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Influencer Marketing: How to Decide Who is a Good or Bad Influencer

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App Masters11:05Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

The right influencer leads a niche hashtag and gets real engagement from followers. Watching them for two weeks and interviewing them before a deal cuts problems later.

Key takeaways

  • No exact metric can tell you who the good influencers are. 1:43
    • Social platforms give outsiders only a limited API, so there is little data to crunch.
    • That access became even more limited recently because of privacy issues.
  • Engagement quality and the content they create matter more than follower count. 2:48
    • More people now know that a high follower count does not mean someone can influence an audience.
    • Even an influencer who brings only great content is worth it, because shareable, repeatable, scalable content can be reboosted and repurposed for months if not years.
  • The best candidates are leaders of a niche hashtag. 4:25
    • Start with a general search like "iOS games", open the top result, then follow the related hashtags to more specific ones.
    • Build a list of several niche hashtags and note who dominates each one. Those people are your candidates.
  • Follow each candidate for about two weeks before you approach them. 8:42
    • Check the language they use, such as religion, politics, gender topics or cursing, that you may not want tied to your brand.
    • Look for the ability to start a new conversation, and see how much attention their posts get.
  • Interview the influencers who still look right before you hire them. 10:08
    • Treat the interview as pre-screening, with about five questions.
    • It works like interviewing a software programmer, and it means far fewer problems later.

People believe people. Brands, not so much, especially brands that talk about themselves and recommend themselves.

NG Gordon

Chapter summaries

0:00 Misconceptions and the limits of tools

Influencer marketing is full of myths, and software alone cannot sort good influencers from bad ones.

  • Hiring an influencer once is a common mistake, and not every influencer is bad for you. 0:14
    • NG Gordon is a former pro tennis player who is now a micro influencer.
    • He speaks on influencer marketing at conferences around the world.
    • His method for finding the right influencers is a hashtag strategy he calls "chase the hashtags".
    • The question put to him is whether to use a metric or to engage with candidates and see what kind of person they are.
  • Tools can build some kind of matrix, but they must be backed by manual work. 2:02
    • You use tools, and you also do other things on top of them.
    • He walks through these steps one by one in his speeches.
    • The value of an influencer's content is hard to put under metrics.

4:02 Chasing the hashtag

Partnerships should start slowly, and the best partners are people who built a community around a niche.

  • Good content is easy to spot, but a partnership should not be rushed. 4:10
    • People believe people, and brands much less.
    • Brands that talk about themselves and recommend themselves are believed least.
    • He invented the "chase the hashtags" hack and promises to explain it later.
    • Many people on Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest or even LinkedIn built a community around a niche topic.

5:33 Build on a niche community

The best influence comes from a community around a niche topic, and most app makers already work in one.

  • The best way to influence is to create a community around a niche topic. 5:37
    • App developers usually work in a niche, so find a hashtag very close to what the app does.
    • Each hashtag has community leaders who talk about that one topic all day.
    • The speaker says this is why the approach suits app developers.
  • A true niche leader posts about one subject without stopping. 6:21
    • Maggie of "Once Upon a Pumpkin" writes and inspires about pumpkin pancakes all day.
    • Other sample hashtags are red shoes, pumpkin and a dog advice tag.
    • The red shoes tag has people who talk only about red shoes.

6:48 Drill down to candidates

Moving from a broad games hashtag to narrower ones shows who really owns each niche.

  • Start broad, then follow related hashtags down to niche ones. 7:06
    • On Instagram, the top result of a general hashtag lists related tags, and each of those lists more specific ones.
    • The question was how a game developer should pick hashtags. The answer is to start with something very general.
    • The same method fits a meditation app, though the example sticks with games.
  • Searching iOS games led to the mobile gamer hashtag and its top posts. 9:41
    • From there, look at what content those top posters make and follow them for a couple of weeks.
    • If you still like their content, reach out to see if you can work out a deal.
    • The people leading the top posts of each niche tag are the candidate list.

In the growth library

NG Gordon (Angie Garden in the transcript), Former pro tennis player, micro influencer and influencer marketing speaker, creator of Dear Mishudad. Teaches how to find and vet influencers for an app by hunting niche hashtag leaders, watching them for two weeks, then interviewing them before any deal. It stresses that engagement quality and reusable content matter more than follower counts or fixed metrics.

More from App Masters · The whole library, and ask it anything

Transcript223 lines
0:00

what is up at nation welcome to the ant masters virtual summit where we are talking with amazing in the app developers to really tell their story so that we can get action-packed content from them and today I've got a phenomenal guess he's been a past podcast guest and we're gonna talk all about influencer marketing the misconceptions why you shouldn't just hire them on a one-time basis and why not all of them are actually bad for you and he is an influencer himself let me introduce the guest he used to be a pro tennis player and now he's a micro influencer and he talks about influencer marketing on my podcast on different conferences all around the world so I'm super excited to have him on let me introduce the guest right now his name is Angie Garden and you can find out all about him on dear me shoot dad calm Angie welcome back yeah it's really good to be back and good to see you again yes so

