How to find and activate an Instagram fashion influencers

Finding Instagram Fashion Influencers 

‍

Influencer marketing is taking more and more importance within the business world. Brands acknowledge the benefits of working with content creators on social media rather than only having paid ads as their marketing strategy. Influencer marketing gives brands a chance to present original, authentic, and creative work to a specific or massive audience depending on their needs and objectives. 

‍

Moreover, a specific and popular community is known for working very well with brands and providing excellent results: fashion. Fashion influencers are one of the most significant Instagram communities. Countless influencers love to share their looks, designs, critics, and overviews on this social media platform. It groups all formats necessary, from quality pictures, short and long video formats to stories, Q&A (for user insight), and other communication channels. Thus, the higher the variety of formats, the higher possibilities of content for sponsored posts! 

‍

Okay, so it’s great for fashion brands to work with Instagram fashion influencers, but what about finding the influencers for their collaborations? As we said, the Instagram fashion community is massive. So how exactly can brands find the right influencers that match their objectives and needs?

‍

Where to look for Instagram Influencers? 

‍

Two options are available for a brand to find a good influencer. 

‍

1. Manual Search

‍

Firstly, look at the most popular Instagram fashion influencers and the ones they follow. You can have a look at their content and number of followers. Then look at similar profiles and select the ones that fit with your brand image. 

‍

Now, if your brand is looking for smaller influencers, it’s a bit trickier as there are more nano-, micro-, and middle- influencers than macro- and mega-influencers. So you can go in the Instagram search section and look at the Instagram accounts suggestions and look at similar profiles once again. 

‍

You can access specific niches as Instagram suggested profiles often have the same feed style, number of followers, location, and influencer audience. Yet the process of manually searching for influencers on Instagram can be time-consuming.

‍

2. The Favikon Solution

‍

However, a second solution can save you time in the research process. Favikon is an influencer marketing tool that provides you access to a database of over 9 million influencers’ profiles. This tool has several features such as the Discovery solution, a search bar with 23 filters to help you find the right influencer. 

‍

‍

With the Discovery feature, you can search influencers by category using 

• keywords (in this case, you would search “fashion,” “outfit,” etc)
• gender
• age (min age and/or max)
• location
• language
• influencer tier(are you looking for micro-, middle- mega-influencers?)
• etc.

‍

All in all you can find thousands of influencers that correspond to your expectations in less than a minute! And guess what? If you find the perfect influencer, Favikon has its own “similar profiles” section that will suggest profiles with similar KPIs, followers, audience, keywords etc. 

‍

But can you already contact the influencer once you’ve found one with the suitable feed and number of followers? 

‍

Absolutely… NOT!

How to select fashion influencers? 

‍

Before contacting an influencer, it’s an absolute must to evaluate their key performance indicators (KPI), such as their reach, engagement rate, visibility, content diversity, account activity, etc. That is how you’ll know if the influencer corresponds to your necessities and can reach your objectives. 

‍

For example: if your goal is to have greater engagement, their engagement rate will be the first ratio you’ll be checking. If the influencer has a low engagement rate, you do not want to be working with them as they do not communicate with their audience, so there is a higher chance that your influencer campaign won’t be successful.

‍

The manual option requires you to calculate all the influencers’ key performance indicators manually, thus going over each post to calculate their reach, engagement, comment and like ratio, etc... This process can be very time-consuming due to the variable results you can obtain and the number of influencers you need for your influencer campaign. Going through this process implies:

‍

• A repeated process: if they have negative ratios, you’ll need to find other influencers and start the calculations all over again with a different profile
• Missing information: influencers can have excellent scores, thus, ask for a higher paycheck than you expected as you don’t know their Market Prices. Moreover, you don’t have access to their Advertising Performances (Ad efficiency, cost per engagement, etc.) 

‍

But don't worry, there is a second option, so don't freak out!

‍

With Favikon you have direct access to all of the influencer's KPIs, Advertising performances, most popular posts, and that with zero calculations or evaluations!

‍

Plus Favikon created a unique score that considers the influencer's overall metrics. From 0 as the lowest and 5 as the best Favikon score, you can add a request of only searching influencers with a high score in the Discovery process. 

‍

To wrap it all in a shell, when finding a fashion Instagram influencer profile that interests you, you can check their audit on Favikon, and have a look at their:

• Core metrics (engagement rate, account growth, audience quality, and saturation rate)
• Additional Metrics (hashtag quality, account activity, content diversity, etc.)
• Previous partnerships
• Advertising performances
• Types of publications

‍

Now onto the next step! You’ve found your perfect fashion Instagram influencer and are planning your influencer campaign. But which type of collab should work best for your brand?

‍

Work with Fashion Influencers on Instagram 

‍

As we said previously, Instagram has various functionalities (carousels, reels, stories, lives, e-shops etc). And to know which one you need, you should choose a type of content for your collab. The social network is also known for the numerous kinds of collabs! 

‍

If you want the influencer to showcase different products, then a Haul is the best solution, and creating a reel is the best format. In the video, your influencer can try on different outfits of your brand and show their audience how they wear them. A reel ads movement, authenticity, and more details on what to expect from the brand's products as we can see them from different angles. 

‍

However, if the objective is to gain engagement and visibility in a short period, lives can generate great results too. On a live shopping, the influencer can answer questions directly in front of the camera and show the product in more detail as there is no time restriction. 

‍

Or do you want a surprise effect from the influencer to generate authenticity? Then maybe an unboxing could be a suitable format for your collab.

‍

Finally, if the goal is to work on your brand image and gain visibility rather than engagement, the number one goal is to showcase the product or outfit professionally. And what better way to do so than by using a carousel! The influencer can do product placement by sharing a few pictures of a photo shoot, positively affecting your brand image.

‍

What you need to know about fashion influencers

‍

Sending your products to fashion Instagram influencers is crucial for many reasons. 

‍

• They will better advertise a product they can wear as they will find small qualities they like and share them with their audience.
• It brings a more authentic image if the influencer has many outfits from the brand as it looks like they wear the brand in their daily life and not just for a collab.

‍

Thus the best way to partner with a fashion Instagram influencer is to send them a few products several times. Moreover, suppose your brand sends gifts in addition to the number of products agreed upon in the contract. In that case, there is a high chance that the influencer will communicate their positive experience with your brand to their followers and other influencers. Working on your relationship with the influencers is crucial! If you reach outstanding results from your influencer campaign, your brand could plan a long-term partnership with the influencer, and this new project is only conceivable if the influencer has a good feeling about your brand. In the case of a long-term partnership, your brand could send new seasonal products to the influencer for every new collection.

‍

For functional reasons, when sending products to the influencer, it is essential to send them with their reference. It will significantly help your collab if the users know exactly how to find the product the influencer is wearing.

‍

Finally, many fashion Instagram influencers mention the brands they wear so their audience can recreate their outfits. This doesn't mean the influencer has partnered with these brands, but it affects how your partnership should be planned. Suppose you are about to work with an influencer that often identifies brands. You might want to design an original description, ask them to tag you, turn on the "sponsored content" in the Instagram functionalities or use the #ad. And don't forget to create original and diverse content to stand out from their other posts, which in other words, represent the competition.

‍