Influencer Intelligence: Using Data to Understand the Influencer Community

Key Insights 📈

  • Influencer Marketing Still Growing: The influencer community is expanding, evidenced by academic programs focusing on influencer marketing, reflecting a significant demand and professionalization in this field​​.
  • Diverse Categories of Influencers Exist: Influencers span various categories, including generational, consumer, industry-specific, technological, DE&I, and platform-specific, necessitating tailored analytics to identify and work with the right influencers for specific marketing goals​​.
  • Influencer Intelligence Informs Business Decisions: Analyzing influencers’ data helps make informed business decisions, from identifying relevant influencers to assessing their impact and leveraging insights for campaigns and product development​​.
  • Influencer Intelligence is Evolving Beyond Celebrity Partnerships: The focus is shifting towards highly targeted goals like conversions and localized sales, with a need for precision in matching influencers to audience niches​​.
  • Research Ensures Relevant Influencer Matchmaking: Thorough research is crucial to align influencers with target audience demographics, interests, and behaviors, ensuring effective engagement and conversion opportunities​​.
  • Authenticity is Key in Influencer Endorsements: Authenticity and transparency are highly valued in influencer endorsements, with research tools needed to identify influencers who genuinely resonate with brand narratives​​.
  • Long-term Influencer Relationships Yield Compounding Benefits: Investing in long-term relationships with influencers can lead to greater trust and influence as influencers become defacto brand ambassadors and continue to support the brand organically over time​​.

The influencer community is exploding and shows no signs of slowing down. In 2022, Duke University launched a class for students who want to pursue influencer marketing on TikTok as a career. The demand is there and growing. It’s only a matter before content creators get their bachelor’s degree in influencer marketing.

It’s clear that millennials and Gen Z’ers trust influencers before purchasing products and want the same level of clout and payday as the ones they follow.

key insight

In 2019, a study from Morning Consult showed that 86% of Gen Z and millennials would post content for money, and 54% would become influencers if they had the opportunity (Source)

This is where influencer intelligence and research come into play. By analyzing various influencer communities and tracking their performance, you can understand which ones are most likely to provide a business impact on your influencer marketing programs. This is critical on so many levels.

There are hundreds of thousands of influencers on social media. So you must make intelligent, data-driven decisions on which ones to collaborate with for your programs. The influencer community can be broken down in so many different ways. Here’s one way to look at the influencer landscape:

  1. Generational influencers (Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, and yes, Boomers too)
  2. Consumer influencers (fashion, retail, beauty, skincare, sneakers, sports)
  3. Industry influencers (healthcare, manufacturing, telecommunications, and other niche industries)
  4. Technology influencers (5G, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science)
  5. DE&I influencers (cultural, Hispanic, Black, Asian, LGBTQ, accessibility)
  6. Social media platform-specific influencers (TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram)

The list goes on.

Using rigorous influencer intelligence and analytics can help you separate real influencers from those who pretend to be more influential than they are. It can also help you track an influencer’s performance over time once you determine which influencers to include in a campaign.

What is Influencer Intelligence?

influencer intelligence is researching and analyzing data on social media influencers to inform business decisions. This encompasses identifying relevant influencers, monitoring their online activities and engagement metrics, assessing their impact on target audiences, and leveraging those insights for strategic purposes like influencer marketing campaigns or product development initiatives.

At its core, influencer intelligence aims to quantify the often nebulous concept of “influence” by tracking tangible metrics like follower counts, post engagement rates, topics and content covered, demographics reached, and more. Armed with these data points, brands can zero in on partnering with the right influencers to achieve objectives around brand awareness, lead generation, sales growth, or community building around shared values.

tip

Influencer intelligence involves deep research and analytics to distinguish genuine influencers from pretenders. It quantifies influence using metrics like follower counts and engagement rates, which helps in selecting the right influencers for specific campaign goals​​.

