How To Hire Twitter Influencers

Many successful brands have leveraged Twitter Influencers to vastly increase their revenue, a blog post from Twitter themselves stated that when combined with tweets from brands, recommendations from influencers can increase purchase intent by as much as 5.2x.

According to the annual “State of Influencer Marketing” report for 2019 by Linqia, Twitter ranks as the 6th most popular platform for social media marketing, as illustrated below:

But don’t let that put you off, Twitter has an active user-base of over 326 million and any comprehensive influencer marketing campaign should incorporate multiple social platforms.

With all that said, many companies are still trying to figure out the best way to use influencers regardless of the social network being discussed, so in this article we’ll cover how to engage with influencers on Twitter.

Pro’s of hiring Twitter influencers

Twitter has great conversion rates

Twitter users in general are receptive to influencer recommendations, probably in no small part due to the fact that Twitter promotes a strong, direct connection to their audience. In fact a recent study found that 40% of Twitter users have made purchases solely off the back of influencer tweets.

Twitter is great for viral content

Generally speaking viral content spreads faster and more often on Twitter than any other social platform, if you can select an Influencer with a history being able to create viral content then you’re onto a winner.

Reach a new audience with Twitter audiences

If you do not normally promote your brand on Twitter then you’re likely to reach a whole new audience as there are less cross-platform users to be found on Twitter than say Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.

Lower cost influencer campaigns 

Compared with Instagram where campaigns can cost thousands of dollars per post, the going rate for Twitter influencers tends to be considerably less, especially when we’re talking about micro influencers and nano influencers.

Con’s of hiring Twitter influencers

Need to weed out users with fake follower counts

Twitter are less on the ball handling fake followers and bot accounts than social platforms like Instagram, so you’ll need to take extra care you make sure the influencers you shortlist are genuinely credible.  Following our guide here should help you out.

Difficult to find the perfect influencers

Searches on Twitter will yield millions of results and narrowing down using their filters can be difficult when you’re trying to just find users that match specific criteria.  Here at SuperSocialClub we have a social media influencers directory with filters for a range of niches and other features.

How to identify the right influencers for your niche

Use a dedicated social media influencer platform

It can take an insane amount of time to find influencer that match your niche, that why we recommend using tools like our Social Media Directory to help you narrow down users that are already happy to work with brands and by specific criteria and topics.

Find influencers with Twitter search

You can also search Twitter for hashtags relating to your niche, for example #foodblogger, #techblogger and so on, make a list based around your niche and work through the results – focussing on the “top” tab that Twitter offers to filter out the most active of the current matches.

If you want to find tweets that have a minimum engagement level you can add a filter to your search term to do so, add min_faves: or min_retweets:  to your search term with a number after the colon to show only results that match that criteria.  If you’re looking for micro influencers, you should be honing on those users with maybe not the largest number of followers but who can regularly garner a large number of tweets and favourites. 

Make a short list of users and investigate their profiles and posting history further. When doing so, consider the following:

• How many shares do they typically get on their tweets?
• Do they get a decent amount of mentions from other users?
• How large is their follower base and how genuine is it?

You also need to consider that the relationship is a two-way street, look for influencers that can not only offer you what you want but who would like what you can offer.

Attend Twitter Chats in Your Niche to Find Influencers

Twitter Chats can be a great way to make connections and find influencers that you can develop long-lasting relationships with. Twitter Chats are “a public Twitter conversation around one unique hashtag. This hashtag allows you to follow the discussion and participate in it. Twitter chats are usually recurring and on specific topics to regularly connect people with these interests.” Social Media Examiner. 

Those who attend Twitter chats are going to be active Twitter users, probably well integrated in the community and knowledgeable about the niche your brand exists in. This can be an awesome way to identify micro influencers to work with.

Establish a relationship with the Twitter influencer

Once you have identified those Twitter users you are most interested in working with, you need to get yourself seen.  Add all the influencers you have shortlisted to a custom user list, something like TweetDeck is good for this.  You can then monitor tweet streams of just these users and make sure you respond to their activity.  Give it a bit of time and they will start to recognise you, and a relationship can be established. 

Now is a good time to make direct contact, DM them and explain who you are and make a proposal stating exactly how you think you can work together.

Don’t ignore Twitter influencers who interact with you

If you find influencers are retweeting, commenting on and favoriting your tweets then use this, don’t ignore them.  If an influencer is approaching you then they are likely to already be open to working with you – making your job much easier!

Make sure the Twitter influencer is compensated

So you have a bunch of influencers you’re happy to work with and who are happy to work with you, a relationship has been established – now you need to make sure they are happy with the deal.  They may expect payment, they may be happy with a trial of your service or free products (common when you are request a review from them).  Discuss this with the influencer and be open to their requests.

Help the Twitter influencer 

Don’t be shy in discussing  the best way to promote your brand, let the influencer have the final say but feel free to present a selection of tweets that show the sort of thing you are hoping for.  Just remember that the influencer has an audience to consider, most will not compromise that or risk alienating the audience.