Influencer marketing is tough.
With so many influencers on so many platforms, it’s hard to know how to choose.
Thankfully, having the right influencer marketing tools can help.
But then the problem starts again: There are a lot of paid and free influencer marketing tools out there, and it’s difficult to know which will be the most effective.
That’s why for this article, we’ve narrowed it down to the top three types of Influencer Marketing tools we recommend for brands.
If you use just these three, you’ll vastly improve your chances of finding and hiring great influencers.
Whether you’re new to influencer marketing or just want better results, these tools can help. We’ll talk about what they are in a second, but first– let’s discuss why you want tools for influencer marketing.
And just FYI, these tools only work for influencers; if you're looking for content creators, they're not useful, unfortunately.
Why should brands use tools for influencer marketing?
At first glance, it might seem like influencer marketing tools add extra time and work.
But if you don’t use tools for influencer marketing, you’ll waste even more time… Not to mention money!
You’re paying these influencers to help you do a very specific task– get your brand in front of more potential customers. Before you sign a contract, it’s a good idea to figure out:
- If the followers they have are real (Fake followers = bad ROI)
- If their followers are invested in their posts (Disengaged followers = also bad ROI)
If you don’t, you risk running campaigns that go nowhere.
This is the single, most important reason you want to use influencer marketing tools: to do your due diligence so you KNOW how much a particular influencer can *actually* help your brand.
Because here’s the deal: not every influencer can deliver the same results for your brand. You can waste tons of time and money on a campaign that does nothing.
If you’ve ever been tempted to think, “Influencer marketing doesn’t work!” There’s a good chance that you were hiring someone whose followers were fake or unengaged.
Influencer marketing tools help put the control back in your hands. When you use them, you’ll know if an influencer can increase your brand awareness and sales.
The influencer marketing tools
Now that you know why you want to use influencer marketing tools, let’s talk about the tools themselves! In this section, we’ll cover the basic types you’ll want to use. We’ll also teach you how you can double-check their accuracy.
Fake Followers Checker
A fake followers checker will tell you how many of an influencer’s followers are real.
This is a great way to vet potential influencers before you reach out.
Here’s how they work: They analyze an influencer’s followers and look for specific signs of fake followers. They look for red flags like profiles with no posts, no followers, or a small list of profiles they follow. They also look for profiles without any sort of activity (engagement) or that seem random or erratic.
Please note: Any fake follower checker is going to be slightly inaccurate because it’s based on public data.
After reading how these checkers work, you might be thinking, “I KNOW people whose accounts look like that, and they’re real people!” That’s why these checkers aren’t 100% accurate. It’s based on their best guess and how fake accounts usually look. Generally speaking, they’ll be able to give you a good approximation of how many of an influencer’s followers are fake.
If you only work with a few influencers a month, you don’t even need a tool to do this. You can check a sample of their followers yourself to see if you spot any signs that the accounts are fake. This isn’t a scalable solution, and you won’t be able to check all their followers, but it’s free and you can get a pretty good idea of their real-to-fake followers ratio.
While we’re on the topic of fake followers, it’s worth bringing up a related, but different thing to watch out for: Follow-for-follow loops.
Beware follow-for-follow loops
You may have noticed some accounts using the words “follow for a follow” in their posts or bios. This is something real accounts use to boost engagement and followers. If someone follows the influencer, they will follow them back and support each other’s posts.
From the influencer’s perspective, it’s great– they’re tricking the algorithm into showing their content to more people.
However, it’s horrible for your brand. People doing follow-for-follow don’t care about what the influencer posts. They want more followers for themselves.
Fake follower checkers can’t pick up on these loops, because the accounts involved are real. If you’re considering hiring an influencer, it’s worth checking their account to see if they have a lot of fluffy, generic comments like, “~this is so cute~” from other influencers in their space. If they do, that’s a sign that their audience might not be as engaged as they appear.
Speaking of engagement, let’s talk about another great influencer marketing tool:
Engagement rate calculator
An engagement rate calculator will tell you how often the influencer and their audience interact. This can be measured by things like likes, shares, and comments.
It’s a good idea to use an engagement rate calculator after using a fake followers checker. If they have a lot of fake followers, there’s no point in checking how engaged they are.
But, if they have no fake followers (or a small percentage of them), then it’s worth checking their engagement rate.
Generally, the more engaged an influencer’s followers are, the more sales you’ll get from their campaigns. Their audience trusts them, and they’re more likely to make a purchase based on their recommendation.
Please note: Some engagement rate calculators are inaccurate because they use data from all the influencer’s posts, ever. For example, if the influencer has 300 posts, the calculator will scrape data from all of them and answer based on that.
But for your purposes, you only need to know about recent engagement rates.
If you’re looking at a healthy influencer profile, you’re going to see that their most recent posts are outperforming their earlier posts. This makes sense– no one (except maybe people who are already celebrities) is a mega-hit right from the start.
Here’s a hack you can use to double-check engagement rates yourself: Add up the likes and comments from an influencer’s last 6 posts, divide them by the number of followers, and multiply that by 100. This should give you a more accurate percentage.
Pro tip: Your brand has a better chance of getting more sales with an influencer who has fewer followers, but a higher engagement rate. Generally, the more followers an influencer has, the less engaged their followers are. So when you’re looking for an influencer, try to find that sweet spot where their engagement is still high. Generally, these will be micro-influencers.
Influencer lookalikes
Okay, now that you have the tools to find amazing influencers, let’s imagine for a moment that you’ve found the PERFECT influencer.
You’ve worked with them, they created brand awareness that generated sales for you, and you’re ready for more. You want to find more influencers just like them, to keep increasing sales.
The solution? An influencer lookalike tool.
Influencer lookalike tools simply find other influencers that have similar analytics and profiles to the ones that have performed well for you. Plug in the social media handle of an influencer you’ve successfully worked with, and they will look for other influencers who are similar.
Of course, influencer lookalikes won’t be 100% accurate– that’s impossible. But, searching for influencer lookalikes should give you somewhere to start.
When you find a new influencer, you can run them through your fake followers checker and engagement rate calculator of choice– and start the cycle all over again.
Build your influencer marketing engine
If you use a combination of these three types of tools, you have the pieces to build a powerful research engine for your influencer marketing campaigns:
- You’ll be better able to spot high-quality influencers
- You’ll know who’s most likely to boost your sales
- And when you find a winner, you’ll be able to find more
That’s why we believe these are the best influencer marketing tools your brand can use.
Of course, none of them are 100% accurate since they’re based on publicly available data. If you want more accurate data, you’ll need to work with a platform like Social Cat that integrates directly with social media platforms, so you can see real-time metrics.
We're covering how to reach out to influencers as well if that's something you need help with.
Do you agree with our list, or did we miss something?
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