Are you looking for TikTok influencers to represent your brand and promote your products, but are having a hard time finding potential matches? There are so many types of influencers and trending content out there, knowing where to start can be overwhelming. Simply looking at follower count and engagement rate isn’t enough, either.
Choosing the right TikTok influencers for your brand is crucial: they’ll act as an extension of what your brand wants to communicate and what it stands for. Make the wrong choice, and your campaign budget could end up in a pile of smoke, or worse, you could have a PR disaster on your hands.
To help you, here are 7 key factors to consider when choosing TikTok influencers to work with on your next campaign.
1. TikTok influencer size
There are 4 main influencer types based on their following size: Nano, Micro, Macro, and Mega influencers. These categories are a helpful guide to gauge what an influencer can bring to your brand when it comes to reach versus engagement.
Nano TikTok influencers
First off, nano influencers are relatively new to the platform and have a smaller following count, between 1,000 to 10,000 followers. Their content is usually very niche and narrow, but it attracts a highly engaged crowd of viewers who share similar interests and passions. Such creators have a strong influence in their communities and are seen as go-to people in their specific niche.
Micro TikTok influencers
A micro influencer has a following size from 10,000 to 50,000 followers. This kind of influencer focuses on a specific but slightly broader niche, and so has both a larger reach and a strong relationship with the audience.
Macro TikTok influencers
A macro influencer, on the other hand, is well-established on the platform and has a larger following between 50,000 to 500,000 followers. These influencers have usually gained fame through TikTok itself, or via other social platforms like YouTube and Instagram.
Think Bretman Rock, Emma Chamberlain, or Liza Koshy. Macro influencers have a solid fanbase who want to see their day-to-day lives, share exciting experiences, and get inspired. Their reach is significant, however they’re definitely far less relatable than their nano or micro counterparts, which typically leads to lower engagement.
Mega TikTok influencers
Lastly, mega influencers rank the highest in the social media influencer hierarchy, with over 500,000 followers. These types of influencers are A or B-list celebrities who have a diverse follower base with varied interests. Their audience is typically less engaged, since their content appeals to a broad audience and covers several niches, and they’re naturally less relatable than more niche influencers.
Clearly, cost is a key constraint when choosing influencers based on size: working with macro or mega influencers will require a larger talent budget compared to micro and nano creators, for instance.
Beyond account size, engagement rate is also a key factor here.
2. TikTok engagement rate
Engagement rate is an important metric used by marketers to measure the performance of any piece of social media content. It’s usually one of the key performance indicators to help both brands and influencers assess the success of a campaign.
By assessing a creator’s average engagement rate, you can quickly get an idea of whether they are right for your marketing goals.
To calculate engagement rates, all you need to do is sum up all interactions (likes, comments, shares) on a piece of content and divide it by the number of followers of the given account. Keep in mind that engagement rate is calculated differently across social media platforms.
3. Influencer location
Geographic location is another aspect you need to look into when selecting influencers for a campaign.
You might be wondering why location matters in our globally-connected world…There are 2 reasons.
International or local approach?
Your campaign strategy might be global or more local, depending on the target audience’s language, culture and other location-specific factors.
This choice also depends on your overall ambition with the campaign. Do you want to launch your products on a global scale? Or test out a new product line with smaller creators who are region-specific and have super-targeted, highly-engaged followers in your niche?
Clarify your approach first to narrow down your options. If your brand only sells products or services in certain markets, you’ll want to make sure that your chosen TikTok influencers are based in those countries, and that their followers are also primarily based in the same locations.
You don’t want to partner up with a creator based in Asia, when your product can only be shipped in Europe because the company’s supply chain doesn’t currently support global shipping! Such a collaboration may increase brand awareness amongst Asian-based viewers, but will bring very little value and no conversions to your brand.
Quick tip: try out HypeTrace. It’s a social media marketing tool that helps you filter down influencers based on location. All you have to do is pick a niche amongst a list of options, select the type of reach your brand is after (Nano, Micro, Macro, or Mega), and the target country.
Cost implications
If you want creators to showcase your products in their videos, shipping costs will come into the picture. So once more, depending on the agreed budget for the campaign, it may or may not make sense to work with influencers who are based far from where your brand operates from.
4. Cross-platform presence
Check out which other platforms your potential TikTok influencers have accounts on. Not only can you identify where you could get them to cross-post content, but you can also see which platform generates the highest engagement and what type of content works best for them.
5. TikTok niche
Next up, an influencer’s niche should be relevant to your brand’s industry, messaging, and tone of voice.
You can quickly identify this by looking at the hashtags used by the creator on their content.
