Over the last couple of years, companies have been turning towards influencer marketing as a way to promote to a more niche audience.

According to Adweek, the industry of established influencer marketers is set to reach $10 billion in worth by 2020. Other social media platforms like Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok have their own set of influencers with different demographics and growth projections.

Mediakix, an influencer marketing agency, surveyed marketers at the end of 2018 to see what their stance on influencer marketing as 2019 rolls into Quarter 2. Of those who were surveyed, 89% said the ROI from influencer marketing was comparable to or better than other networks.

The same survey noted that 65% of marketers plan on increasing their budgets for 2019.

How to Find a Social Media Influencer

When brands decide to start incorporating social media influencers as a part of their marketing strategy, there are a lot of different elements they need to consider. One of the first things would be determining what they want to accomplish by teaming up with an influencer. These goals could vary from an increase in sales, followers or brand awareness.

Narrowing down your end goal will help you determine the type of influencer that will best fit your brand strategy.

As you dive deeper into the process, start searching for keywords in the ‘People’ category and hashtags that are appropriate for your brand. The influencers that appear and have the content with the most engagement have the potential to be the right fit for your marketing strategy.

How to Measure Influence

Another important thing to consider is the level of influence the person has. Probably two of the most common ways to measure influence is through reach and engagement.

An account’s reach is basically the number of people who see the content posted. You can get a pretty good idea of how large of reach someone has based on their audience size (number of followers), impressions ( when people see the content posted, doesn’t necessarily mean an action has taken place).

Engagement, on the other hand, is measured by actions. These actions include likes, comments, retweets, and sharing. While having a massive following is great, if those followers are not engaging with the content posted marketing campaigns can only go so far.