K atie c ouric

Choosing Influencers
Since influencers and big accounts can play an important role in driving
growth on Instagram, you need to be strategic in choosing whom you
collaborate with. Not all influencers will be beneficial to your brand or
message. Just because they’re popular and have a large following doesn’t
mean they’ll help your visibility.
Test influencers just like you would content. David Oh of FabFitFun
says that his team tested more than five thousand influencers before finding
the ones who worked best for their brand. He urges you to be diligent—you
can’t just try one and expect results. Oftentimes the influencers David’s
team initially hypothesized to be the best weren’t always the ones who
created the most successful results.
After a lot of trial and error, Oh found that one of the best influencers
for FabFitFun is Tori Spelling. She’s great at creating compelling content.
After seeing how well her videos performed, FabFitFun took them,
analyzed what worked, and made a tutorial about how to create similar
videos. They passed the tutorials along to their other influencers and now
all of them create content in a similar style. Oh has found that supporting
his influencers with their own brands has helped his company’s reach.
He recalls that in the beginning, building relationships with influencers
was a funny process—his team tried all sorts of crazy strategies. Once,
someone on his team passed a request to the dentist of the brother of the
influencer they were trying to target. Believe it or not, they succeeded, and
FabFitFun still works with that influencer to this day. Do what it takes to
reach these people (but try not to be too creepy).

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Oh’s team didn’t have a lot of money when they started, so they targeted
smaller influencers and, at first, exchanged FabFitFun products for posts.
Once they started working with people who were known throughout the
influencer network, they found themselves in an influencer bubble—other
important influencers started to know them. If you can get a buzz going
about your product or brand, often influencers will start coming to you. For
example, if a few people on 
Dancing with the Stars
, 
The Bachelorette
, or
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
are interested in your brand, product,
or ideas, other reality stars will start to notice you. And if you have
something valuable to offer, celebrities will start to want to get it as well.
If you don’t have a product, think about what you can offer an
influencer. Sometimes an influencer will work with you because of your
compelling content. Other times, it’s because you can offer them something,
like taking pictures of them or featuring them in cool collaborative content.
Think about what the influencer may need and how your skill set can
enhance theirs.