What is the best way to reach out to influencers?

Find Alternate Means of Contact

Influencers have more than likely gathered their influence by their connectedness to their audience. This may prove difficult for you as a business to find the right channel of communication as they are going to be flooded with comments and inquiries from fans. Their main social feeds might not be the best option to contact. Find out their management or business profiles/emails in order to best reach them with branding offers. If they have a larger following, they are likely going to have a team that can talk with you about their rates or service options.

Get Your Timing Right

Influencers have a fun job, but it’s still a job. They keep regular hours if they want to be successful, and they’re more liable to engage with your messages if you appreciate that. Looking at what time they post content is a good move to start with—while they’re online, they’re probably checking their DMs. After-hours or early-hours messages may be missed, particularly if you’re not cognizant of any time zone differences.

Find a Commonality;

To get the most out of one’s contact with influencers, consider finding a commonality and using that common ground as a foundation to start a meaningful conversation. In this case, common ground could mean anything from your favorite city traveled to the piece of art they included in their recent post. For example, if the influencer you’re interested in connecting with is exploring San Francisco, consider including the best restaurant you visited while you were there in your initial contact.

This simple effort not only makes you come across as friendly and easy to talk to, it also has the potential to give the influencer the impression that you’re someone who may be able to add value to their life and experiences.

Be Specific In Your Pitch

Be specific about what you are asking from them. Don’t mention that you’re interested in collaborating and leaving it at that. For example, tell them that you would like to work on a blog and social media campaign comprising an advertorial and supporting content on Instagram and Facebook. Not only does this make it easier for the influencer to say yes or no, but it also shows them that you know what you want and they won’t need to hold your hand throughout the collaboration.

Look to Micro-Influencers;

Forget about reaching out to those with a large number of followers and instead focus on your niche. Everyone wants to reach a wide audience, but reaching the right audience is what counts. A good influencer owns their area of expertise and capitalizes on the influence they have in the market.

As a brand, you want to leverage your product as a weapon at their disposal. For instance, lash extensions can enhance the image of almost any model on social media. By offering our services pro bono and creating a referral system through their page we can effectively create traffic and convert customers both locally and nationally depending on the services they’re after and the products we offer.

Approach with the Intention of a Long-Term Partnership;

I’d say one of my biggest tips for reaching out to influencers is to approach influencers as a potential long-term partnership, not just a transactional relationship. Influencers genuinely deeply care about the audience they’ve built up over the years, so they want to learn how your products would actually benefit their audience in the long term.

The last thing they want to do is just promote any product out there and anger their audience, just to receive a one-time sponsorship fee or affiliate fee. You should do your research upfront, and fully understand if their audience would truly benefit from your product offering before reaching out because if you do, the likelihood of you forming a long-term partnership with the influencer is much higher.

Identify Genuine Influencers

When you’ve narrowed down your list of potential collaborators, look into their material quality, how they interact with their followers, and whether their community is real or phony. Unfortunately, the amount of followers on an influencer’s page is no longer a reliable indicator of their actual social impact.

You should also verify to see if these followers are real people and not bots. I believe analyzing the comments under postings can assist you in detecting it. Fake, irrelevant comments posted by bots, or their complete absence, may indicate that the influencer’s followership was obtained artificially through the use of specific “black marketing” methods and will not assist your brand.

You can also manually check the profiles of the random followers. It’s quite easy to identify the bot’s profile because it usually lacks a bio, has no posts or only a few of them, and the photographs are mostly chosen at random.

Give Before You Ask

Stand out by giving them something of value, perhaps over a long period of time, before you ever ask for anything. Example: Want a LinkedIn expert to come on your live show? Share their content, comment on their content. Add value. Once they’ve engaged with you in return, you can make your request. As a bonus, you may end up having a genuine, ongoing relationship with this influencer – and you never know where it could go!

Get Straight to the Point

Influencers are busy people. They receive hundreds of emails every day, many from well-meaning but unimportant or irrelevant brands who don’t know how to properly address them in 140 characters or fewer. When contacting influencers, keep it short and sweet. Include the relevant information about your brand, what you are offering, and why you think the influencer is a great fit. Make sure to highlight what is in it for the influence quickly. Why should they work with your brand? Don’t bury the lead. Get to the point and make sure the influencer can easily see why your brand will be great for them to promote.

Use Popular Hashtags

When trying to find an influencer that is suitable for your brand and audience, hashtags are the way to go. Popular, relevant hashtags will help you identify the influencers that are most relevant to your brand and that will appeal to your audience. For example, as we’re an apparel brand we use popular hashtags such as #fashionstyles #OOTD #fashionblogger etc based on what we’re trying to promote. And then we start looking at not only the number of followers they have, but also the interaction and engagement on their post.

It is always best to choose an influencer who has at least a 10% engagement rate from their audience rather than just opt for a higher following. In fact, even if they have less followers and a higher engagement, it ensures that their influence will be more effective and you’ll gain better results from their posts.