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Using Social Listening to Discover the Best Influencers for your Brand

Spending your ad budget efficiently has always been important, but with many companies reducing spending due to COVID-19, it is now a necessity. Although some businesses are choosing to cut their marketing budget first, it is actually an ideal time for social media marketing. As people stay home to help fight the spread of COVID-19 and social media becomes the primary method of recreational social interaction, more eyes are on social platforms than ever before. 

Influencer marketing can be a useful tool for brand management without breaking the bank. But how do you know which influencers are right for you? There are hundreds of thousands of accounts with large followings, but how do you determine who is authentically engaged with your brand, industry, or target audience, and who will have the greatest impact? 

Step 1: Using the Influencer Dashboard

Social listening can be the perfect asset to your search for the right influencers. Nuvi Listen and Analyze are uniquely built for this with dashboards that analyze influencers in 6 different ways. 

Nuvi's monitor and influencer dashboard that's part of Nuvi Analyze shows the six ways Nuvi analyzes an influencer: Most reach, influencer score, most spread, most active, most mentioned, most reshares.

1) Influencer Score is a comprehensive analysis of an influencer on a logarithmic scale of 1-100 which is derived from an influencer’s following and activity.  This provides a quick snapshot of how big and how active an influencer is. 

You can also sort potential influencers by 5 additional qualities: most active, most mentioned, most reach, most reshares, and most spread. This allows you to choose an influencer that best suits your specific campaign’s goals and speaks to your unique target customer–which may change with time. 

2) Most Active is a measure of how often a user posts. Finding an active influencer may help you identify someone who is most likely knowledgeable about the latest social media trends. Highly active influencers often have fan bases who are also highly active. If your buyer persona is social media savvy, this could be a useful sorting tool. 

3) Most Mentioned measures how often a user is mentioning your brand or product. Influencers who are mentioning your brand frequently can be useful for generating discussion and making your hashtag trend, especially if their posts receive high levels of engagement from an active following. This could be used to generate buzz around a new product launch. 

4) Reach measures an influencer’s follower count, and gives you an idea of how many people see a user’s content regularly. An influencer with a high level of reach would be a great choice for building awareness of your brand. 

5) Reshares can be an indicator that their audience regards them as a trusted source on a given topic, which can identify them as a niche expert or a micro influencer. Choosing a micro influencer is a great step towards increasing brand awareness for a very specific demographic or building your reputation among a target community. 

6) Spread measures an influencer’s follower count, in addition to the number of people who will see the content they share from secondary sources, such as retweets. An influencer with a relatively small following but high likelihood of generating many reshares may reach the same number of eyes at a smaller price tag than a bigger influencer with a less active following. 

All of these factors allow you to hone in on what you are looking to gain from working with an influencer, and make an informed decision as to who will best get you and your messaging to your target audience.

Looking at a monitor we set up for Disney parks, we can see that over the last 7 days, they have reached millions of viewers via coverage in news outlets and publications. Lonely Planet accounted for the furthest reach, and therefore would be a great outlet to partner with if Disney wanted to put out a campaign that reached a large number of people quickly and efficiently.

Nuvi's monitor and analysis tools is showing the data for influencers according to the number of people they've reached for Disney Parks. On the left is a list of the top 10 influencers and the number of people they reached. On the right is a pie chart giving a visual representation of how the reach of the 10 influencers differ from each other.

Looking at the most active tab, we find the users that are most dedicated to Disney brands. This tab measures which users have a high number of mentions of the key terms from our monitor. Sponsored content from these users would come across as authentic, and reaching out to them may give you insight about your most dedicated fans.

Nuvi's monitor and analysis tools is showing the data for influencers according to their activity for Disney Parks. On the left is a list of the top 10 most active influencers and their number of tweets in that time period. On the right is a pie chart giving a visual representation of how the 10 most active influencers differ from each other

Looking at the data sorted by influencer score, we can find bloggers and individual users, in addition to large publications, who are active contributors to the discussion about Disney Parks. Collaborations with publications and bloggers each have unique advantages. Publications, for example, tend to reach working professionals, while bloggers are better at reaching stay-at-home parents— both audiences Disney Parks would want to target. 