In social media, influence is decentralized – everyone from celebrities to subject matter experts to everyday consumers can sway audience opinions and behaviors. Influencer intelligence helps filter an oversaturated landscape to spotlight authentic influencers who align with brand goals and have demonstrated the ability to drive results. These analytics aid ongoing relationship management to ensure continued value alignment, impact tracking, and optimization opportunities.

Initially associated predominantly with celebrity partnerships, the influencer marketing industry’s rapid maturation has also shifted the practice of influencer intelligence down-funnel. Beyond broad awareness plays, brands leverage activated communities for highly targeted goals around conversions, localized sales, employee advocacy, customer testimonials, and more. Precision matching niche influencers to audience niches takes real intelligence gathering and continual analytics.

At its heart, though, influencer intelligence starts by identifying the right influencers – filtering out peripheral noise by zeroing in on topic authorities and community leaders. This informs downstream decisions around relationship building, campaign activations, tool integrations, and measurement plans tailored specifically to each partnership. Tracking associated impact then feeds back into relationship intelligence to perpetuate an upward spiral over time.

Influencer Intelligence Examples

Table: Potential source for influencer intelligence

SourceDescriptionMetricsUse Cases
Social MediaDirect tracking of influencer profiles and activityFollowers, engagement, content topics, growthCore influencer identification, benchmarking, optimization
Media MentionsAnalyze reach/impact of outlets referencing influencerPublication tier, potential impressions, qual/quant tonePR valuation, 3rd party endorsement scoring
SurveysUnderstand audience perceptions of influencerAided/unaided awareness, favorability, attribute associationCelebrity partnership evaluation
Search DataTrack internet search volume for influencerRelative search frequency over timeInterest tracking, opportunity identification

These are just a few ways to discover content creators. No matter your method, the goal is to assess an influencer’s ability to drive marketing results.

Influencer Intelligence Case Study

Influencer intelligence can provide powerful insights to inform business strategy across various use cases. For example, I recently analyzed the concept of “digital transformation” – a broad term used pervasively across industries to describe technology-driven evolution.

Given the burst of digital acceleration spurred by COVID-19 disruptions, I wanted to benchmark perception, discussion trends, and influencer landscapes around this topic through an intelligence lens.

Research Methodology

My objective was to identify key players and influencers shaping the narrative and perception of digital transformation over recent years. This could in turn, inform organizational positioning, partnership opportunities, and external messaging strategies. I gathered influencer data and intelligence from three core sources:

Social Media

  • Analyzed topic engagement and conversations on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram to surface relevant influencers
  • Tracked number of mentions, potential reach, and audience demographics

News

  • Aggregated five years of digital transformation coverage across premium publisher sites
  • Identified frequently referenced companies and experts

Industry Landscape

  • Used Alexa.com organic search data to surface brands ranking highly for “digital transformation” searches
  • Validated findings via Wayback Machine archives to cross-reference historical positioning

Key Insights

The research revealed one standout organization leading across social conversations, news headlines, and organic search real estate – a prominent technology company headquartered near Seattle.

Analyzing through 2006, technologists and journalists already recognized coming waves of digital disruption decades ago that progressive companies would need to tackle. This first-mover foresight appears to have paved the way for this organization’s modern market dominance around the digital transformation narrative.

Influencer analysis provided further context – their executives are go-to sources for technology and business publications, while partnerships with key analysts and advisory firms propagate endorsements. These compounding effects solidify the perception of leadership over time.

Next Steps

While one clear market leader stood out, my analysis revealed pockets of opportunity across underserved niches and peripheral conversations. Follow-on activations could include:

  • Targeted partnership cultivation with surface-level yet highly engaged mid-tail influencers
  • Observation of sub-trend movements to assess opportunity windows
  • Shaping an alternative narrative of digital advancement for differentiated positioning

The methodology and framework also adapt to other strategic branding, marketing, and intelligence topics. Consistent gathering of environmental signals guides optimal visibility tactics amid constant change.

