Analyze Influencer Profiles With Help From Artificial Intelligence

If you’ve ever tried to find influencers to promote your brand in marketing campaigns, you’ve probably realized that there are a lot of details to consider before choosing who to collaborate with. 

This process can be overwhelming and labor-intensive if you don’t have the data you need to complete your analysis. Thankfully, artificial intelligence can help you out. You just need to know what to look out for, but we’ve got you covered on that.

AI in the influencer discovery process

In order to take advantage of using artificial intelligence in your influencer search, you’ll have to subscribe to an influencer marketing platform. These platforms are an alternative to having to ask influencers for their internal metrics or to hiring costly agencies to do that for you. 

An influencer marketing platform allows you to search using filters, so that you see only the results that interest you. For example, if you want to see Instagram influencers working in the fashion category who have 15-50K followers and high engagement, you can plug those parameters into the filters.

Then, when viewing the results, the platform will show you performance metrics about each influencer’s profile, such as:

  • Follower number and growth
  • Engagement rate
  • Audience demographics and authenticity
  • Branded content performance

Moreover, save interesting results to customizable lists. You can use these lists to keep track of your campaigns, compare influencers, or even download a spreadsheet to help automate your outreach.

How AI can help you analyze metrics and spot influencer fraud

Influencer fraud remains a concern for marketers, so it’s important to know how to recognize it. AI can help you with that, as it can quickly and seamlessly compare data over time or compare influencers to their peers. Let’s look at a few ways to spot fraud when analyzing influencer profiles with AI.

Check that growth is organic

Organic growth means that an influencer’s followers found their profile and decided to follow them because of their content. This kind of growth happens slowly over time, and if you plot it out visually, it would look like a gentle slope upwards.

On the other hand, if you see sudden spikes in growth, it suggests something else. First, search a bit to see if the influencer went viral or hosted a giveaway around the date of the spike. Both of these are legitimate explanations for sudden growth.

In this specific case, the spike in follower growth was due to the influencer debuting on a reality TV show. Notice that now his growth is tapering off and he’s slowly losing followers.

However, if you can’t find any logical explanation for such rapid growth, the data may be showing you that the influencer bought a batch of fake followers. So it’s best to prioritize influencers with healthy growth, even if they don’t have a huge number of followers yet.

Beware extreme engagement rate

Engagement rate is a metric that shows the level of interaction between an influencer and their followers. Followers who trust the influencer and enjoy their content are more likely to interact with it through likes, comments, shares, etc.

Engagement varies by network and follower count, so always use AI to compare an influencer to their peers, or know the industry averages for the peer group you’re evaluating.

Very low engagement is obviously bad, as it shows that people aren’t interested in the influencer’s content. But low engagement can also show fake followers. When influencers buy followers, the bots drive up follower count, but decrease engagement, as they don’t interact with content.

Additionally, beware extremely high engagement, because influencers can also buy fake engagements. When the AI compares the influencer’s engagement rate to that of their peers, it can notify you of suspiciously high rates. 

This influencer’s engagement rate is so high when compared to their peers that it may be too good to be true.

Take a look at audience demographics

Another way to spot influencer fraud is looking at audience demographics. This is also an important step in making sure that the influencer’s followers match the target audience for your campaign. 

Audience demographics can show you info about the audience’s location, as seen above.

Assessing demographics like age, gender, interests, country or language can help you spot irregularities that may be signs of fake followers. For example, if you see that a majority of the audience is located in Russia, but the influencer is based in Mexico and has nothing to do with Russia, something could be up.

Verify that the audience consists of real people

Another way AI can help you spot fake followers is with an authenticity analysis. This evaluates the audience for behaviors that are typical of bots. 

An audience authenticity analysis from an influencer marketing platform.

It’s normal for influencers to have a small percentage of fake followers. But if you start to see large portions of the audience that look suspicious, you should evaluate this metric in conjunction with the others on this list, or ask the influencer for further details about their audience.

Conclusion

Finding influencers can be tricky, but AI can help you simplify the process. Just remember to thoroughly analyze influencer profiles before choosing who to collaborate with so that you can spot any potential influencer fraud and make an informed decision for your brand.

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