Influencer Marketing has become quite a catchword in the fashion industry. In the past, this took on the moniker of Celebrity Placement / Product Placement or Digital PR, but this term like the industry has evolved from the concept that an influencer is simply a celebrity with millions of followers on Twitter or Instagram to someone who has a strong digital or offline presence and a community that engages just as strongly with their messaging. Modern fashion marketers utilize savvy techniques to reach out to these influencers who may be local celebrities or socialites, but just as often tend to be the fashion and beauty bloggers adored by so many.
When searching for these influencers, it pays to be familiar with the industry and of course always on the pulse for bloggers or socialites who have a quickly rising star. Maybe their content is regularly being featured on the websites of popular fashion magazines such as Lucky, Cosmo or Teen Vogue. Maybe they have been heavily promoting through I Heart Fashion or Independent Fashion Bloggers or maybe you are just starting to see their content become popular through Instagram or maybe LookBook.nu. However they are found, two platforms have become strong bases for finding and reaching these influencers. They are Instagram and Twitter. While finding the right influencers came come from any channel, here are five reasons twitter is a great social platform for blogger outreach.
- Everyone is accessible through Twitter. In fact, in our experience, the average response time to a tweet for an account with above 10,000 for us was under 6 hours, where as via email, it ranged between 24 to 40 hours. Even if a influencer for some reason has made their account private, you can still send them a tweet publicly and ask to continue the conversation via email or your preferred channel.
- Twitter Lists, a Social CRM. A not so well kept secret on Twitter is the usefulness of Twitter Lists to organize, collate and basically identify leads for the long run. By creating a list it allows for easy tracking of a potential influencer to gauge how quickly they are growing, along with how they stack up to others on your list. The best part is dependent on the description and name of the list, other users may come across the list and add themselves or other Twitter users. Imagine how great it would be if your list of “Fashion Influencers” populated itself with new quality leads in a few short weeks.
- Hashtags make the search. A lot easier that is. Twitter was the first platform to feature and heavily integrate hashtags into its Search API and thanks to a few more years of experience, it touts the most robust hashtag search function in the industry (so much that hundreds of other platforms leverage Twitter’s search API). This is key, because Twitter allows for you to group conversations by popular hashtags of your audience. If you follow one popular influencer and she uses an unfamiliar hashtag, a little further investigation can lead to discovering a whole new crop of influencer. Popular hashtags for fashion bloggers include #fblog, #fashionblogger and #ootd (outfit of the day).
- Social Search Amplification. While this concept is no longer unique to Twitter, Twitter definitely does it best due to the combination of hashtags in search and an algorithm that prorates the value of a tweet based on the reaction of its audience. Twitter allows users to magnify or amplify the reach of a tweet by retweeting, replying to or favoriting the tweet. But the social amplification comes from getting a targeted individual to retweet your post or tag others that are relevant to the search. Asking users to retweet or tag those who might be interested can really drive strong results.
- Twitter Tools for Search. Twitter’s vast amount of openness with its APIs has lead to some very strong support from the developmental community. There are many tools to assist in the search for influencers, which help considerably by allowing searches for specific keywords in the user profiles (a pretty good clue of their interests), the number of users of a particular interest that follow a user, their level of engagement with their audience and much much more. Some great tools for Twitter include Followerwonk, Buzzsumo, Commun.li and Twellow, although considerably more are out there and just a search away.
When thinking of influencers, names like Leandra Medine ( Man Repeller ) or Aimee Song ( Song of Style ) are usually the first that come to mind in fashion, however many many other influencers exist. These are bloggers, smaller celebrities and even local socialities that maybe do not command an audience of 2,000,000 ( yes that is 2M for those that love Instagram ), but an audience of 20,000. Yet with their much smaller audience, they also have a community of businesses, fans, friends and family that closely follow their every move and are much more likely to engage with or endorse their every post.
How has Twitter helped your search for influencers? Any ideas of how this platform can help others find influencers faster and better? Feel free to leave your comments in the comments below. But if your looking for a little more, Heyo created this great guide on Using Twitter to Find Influencers; just ask them to update it some time.
Image Credits: Fashion Society
