In an age where the slightest change to a beloved social platform can cause some to decry and others to say grace, it’s easy to understand the trepidation of the influencer leveraging this platform. Its also the age where Facebook, the mega platform with superior audience and analytics, tries to maintain its dominance as the originator of the viral video. After all, it’s already survived the Youtubes, Vines, and the Periscopes of the world right? But in fashion, Facebook will always play second fiddle, although a very important chord, as it’s still very much about the future of the photo sharing app Facebook owns.
But now the brand who needs the influencer to sustain that influence is in a pickle right? Not really. All the usual suspects apply when evaluating the impact of an influencer and will remain beyond any algorithm change. But for those still wanting more, here are Five Odd Metrics to Track influencer engagement.
Percentage of Owned Comments
Most Brands look to see overall number of comments per post. Sophisticated brands try to tie this into their audience size to determine percentage of highly engaged audiences. If 90% of the comments are from the post’s originator, they aren’t doing much engaging, but a lot of talking. Probably not a person of influence.
Velocity of Post Engagement
Most Brands look to see the overall number of loves compared to their following or the love rate of an influencer. More sophisticated brands track the engagement of the most recent posts that have reached matured. Few brands track the velocity of post engagement, a key indicator of how fast an influencer can bring their content to new eyeballs. Simply put, does it take 10 days to acquire 1,000 likes or 10 minutes.
Percentage of Hashtags
If the posts contain more blue than black / grey, that’s a sure sign that the influencer is more sales than substance. Smart influencers nestle the majority of hashtags into their comments and include only a few highly relevant ones in the actual post. High usage of certain hashtags such as like4like, instalike, tagsforlikes and others indicate they probably don’t reach your target audience.
Time of Posting
Most Brands and influencers post within the normal confines of the day, typically from 8 to 6 PM. This is because outside those hours, their average engagement starts to decrease. Celebrities however post around the clock and can amass hundreds of thousands of likes at any time. If an influencer is able to maintain a high level of likes posting at 3 AM in your brand’s time zone, either they are truly influential or they command an audience that is more active at that time, which may or may not be the audience you want.
Like Fluctuation
Strong influencers will not create weak content. So long as this holds true, those perfectly curated pages will never hold a blurry picture, an off brand image or a deceptive post. However, strong fluctuations in post engagement are not common, particularly when the user posts about the same content. If their posts average ten likes and one has 4,000 followed by three more with fifteen, either the influencer made an extremely timely post or bought likes. It’s even more obvious when posts jump from the thousands to the hundreds daily. We all get lucky and hit the right chord, but this doesn’t happen repeatedly especially if their audience isn’t growing at pace.
Featured Image: Martin Singla
