Influencer marketing can turn out to be a pretty lengthy process. You need to research your niche and find the right social influencers to work with, then you need to check these influencers to ensure they’re a good fit with your brand. And once you've identified the right ones, then you need to work at building a relationship with them.

And all of that is before you even start your actual campaign. 

If you’re looking to speed up the process, you can do so by using a tool that connects you directly with relevant influencers. 

In this post, I’m going to share three influencer marketplace tools which will help you connect directly with social influencers. 

But first…

Before you start working with social influencers, it’s important to know what you want to achieve through this project. and get some key details locked in.

It's important to establish:

• What types of influencers you'd like to work with - Are you more focused on celebrities, niche influencers, micro-influencers, bloggers, social media influencers, etc.
• What channels you want to target - Which social network, or via blogs, etc.
• The scope of your campaign - Is it just a one-off project, such as a product review or a sponsored post, or do you want to create a bigger campaign that requires several posts, throughout multiple days/weeks?
• Whether you want to work with one of a group of influencers - You could just work with one, or you could build a larger campaign where you work with multiple influencers to promote your products and services
• What your goals are regarding the campaign - Are you looking to boost brand awareness, promote something specific, or boost your website traffic? You need to be very clear about what you want to achieve, as it will help you come up with the right campaign to actually reach your objectives
• Your campaign KPIs - This is based on your campaign objectives and the type of campaign you’re creating. Establish what your KPIs (key performance indicators) are before your actual campaign starts. This will help you measure the success of your campaign
• Your brand guidelines - You'll also need to provide clear brand guidelines to the social influencers you work with to help give them direction 

All of this information need to be condensed into a detailed brief for potential influencers to work with.  

Once you've covered off these elements, you'll also need to do some extra research into the influencers you’re considering to understand whether they're the right fit.

Here are some questions to consider:

• What channels do they use, and which of their channels are most popular? 
• How much engagement do they generate from their audience?  
• What other brands have they worked with in the past? 

These important questions will help you start off on the right track. Furthering this, here are some of the best influencer outreach tools and influencer marketplaces which can connect you directly relevant influencers: 

Social Bond

Social Bond is an influencer marketing platform and marketplace that can not only connect you with social influencers, but also enables you to fully manage and analyze your campaigns.

Once you’ve created your account, you can put together your campaign objectives, strategy, and guidelines, so that any influencers you connect with will know what you’re looking for. 

After that, you can start searching for the right influencers for you. All of the listed influencers are rated from 1 to 100, based on followers, engagement, and influence. To find the right influencers, you can search based on all kinds of useful filters, including their followers and the influencers’ demographics (location, niche, brand affinity, gender, etc.).

What I really love about Social Bond, however, is that you can research each influencers' audience in depth and find out their gender balance, what languages they speak, what cities they live in, and even things like their favorite brands.   

You can then fully manage your campaign from start to finish and track your results as you go along - and to top it all off, you have access to a full suite social media management tool to manage all of your accounts in one place, keep up with comments and mentions, and plan your influencer marketing campaigns using the social media calendar. 

Hivency

Hivency is an influencer marketing platform which facilitates the relationship between influencers and companies. 

They have over 50,000 social influencers listed on their database, from a range of niches including travel, food, fashion, and many more. 

The way Hivency works from a company’s point of view is very straightforward: 

• First, you create your proposal (a product or service) that you want to offer the influencers on the Hivency platform
• Next, interested influencers can reach out and let you know that they’re interested in your product/service and would like to help promote it on their channel
• You choose the right social influencers to work with by selecting the criteria that's most important to you, and letting the platform’s algorithm choose the best options based on this criteria
• Once agreed, you send them the products or services and the influencer will share content featuring your products/services on their channels 

Inzpire.me

Another great option is inzpire.me – a full-suite influencer marketing platform for handling all of your influencer marketing campaign needs. 

Their network has over 16,000 content creators listed, including influencers on most major digital channels and social networks.

So, how does it work?

It all starts with finding and contacting influencers - you can use Inzpire's filters to find influencers based on their location, their audience size, cost, and so on. You’re also able to view their engagement stats and information about their audience. If you find any influencers that you’re interested in, simply save them to your Shortlist or add them directly to a campaign. 

You’re also able to create your campaign brief, where you can list your objectives and vision. Plus, you have access to campaign templates to help you set-up the campaign brief more quickly. 

And, finally, once the campaign starts, you can track campaign performance all along the way. 

Conclusion

Influencer marketing has become one of the most widely-used digital marketing strategies – and for good reason. Banking on the success and influence of a content creator can help you improve your brand awareness, reach a much larger audience, and generate better results for your business.