How to hire an influencer: A guide for successful partnerships

As brands continue to rely on multiple social media accounts to reach audiences and grow, influencers have become a fundamental part of successful digital strategies. It’s not hard to see why—Influencer marketing can increase your brand’s reach, engagement and overall credibility.

But that’s only if marketers understand how to hire an influencer in the first place. The process of sourcing, contracting and managing influencer contracts plays a key role in the eventual success of any influencer campaign.

Read on to find out how to hire an influencer the right way, so you have a better chance of assuring success for your social marketing efforts.

Understand the process of hiring influencers

Marketers rarely stumble on the perfect influencer for their brand by chance. The hiring process needs to be treated as a dedicated strategy in its own right to establish strong working relationships with the right influencers from the get-go.

When you’re learning how to hire an influencer, consider the process as a type of recruitment, except you’re looking for independent contractors/freelancers instead of new employees. The typical influencer hiring process is made up of five key steps:

Influencer marketing tools, like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing (formerly Tagger), can help streamline this process. Below, we’ll go into detail on how to optimize each step.

Create an influencer shortlist to partner with

Learning how to hire an influencer successfully isn’t as simple as partnering with the biggest account you can find. A far more effective strategy is making sure you source influencers with the same target audience as your brand. Check out their profiles, posts and engagement rates.

Once you start finding an influencer make sure some, if not all, of the below metrics match with your business needs. When creating your influencer shortlist, consider using a data-driven solution like Sprout Influencer Marketing so you can easily track each influencer’s account performance. A dedicated platform like Sprout’s allows you to vet influencers, assess their alignment with your brand values and understand their audience demographics–without a bunch of manual research.

As you think about what influencers are right for your brand, watch our video on how to build the best influencer partnerships. These insights will provide a solid understanding that'll also support you through the later stages of influencer marketing.