When working with an influencer to promote your books, in order to have the highest chance of success, you'll want to make sure you're choosing the right person for the job. That involves doing your research before reaching out to make contact, including using influencer discovery platforms and tools to find the best people for your needs.
Think about the influencer's content, audience demographics, and engagement to identify who most closely aligns with your book’s themes, genre, and target audience. You want someone who can help you sell more books, but also a person who's easy to work with and who'll provide you with a great way to get closer to your goals. Here are the biggest key considerations you should be looking for when choosing an influencer.
1. Audience Demographics & Psychographics
Understanding the influencer's audience is a vital part of making sure you're selecting the right person.
- Demographics refer to things such as the audience's age, gender, location, career, and education
- Psychographics are qualitative measurements involving goals, values, lifestyle choices, interests, and desires.
A mix of these two areas gives you the best chance of finding people who want to read your book. Demographics matter, of course, since you wouldn't market a teen book to people in their 50s or 60s. However, you also want to make sure you're looking for an influencer with the right audience based on interests and goals, too.
Making sure the influencer's audience and your target reader demographic are compatible is a great way to help your marketing efforts reach people who want to read books like yours. After all, if your target reader isn't someone who can relate to the influencer marketing your books, that could hurt your sales and stop people from buying.
2. Style, Branding, & Voice
Evaluating the content style, voice, and branding of an influencer also matters, because the tone, messaging, and overall feel of their content all must work for you and the people you're trying to reach. If your book is marketed by people who don't understand the audience you're trying to reach, you're not going to see as much success.
Ensuring compatibility between the influencer's persona and your book's brand image is crucial and will increase the odds that your book will perform well. No matter what influencer you choose, there's no guarantee of success, but you can increase your odds by taking the time to find the right influencer for your goals. Ideally, this is either someone who already talks about books, or who has a very similar image to the book you're marketing, or both.
NOTE: As you're looking for an influencer, make sure you stay open to unique ways to reach your intended audience. For example, a mommy blogger could be a great person to partner with if you have a children's book, but they could also help you market a parenting book, a romance novel, or even a "find yourself after motherhood" style of book. You could have far more opportunities than you realize at first, so consider all of the options.
3. Audience Size
The size of the influencer's audience matters, and exploring the different types of influencers based on audience size (macro, micro, nano) is another way to help narrow down who you want to work with and which influencers might be the best choice for your needs.
- Macro influencers have 500K to one million followers
- Micro influencers are in the 10K to 100K followers range
- Nano influencers are smaller, with follower counts in the 1K to 10K range
Your first reaction might be to look for macro influencers because of the size of their reach—but if your book is in a more niche area, you could have better success with a micro or even nano influencer. The audience size isn't always as important as the dedicated nature of that audience or the level of focus and interest they have in a particular subject area. The right micro influencer might bring in the same reach as a macro influencer if the audiences align!
Understanding the advantages and limitations of each influencer size is the best place to start when making a determination of influencer value in this particular area. You should consider your campaign objectives, budget, and target audience when selecting influencer size, and spend some time looking into what each of your potential influencers is doing when it comes to interacting with their audience and promoting products. You want someone who will get your message out effectively.
4. Influencer’s Stats
Analyzing key performance metrics such as engagement rate, reach, and growth rate is also a valuable way to find an influencer. If you've already narrowed your search down to several options based on audience size, demographics, and style, stats are the next logical consideration. You want an influencer who's engaged with their audience and who posts frequently, which helps their audience continue to trust and value what they have to say.
You should also look at whether the influencer is just posting content and liking comments, or if they actually have the ability to drive meaningful interactions and conversations. There needs to be real interaction, especially if you're looking for influencers for more profound, detailed, or deep subjects.
Taking into consideration the authenticity and credibility of the influencer's audience engagement is well worth doing, even if it takes some time. Choosing the wrong influencer could be an expensive lesson and require you to make big adjustments to your future marketing plans in order to increase your book's sales. Fortunately, you're less likely to have that problem if you take the time to find the right influencer from the beginning.
5. Costs & Pricing
Understanding all the factors that affect influencer pricing also matters. If you have a small marketing budget, whether you you're an author or a publisher, some influencers may simply be out of reach. Others might be more affordable, but they won't necessarily give you the right audience or interaction levels. You'll need to make sure that you're evaluating the cost-effectiveness of partnering with influencers based on campaign objectives and budget, so everything stays affordable.
Negotiating fair compensation terms and agreements with influencers can take some time, but it's well worth doing when you're trying to find the best fit for your needs. You don't want to settle for an influencer who doesn't have the following you need, but you also don't want to use your entire budget on a couple of posts from one influencer. There's a balancing act in finding the best influencer for your particular needs.
The Bottom Line on Choosing an Influencer
The most important thing to remember about choosing the right influencer is that it's a multi-faceted process. If you only focus on the cost, or the audience, or the brand voice, you'll be overlooking a lot of other areas that also matter. There's no reason to settle for anything less than the best influencer for your book, when you take the time to go over each aspect of what you're looking for and find the person that fits. Not only can that help with better sales, but you'll generally have a better experience and a lot more peace of mind, as well.
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