Why is Influencer Research Important?

Table: Snapshot influencer research factors

AspectOverviewKey Metrics forRisks/Mitigation
Target Audience AlignmentIdentifying influencers with followers matching your audienceFollower demographics, interestsMismatched audience: Use detailed analytics tools to verify alignment
Authenticity and CredibilityFinding influencers who genuinely fit with your brandBrand-influencer value congruence, past endorsementsInauthentic partnerships: Seek influencers with consistent, brand-aligned content
Optimizing ROISelecting influencers with a track record of audience engagementEngagement rate, conversion rate, past campaign successLow ROI: Set clear KPIs and regularly monitor campaign performance
Fraud DetectionIdentifying genuine influencers with real engagementFollower growth patterns, engagement authenticityInfluencer fraud: Use advanced analytics tools for authenticity checks
Strategic Planning and BenchmarkingUnderstanding an influencer’s past performance for better planningHistorical data on engagement, campaign outcomesUnrealistic expectations: Set benchmarks based on detailed performance analysis
Long-term RelationshipsBuilding ongoing partnerships with effective influencersLongevity of influencer relationships, repeated campaign successShort-term focus: Emphasize relationship building in influencer contracts
Understanding Trends and RelevanceStaying current with market trends through influencersTrend adoption rates, influencer’s role in trendsettingOutdated strategies: Regularly update research to stay on top of trends
Content Strategy InsightsGaining insights into effective content typesContent engagement analysis, audience feedbackMisaligned content: Continuously adapt content strategy based on insights

Target Audience Alignment

Thorough influencer research enables brands to identify influencers whose established communities and followers closely match a defined target audience’s demographics, interests, values, and behaviors. Rather than taking a spray-and-pray approach in hopes of reaching the right people, thoughtful vetting ensures marketing activations and campaigns engage relevant segments who actively interact with the influencers in question.

This precision matching guards against wasted spend and amplifies the likelihood that target groups are interested in brand messaging. It also paves the way for downstream conversion opportunities, as awareness and consideration-building foundations already exist within an influencer’s engaged community.

Authenticity and Credibility

Beyond pure audience alignment, research also uncovers which influencers can synergistically lend an authentic voice to brand narratives. Through demonstrated topical authorities, niche experts, brand fans, or customer advocates, marketing campaigns gain credibility by partnering with voices who genuinely appreciate the products or causes at the core of activations.

tip

The influencer marketing industry has evolved from celebrity-focused to more nuanced, targeting specific audience niches. Identifying and partnering with niche influencers for targeted goals is key to effective influencer marketing strategies​​.

Unlike old-school celebrity sponsorships, rising generations value transparency and authenticity in influencer endorsements. They are adept at detecting paid sponsorships that feel disconnected from an influencer’s interests or areas of expertise. Research tools highlight creators who organically embrace brand narratives as part of holistic identity, driving more believable and enduring partnerships over time.

Optimizing ROI

Careful vetting enables brands to pinpoint influencers with an established track record of engaging their community and motivating actions or behaviors preferred by campaign strategists. By analyzing historical performance data across areas like sales lifts, website traffic growth, code/link redemptions, and more, brands can forecast reasonable expectations around a paid media campaign return on investment.

Advanced measurement and modeling techniques quantify influencer marketing efficacy to financial returns, allowing confident investments in channels proven to deliver outcomes. Continuous optimization improves cost efficiency and overall program performance as intelligence feeds into relationship management.

Fraud Detection

As within any emerging industry, influencer marketing contends with degrees of fraudulent behavior like inflated followings, artificial engagement pumping, and more. Thorough influencer audits assess quantitative and qualitative signals to detect anomalous patterns indicative of deception. This protects brand investments and ensures messaging reaches real human beings rather than bots or paid farms.

