Spotting Red Flags Before Collaborating With An Influencer

We all know in 2022 one way to get your start up business or art work out there is collaborating with an influencer. In my early personal training days with my business (KTAOW), I collaborated with influencers in the early Instagram days. It was a time we were all trying to figure out how the algorithms worked and how we could take advantage of social media for businesses. Instagram really was the game changer for a lot of businesses. Early on it was easier to gain followers, likes, and blow up your business or profile. Later down the line Instagram changed the algorithm and of course wanted to capitalize more on businesses, so they create the business account option. What most people don’t know is when you create a business account it actually makes it harder for you to gain engagement, instagram wants you to pay for advertising. First im going to go through why you should create a business account, break myths about social media , and how to approach an influencer.

Why You Should Create A Business Account

Business accounts have features such as adding an email, contact information, website, profile, insights, and promotions.

Email & Website:

Every business should have a professional email and website. If you’re still a start up and can’t afford a website, the best option is having a professional email and contact information. There are a lot of psychological influences when it comes to attracting potential customers. There are statistics that show that most people equate an actual business as an entity that has a website and good branding. This means to make sure your branding is on point whether you have instagram or a website. If you have poor visuals it will come off as you are not an actual business.

Profile & Insights:

Creating a business profile means a link to your website, & contact information, is visible. This now indicates to followers you are a business. Insights are very important. The only way to scale a business is to measure the traffic your profile attracts. This means studying your demographic. This means analyzing who follows you, what age range, gender, where around the world are they from? and what time of day are they active on your account? This is the only way to see if you are progressing with your social media content. Study what posts gain more traction and think about why. Is it your caption? is it the visuals? is it the hash tags you chose? Did people save your post more? Did they share it more? This is why insights are crucial. They are so crucial thats why social media managers exists, there are experts on this.

Promotions:

Promotions are so crucial because you are offered an option to boost your posts. You really could spend as little as $20 and create promotions. They really work and every business does this. It doesnt matter if its youtube, google, or Facebook. This also makes your profile seem legitimate to those who see your AD. If you don’t have the money to spend on AD’s don’t worry im going to teach you how to approach an influencer and spotting red flags.

Red Flags To Spot Confronting An Influencer

Fake Followers: Repeat after me followers do not equate money. Some influencers purchase fake followers and bots to comment their posts. How do you know if a influencers followers are fake? If you see someone with 1 million followers with 30-100 likes on their post, its a clear indication they are using bots. If the account looks believable such as engagement, and followers look to be normal make sure to read comments. Bots post generic comments such as fire emjoj’s and are monosyllabic. They will say nice! cool! amazing! most comments have some type of substance. Its a known fact for the followers you have usually about 1% are reached with no advertisements. This means if you see someone with a million followers, the likes under a post should be about 10,000. Is it possible to have more engagement? Yes most high engagement accounts have around 3-6% of their followers, the average is 1%. This means even less of a % is likely to purchase a product out of your followers.

Demographic:

Make sure the influencer has a solid demographic and isnt all over the place. Understand what type of demographic they have in terms of is their audience more men, women, is it a fitness influencer? music artist? travel blogger? etc. Don’t be a ceramic artist asking a fitness model to promote your ceramics. This is an example of two demographics that are entirely opposite of each other. If you’re paying for a collaboration with them, they might still do it; but it will be a waste of your money.

Agreements:

I can not stress this enough create a contract or agreement with the influencer. I’d hate to say it but an influencer will try to swindle you if they get a chance. I worked with many influencers in the past and learned how to be professional over the years. Always send a contract to set the tone that this is a business traction. Make sure you are in depth on what is allowed and what is not allowed during this collaboration. For example I offered personal training to a famous influencer offering my services, and while our collaboration was active she would promote weight loss teas that she wasn’t using. This was a conflict of interest and I then terminated the contract. Another thing she wouldn’t do is she wouldn’t post the videos of me training her (probably because she was promoting the teas). Once I noticed that I terminated everything. I worked with other influencers after , while learning from my mistake.

How To Approach An Influencer

If you don’t know how to market, you’re going to have to learn and perfect the technique of cold emailing. Create a script and send it to multiple influencers. Usually most influencers have their contact information public. A good example of cold emailing is:

“Hi (insert their name)! My name is Akapa and I am a personal trainer based in your area. I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I noticed your demographic is the same demographic that I am interested in promoting my product to. I was wondering if you would like to do a collaboration with me. I am willing to offer you personal training 3 times a week for 3 months in exchange for promotion. If this sounds like a collaboration you would like to take on please let me know!

Note: I did this in a way where I am offering time in exchange for promotion. If your job is a service this is one way you can exchange without paying money for a collaboration. If you do pay for a collaboration make sure you state you will pay them for x amount of time if they create x amount of post. Make sure this includes stories, posts, and videos.