0:59

young you always like no I don't see any gray hair there's plenty of gray hair it's just the camera's not picking up on it I just got to get close there okay okay you got a good team there Angie I know that I want to talk to you about this chased a hashtag strategy and finding the right influencers I know people in the past I've said hey look at the engagement don't always just look at the follower count look at the engagement if there's a good engagement on the post that's the right type of influencer that you want to work with so again when you're trying to decide who's the good one who's the bad one what are you really focused on is there a metric or do you just like to engage with them to see what kind of person they are some kind of there's no exact metrics because he here is the problem with the metrics you the software people who know was API right you you all know his API so said party of the social

1:58

media platform the the give API to third parties okay the the Instagram Twitter and on the give API and that API apparently all nodes of is very limited and actually recently became even more limited because of privacy issues so the it's it's hard to crunch the data when you don't have much data so you can be some kind of matrix and use tools but you need to do other things so sue me you know I give speeches and I go back one by one what you need to do so like for example like what you said about engagement is right it's really right so by now we know that the number of followers and lags is does not is not necessarily means that you got someone that can influence here we know that we know that don't focus on follow accounts but now this disk of Education more more people understand that and by now people know that in the engagement quality of engagement is very important I'm very glad that you know that because

3:20

still may don't know that but the engagement is very very important also don't forget one of the greatest value and that's hard to put under metrics while the great value of influencer is the content that content creators even if they don't bring you any anything besides amazing content that is a shareable repeatable scalable way you can take this amazing interesting great detest content and you can reboost it for months if not years you can repurpose it only for that they are of a great value so but we are not done right we can see good content when we get it right so that would and mean about partnership you see what you get but don't do it too fast so this process as you mentioned the the hack that I invented called chess the hashtags in which I will be happy later to explain but basically it's a you need to chest those influencers that are leaders of a certain niche hashtag because that

4:39

dominating that hashtag and once you do that there can be a candidate you have an example of how you found answer may be sure they built communities so that people people believe people right people believe people brand not so much especially brands did talk about themselves and recommend themselves right and so then many many people out there on Instagram Twitter Pinterest or even linked in that that a crazy but something and that crazy that did something is a niche topic I learned from dear measure which is the I created an influencer and Destin MD measure it's based on on an inspired by my dog and so I find out that what I learned from that is that the best way to influence is to create a community around a niche topic okay so it's wonderful for apps developers because usually app developer is around niche topic to write so you got to go and find a hashtag that is very very very related to what you do

6:05

okay in each hashtag for example red shoes the app people out there that are community leader slash in influencers that all they do all day long is talking about red shoes or did someone called Maggie Maggie for Once Upon a pumpkin all she does is talking writing and inspiring about pumpkin pumpkin pancake all day long you know so test examples so I give you the examples of what can test the hash tag hash tags they can go ahead red shoes pumpkin or a dog that you've advice so let's let's talk about this maybe for a game or even a meditation app maybe let's stick with the game a portion of this but I am a game developer I want I have a game that I want to promote I want to try to fight them right influencer what would you suggest to that person what kind of hashtag should we be looking for okay so my my suggestion is start with something very Jack with very general search well very general search

7:18

like I know I like games games games yeah iOS games click and so you start with something very general and you drift down from there click on the top search result for that general hashtag and you will see on Instagram a unions to come I am okay cool so you can see related which is related so that we later does a more specific hashtags that are coming that are coming from dead hashtag those are more niche hunter and if you go to them you will see again ways as related toes a more specific those are the hashtags that you should target and so bill the list of several of them and then see who is leading who is dominating those hashtags you will see the next win with we said top so those are the influence of total candidates those are your people so you be the list and then don't marry yet hold on your horses and here is my another hack that I teach wait couple of weeks meaning two weeks those two weeks for them and see

8:50

the quality of the context what language they use maybe they use a lot of language about religion or gender that you don't want or politics or the curse maybe you like as you know maybe not so use and you see how much love or attention or it doesn't matter Love Actually it's like how much people listen to them okay because I found it some influences influence on people that actually had them it doesn't matter yes but you will see the engagement how much attention you know what his how I'm going see is how if they have the ability to create a new conversation about something that's what you should look because the Rinka with new conversation but you gamma your new kidnap right so I went on iOS games and then I found mobile gamer as the other hashtag now I'm able to see some of the top pose and then I can engage with that person see what kind of content they have maybe follow them for a couple of

9:53

weeks see if I still like their content and then reach out to them to see you know if we can work out a deal now I'm gonna touch it once I can see and then after this couple of weeks if you still like what you see that's awesome it means there will be much less problems but then you don't hide them yet then you interview them and that's the pre-screening you interview them so you ask them like five questions you know just like you interview a software programmer it's very very similar what do you ask ask Angie our guys if you want to learn more about Angie go to dear miss you dad calm dear miss you dad calm it is linked up into the description so you can learn more about all the stuff that Angie has been doing with influencer marketing and I'll see you on the next video click that video if you want to see a playlist of all our previous app masters virtual summits and click the bottom video on how to drive

10:54

insanely low CPI's using influencer marketing and Instagram ads don't forget to hit subscribe peace out