Nuvi's monitor and analysis tools is showing the data for influencers according to their influencer score for Disney Parks. On the left is a list of the top 10 influencers and their scores. On the right is a pie chart giving a visual representation of how the 10 influencer's scores differ from each other.

Step 2: Searching for the Author With Our Monitors

With Nuvi Listen and Analyze, you can also analyze data from different windows of time. This will allow you to detect trends in engagement. Is this influencer established, or did they only recently begin to build their brand? Are they increasing or decreasing in popularity? You can use this to study activity over the span of a campaign - does their engagement and activity increase when they are promoting a product or event? Looking at data over time will answer these questions. 

Searching your monitor for an influencer’s name can show how often they’ve mentioned a specific topic (or your brand) in a given window of time. This can help you identify how long they’ve been an advocate or an expert in a certain topic. Searching monitors over time can also aid you in double checking everything that someone has said about your company. 

Gif of a Nuvi monitor that shows how to pull only the data of an influencer a company is interested in.

Step 3: Visit Their Profile

Before selecting an influencer, visit their profile to get a sense of the overall impression their brand leaves on you. Factors such as the influencer’s profile image, cover photo and bio may be important to how they are perceived by potential customers. Reading an influencer’s interactions with their audience can provide you with important information about their reputation. Viewing the “big picture” is essential to determining if an influencer would resonate with your target customers. 

Let’s use Offhand Disney as an example.

According to Nuvi's Listen software, Offhand Disney has 15k followers and 48 social ranking. This tweet reads: @coreyhamilson @etanti18 Good answer good answer. Neither of you said grab food though so minus 1 point... I'd hate to declare a winner and divide this friendship. So tie breaker, what is my favorite (non Haunted Mansion) ride at Disneyland?

The link in their following bio shows us that they are also active on Youtube. This would make them a great choice if you are looking to create video content or publish on multiple platforms. Youtube’s demographics tend to skew young, so this influencer would also be a good investment if Disney were looking to reach fans in their teens and early 20s. 

Offhand Disney's Twitter profile page has 3,203 tweets. Their cover images is a bright bluish purple. Offhand and Disney are written in all caps and the first word is on top of the other with a thick blue line separating them. On the O of Offhand is a Mickey Mouse Disney hat. The profile image is of a young man in his early 20's holding his hand against his cheeks and he looks surprised. The bio reads: #1 source of Haunted Mansion info for the Walt Disney Company. But actually youtuber

We can tell from their cover photo logo that Offhand Disney is dedicated to their channel. They fall into the micro influencer category with less than 50,000 followers. They have relatively few Twitter posts for an account that joined in 2016, but appear to post roughly every day based on their recent tweets.

Offhand Disney tweeted: Day 7 of Disneyland closure... today the hallucinations began. I smell pirate water everywhere i go, and hear ragtime piano every time i walk down the sidewalk.
Offhand Disney tweeted: I'm planning on live streaming something soon for everyone to enjoy while we wait out this pandemic. Either Disneyland Adventures laythrough Or a live stream marathon of all of my videos/Disney movies

Offhand Disney’s recent tweets show us that they have a sense of humor and tweet about current events as they relate to Disney. Their audience appears engaged, as many posts receive hundreds or thousands of likes. Their commitment to creating Disney related content even as the parks are closed shows dedication to their craft and creativity.

Sophie tweeted: @offhandDisney hi offhand... i am currently making a presentation for my friends on why the haunted mansion is the best disney ride ever I was wondering if you'd like to give input and/or be featured so I have more support on my point. Offhand Disney replied: I'd say binge my 31 Nights of the Haunted Mansion series. So much there
Offhand Disney retweeted: here's the scene from Main Street USA tonight at Walt Disney World President Josh D'Amaro is joined by beloved Disney characters to say goodbye to guests (biggest cheers for Big Al and Wendell!). Offhand Disney replied Josh= the greatest ever

Looking at their replies, we can see the Offhand Disney account positively engages with both fans of the blog and other Disney themed blogs. A quick look at their profile confirms that they could potentially be a great fit if Disney was interested in advertising a new attraction or special fan event to engaged Disney fans.

Although the process of selecting influencers out of the hundreds of thousands of options may seem daunting, it can be a quick, streamlined process when you’re armed with the right tools and data.

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