As influencer marketing matures, a deep responsibility exists across all players to increase transparency and accountability. Responsible research promotes trust through advocacy groups, certification mechanisms, standardized metrics, and other industry initiatives. There will always be gaming degrees, but continual intelligence gathering minimizes blind spots.

Strategic Planning and Benchmarking

Compiling audience interests, engagement histories, preferential content types, partnership profiles and more enables intricate campaign plans reflective of each unique influencer partnership. Rather than boilerplate activations, customization drives better performance through tailored creative, messaging nuances, optimal channel recommendations, and synchronized timing.

tip

Influencer intelligence can provide business strategic insights, helping identify key players and shape marketing and partnership strategies, especially in rapidly evolving sectors like digital transformation​​.

Historical performance baselines also set realistic expectations around likely campaign results while allowing testing and iteration to improve outcomes over time. Continual intelligence gathering informs both strategic planning and benchmark-setting amidst constant internet shifts.

Long-term Relationships

Unlike transient advertising channels, brands that invest in long-term influencer relationships reap compounding benefits over time as trust builds. Through repeated activations and frequent touchpoints, influencers morph into defacto brand ambassadors who proactively voice support even without being paid directly. These affiliations authentically emerge through shared values, exclusivity benefits, and enduring positive associations.

Courtship gathering gives way to intimacy intelligence, revealing an impact beyond contractual obligations. Direct response conversions might taper off, but residual lifestyle evangelism persists organically across an influencer’s blog posts, social media, and community discussions.

Understanding Trends and Relevance

Thought leaders and micro-influencers focused on specific passion areas often embrace emerging interests, technologies, and cultural movements before mass awareness hits. Through constant pulse-taking, brands identify rising trends that might impact various functions like product development, brand messaging, and experience design.

tip

Influencer intelligence can reveal untapped market niches and opportunities, allowing for targeted partnerships and alternative narrative development to differentiate brands​​.

Early alignment with these movements sustains cultural relevance as audiences themselves evolve. Failure exposes brands to disruption threats if detached from the communities that best reflect target consumers. Influence intelligence provides leading indicators to monitor and iterate upon.

Content Strategy Insights

Social listening identifies best-resonating content across influencer profiles – from video formats, hashtag utilization, conversational tonality, etc. These patterns inform a brand’s content series to align with audience consumption preferences.

Monitoring third-party discussions reveals frequent pain points, objections, and natural language around branded topics. Content series directly tackle these issues through educational addressing or spotlighting customers who have overcome similar challenges.

This real-time research transforms sterile content into authentic community dialogue. Over time, brands earn trust by delivering genuine value rather than pure promotional fare.

Using Social Intelligence to Analyze Influencer Data

Once key influencers are identified, ongoing social listening provides invaluable pulse-taking into shifting opinions and interests within these communities. Brands can track:

  1. Conversational trends: Monitor topic patterns to see if any interests are gaining or declining in popularity.
  2. Real-time reactions: Spot new opportunities based on emerging themes fueling immediate attention.
  3. Contextual analysis: Examine specific discussion facets – are influencers debating technology obstacles or cultural impediments?
  4. Sentiment tracking: Assess smaller cohort feelings towards priority topics.

Powerful social media monitoring tools enable brands to gather these rich insights systematically across influencer profiles, prioritizing actionability. Key capabilities include flexible Boolean search queries to isolate discussion clusters, machine learning classifiers to detect nuanced sentiment variance, and historical pattern analyses to spotlight trend divergence. Workflow automation alerts analysts to spikes in volume, sentiment shifts, or new influencer emergence in real-time for rapid response. Custom reporting and collaborative analytics pave the way for shareable findings.

This intelligence provides early signals into the bleeding edge themes and frames influencing market opinions. It reveals how to refine messaging targeting to resonate more deeply. Influence thought leaders often presage consumer shifts well before mass adoption. Their early endorsement as allies lends momentum once those trends disseminate across broader segments. So thought leadership research creates invaluable competitive advantage – as long as findings permeate strategists and teams enterprise-wide.

tip

Effective influencer research aligns influencer communities with a brand’s target audience, ensuring relevance and potential for conversion, moving beyond superficial metrics​​.