Say if your brand is into fashion, search for any fashion-related hashtags. This will show the top content related to these hashtags, which viewers are most interested in. Your ideal creator will often use similar hashtags in their content.
Beyond hashtags, the creator should also be posting content that lends itself well to your brand.
Here are some examples:
- For cleaning products or services, try cleaning-focused creators.
- For food, look into mukbang video creators.
- For clothing, connect with fashion and beauty influencers who like to showcase their new looks.
- If your brand offers a workout and lifestyle app, tap into fitness influencers who share helpful tips with their followers.
- If your brand sells cosmetic products, make-up gurus who often do product reviews are your go-to.
6. Type of content
Once you have a shortlist of 5 to 10 TikTok influencers for your campaign, consider the specific type of content you want, and whether this aligns with the creators’ existing content.
As an example, if your goal is to push out product reviews, then the creators’ page should include talking videos and product demonstrations. This is so the branded content appears natural and organic on the influencer’s profile. If it stands out too much, it will come off as overly promotional, which TikTok users typically don’t like – and the creator will probably end up taking the video down as soon as they can.
Other types of TikTok content to consider include:
- Storytelling, captivating content, if your products lend themselves well to this or you have an interesting brand story to tell.
- Humorous content and jokes, if this matches your brand tone and personality.
- Get Ready With Me (GRWM) content, where products can easily be integrated.
7. TikTok audience demographics
Lastly, you need to study your chosen TikTok influencers’ audience demographics, including gender, age, and location. This is critical to ensure you’ll reach the right audience by working with them.
You could do this manually by checking interactions on the creators’ posts, especially comments, and see who the most engaged viewers are.
This isn’t efficient or scalable, so instead use a social media analytics tool. It’ll make your life a whole lot easier and automate the analytical part, including campaign reporting and more.
You can try out HypeAuditor, which measures engagement rates and track creators’ audience data.
Beside all the above, there are still a few pitfalls you need to be aware of before making your final choice.
A few things you need to pay attention to…
Fake TikTok Influencers
It’s no news that many TikTok profiles are simply fake. It’s easier than ever to buy followers, likes, or even comments and pretend to be a legit influencer – so you need to know how to spot fake influencers.
Here are some telltale signs.
1. Engagement rates don’t align with following size
Fake influencers sometimes have a huge number of followers, yet only an insignificant number of likes or comments on their posts. In other cases, their engagement is totally inconsistent across posts – some get tons of engagement, other similar posts get close to none.
2. Odd comments and follower names
Even if the number of likes and comments seems to align with follower count, in most cases the comments include totally irrelevant text or only random emojis. On top of this, by looking at the profile’s followers, you might see odd or similar names that don’t seem legit. Most followers could also be from the same location for no apparent reason.
Quick tip: use a free tool like HypeAuditor’s TikTok Account Quality checker to quickly see whether an account has fake followers. Organic is always best!
3. Putting pressure on payments
When you contact fake influencers, they might try to pressurize you into paying them upfront. This is a no-go.
Or, they might agree to your initial payment terms but the day prior to a post’s due date, suddenly demand payment be made and threaten to pull out of the campaign. At this point, you might not want to jeopardize the campaign timelines and rush to get the payment out the door…only to find out you’ve been scammed.
4. Lack of responsiveness
Scammers might abruptly stop responding when challenged, as they can see you’re not falling for the trap. They could even block your account. If there’s sudden radio silence from them after you ask simple questions and try to vet them, or they refuse to provide any references, it’s another red flag.
Previous promotions
Do check the creators’ feed for previous promotions before hiring them. Clearly, it’s best if they have already done work for brands and can commit to deadlines.
Plus, you can see whether the influencer has any ongoing partnerships with competitors, and analyze their branded posts’ engagement and reach to inform your own content strategy.
Conclusion
Choosing the right TikTok influencers for your marketing campaign is essential, and doesn’t simply boil down to popularity or follower count.
Brands need to weigh up what matters to them most between reach and engagement, or a mixture of both and to what degree. This will help inform which influencer type is best suited for a given campaign. Ultimately, it comes down to a cost versus benefit analysis: is the creator worth their cost, based on the outcomes they can help your brand achieve?
Factors to consider here include following size, engagement rate, location, cross-platforms presence, niche, type of content and audience demographics. All of these should align to your brand goals and campaign strategy.
To help you with influencer selection, there are many social media marketing tools you can try. But you’ll still need to spend time and effort to find the right match, handle communications with the creators, and make sure they produce the deliverables on time.
Or, you could let us at TIKTAL handle all the work for you! We work with leading brands and top creators to achieve campaign goals with ease and trust – reach out today to get started.