect negatively on your brand.

A good fit can be ensured by looking at what kind of content the influencer is creating now and are they claiming to be an expert in some topic such as beauty or technology. When working with an influencer who is an expert and familiar with your field of work, the collaboration has a more natural and authentic feeling.

So, to recap:

1. Use an influencer marketing platform to create open campaigns that attract the right kind of influencers instead of searching for and reaching out to them manually.

2. Evaluate influencers based on your campaign goals and objectives, the influencer's follower demographics, previous activity, and price.

3. Select the best influencers for your campaign and get to work!

Boksi campaign report includes all the results you need to know about your campaign.

Stop sliding into DMs - let influencers slide into yours

By following these guidelines, you can find Instagram influencers that suit your brand and have an impact on the people you want to reach. An influencer marketing platform does wonders for your influencer marketing management - instead of wasting time on outreach, take the inbound approach and let the influencers apply to campaigns they fit best in.

Some influencer marketing platforms allow you to manage the whole campaign process from beginning to end. For example, Boksi provides you with a real-time campaign report, so you can observe how the different KPIs change as your campaign proceeds. This also makes it easy to compare different campaigns with each other.

But don’t worry about achieving perfect results right away. Influencer marketing, like many other forms of marketing, requires trial and error before you start figuring out what works for your brand. With Boksi you can be one step closer to that goal on your first try.

Boksi is the preferred platform for over 15,000 creators and influencers, and we've helped companies such as Wolt, Lumene, Luhta, and so many more supercharge their influencer marketing.

Why don't you try out Boksi today? Request a demo here and get started!