The downstream impacts manifest across owned narratives, partner co-creation, product developments, and brand experiences. But activated change originates upstream through environmental awareness. In that sense, social intelligence provides the compass heading amid turbulent modern markets.

How to Make Influencer Intelligence Actionable

Influencer intelligence must catalyze real change rather than passively pile up. Actionable research permeates downstream executions across all PESO channels–owned, earned, and paid media channels

Table: How to apply influencer intelligence

ChannelTacticsMetricsRisks
Owned & Earned MediaInfuse insights into narratives and press mentions% of content influenced by research Brand and executive visibility Uplift in awareness, message pull-throughMissed opportunities Outdated or irrelevant messaging
Content MarketingShape content ideation and community interactionsConversation volume and sentiment Affinity and engagement scoresPoor resonance Misinterpretation of insights
On-page SEOOptimize page metadata and markupRankings, traffic, conversionsDilution of focus Over-optimization
Paid SearchExpand keywords and campaignsImpressions, CTR, conversionsWasted spend from irrelevance
Social OptimizationCreate optimized titles, descriptions, and assetsEngagement, community growthInauthentic tone Dissonance
ActivationGuide executive messaging and speakingQualified media opportunities SentimentReputation risks Inconsistency
CampaignsInject influencer perspectives into creative concepts and measurementPerformance vs. goal completionPoor attribution False positives

In isolation, influence research is merely that – words and data without inherent utility. But it becomes a powerful market compass when made actionable across message framing, experience development, and communication channels. Intelligence guides owners, strategists, and creatives to perpetually realign activities amid fluid disruption.

Monitoring global currents does not necessitate direct influencer activations or marketing campaigns to derive value. Simply by permeating insights downstream, organizations sustain resonance through relevance, preemption, and ally alignment – all originating from intelligence.

Using Research Before You Hire Influencers

Influencer marketing headlines continue to spotlight high-profile partnership success stories. However, substantial upfront research remains imperative for brands to avoid wasted investments when bringing on influencer partners. Without proper vetting, vanity metrics like follower counts or engagement ratios lack contextual insights into influence ability. Thoughtful analysis of reach, resonance, relevance, and brand reference reveals precision alignments between influencer impact and campaign objectives to drive real action.

tip

Careful selection of influencers based on historical performance data and a track record of genuine engagement is essential. This approach can forecast campaign ROI and ensure efficient investment in influencer marketing​​.

A common pitfall occurs when marketers prioritize flashy names without diligent inquiry into value fit, content resonance, or audience segmentation data. Significant brand investments yield negligible returns on promoted posts, videos, or hashtag challenges in these cases. Of course, extraneous factors always exist – campaign timing, product mismatches, website friction, and more sway performance. The lack of rigorous initial research massively heightens the risks of disappointment. No activation can single-handedly drive sales without research confirming product-market fit and consumer interest.

Establishing an insights-led vetting framework minimizes blind spots through two critical phases:

  1. Upfront Audit: Thorough discovery provides credibility benchmarks through granular analysis of audience demographics, values congruence, preferential content formats, and channel efficacy.
  2. Ongoing Optimization: Post-launch monitoring helps continuously improve future activations via performance benchmarking, trend analysis, and predictive modeling.

In aggregate, research fuels unprecedented alignments between influencers and strategic goals to sustain competitive advantage.

Influencer Research Tools

The explosive rise of influencer marketing fuels parallel innovation in analytics providers and intelligence tools. Hundreds of startups now jockey for positions with promises to identify untapped networks expose fraudulent followers, or benchmark performance through proprietary algorithms.

Navigating the crowded landscape overwhelms uninformed buyers. But thorough diligence matching business challenges to functional expertise calibrates expectations. Not all influencer intelligence solutions serve equal utility across objectives and activation types. Smart marketers audit strengths against use case priorities and data transparency before buying.

For example, quantifying campaign ROI requires channel-specific conversion APIs and deterministic measurement. Niche mapping relies on multi-variant clustering engines. Values alignment assessment benefits from natural language processing and semantic analysis. Some providers excel at discovery through crawled data aggregation, while others focus on post-launch optimization via deep learning. Hybrid tools attempt to stretch across the full spectrum but risk mastering none.

The most sustainable partnerships stem from precision pairings where technology capabilities directly address defined needs. An overarching framework centralizes insights across point solutions into a unified command center. However, specialized tools avoid grazing fields beyond core competency.

Regardless of approach, buyer vetting verifies vendor viability, solution roadmaps, and responsiveness cadences before large-scale commitments. Just as brands research influencers themselves, so too should they evaluate the technologies and partners supporting program success.

Here’s a list of five highly regarded tools, each known for its unique features and capabilities:

  1. BuzzSumo: BuzzSumo is a versatile tool that excels in content research and influencer identification. It allows you to search for influencers based on keywords and niches, offering insights into their reach, authority, and engagement levels. This tool is particularly useful for finding content creators who significantly impact your industry.
  2. Upfluence: Specializing in influencer discovery and campaign management, Upfluence is a comprehensive platform providing in-depth analytics on influencer performance. It allows for efficient searching through a vast database of influencers across various social media platforms, helping brands identify the most relevant influencers for their campaigns.
  3. HypeAuditor: Focused on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok, HypeAuditor is renowned for its analytics and fraud detection capabilities. It offers detailed reports on influencer audience demographics, engagement rates, and the authenticity of their followers, making it a valuable tool for ensuring genuine influencer partnerships.
  4. Klear: Klear is a powerful tool for finding influencers and analyzing their social media profiles. It offers extensive data on influencers’ audience demographics and engagement patterns, making it easier for marketers to target their campaigns effectively. Klear’s advanced search filters help refine searches to find the most suitable influencers.
  5. AspireIQ (formerly Revfluence): AspireIQ is a platform that streamlines the process of connecting brands with influencers. It offers a large database of influencers and provides tools for managing collaborations, tracking campaign performance, and measuring ROI. AspireIQ is particularly user-friendly, making it a good choice for those new to influencer marketing.

Remember, the best influencer marketing research tool is not $24 a/month. You get what you pay for.

Wrap-Up Thoughts

Influencer marketing transcends superficial vanity metrics by embracing nuanced intelligence. Follower counts, and engagement ratios lack contextual insights on influence ability and audience alignment. Instead, brands should focus on forging strategic partnerships grounded in credibility and authenticity – the true resonance drivers.

This requires thorough vetting beyond surface-level metrics into values congruence, preferential content formats, and channel efficacy. Granular analysis sizes potential partnerships across dimensions like true audience demographics, historical campaign performance, and even predictive return-on-investment modeling. Tracking hard conversion data and soft affinity signals over time reveals genuine influence – especially among rising generations valuing transparency.

This intelligence ultimately guides brands in uncovering aligned yet underutilized niche communities and micro-influencers. It informs campaign creatives, personalized assets, and measurement plans tailored to what precisely motivates target segments. Data-driven insights feed into relationship management, continuous optimization improves cost efficiency and overall program performance.

The evolving landscape of influencer marketing demands such nuanced understanding of ever-emergent influencer dynamics and audience preferences. Influencer intelligence has thus become indispensable for resonant messaging and experience development amid fluid modern markets. It provides the compass heading to reach consumers overwhelmed by fragmentation and platform noise. A data-informed approach drives relevance, engagement, and strong ROI amid turbulent technological change. Influence intelligence separates transient fads from enduring strategies.

Michael Brito

Michael Brito is a Digital OG. He’s been building brands online since Al Gore invented the Internet. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.