Influ­encers offer sev­er­al dis­tinct advan­tages to brands. Influ­encers enable brands to poten­tial­ly speak to con­sumers more authen­ti­cal­ly. They also open oppor­tu­ni­ties for brands to con­nect with con­sumers in ways they are more open to than tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing tac­tics. And this, in turn, allows brands to reclaim some of the pow­er they lost in sway­ing con­sumer pur­chas­ing deci­sions with the rise of social.

As influ­encer mar­ket­ing has evolved from sim­ply find­ing the influ­encer with the widest reach to iden­ti­fy­ing the one spe­cif­ic influ­encer with­in a sea of influ­encers that is the exact right fit, how is a brand to know which influ­encer is right? And what comes next?

Here are 15 tips from dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing experts on how to get the most out of an influ­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paign.

1. Think About The Audience Your Brand Is Trying To Reach

Eric Brown, vice pres­i­dent of com­mu­ni­ca­tions at social net­work engage­ment com­pa­ny Lithi­um Tech­nolo­gies, which acquired online exper­tise man­age­ment firm Klout last year, calls it “old hat mar­ket­ing,” but said brands have to first think about their tar­get and how they are going to engage it.

Katie Pater­son, dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing direc­tor of influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form Traackr, agrees it helps to first under­stand who is buy­ing a brand’s prod­ucts.

“The more you under­stand the buy­er, the more you are able to dis­sect who is influ­enc­ing them,” Pater­son said.

And, for her part, dig­i­tal indus­try con­sul­tant Hol­lis Thomases notes an influ­encer is only as valu­able as his or her audi­ence and no mar­keter can scale an influ­encer, which can some­times be a deter­rent to mar­keters who want assur­ance of scale. Influ­encer mar­ket­ing is a pow­er­ful and effec­tive way to con­duct mar­ket­ing, but it has some lim­i­ta­tions, she said.

2. Identify Influencers With Laser Focus

Influ­encer mar­ket­ing is no longer about uti­liz­ing social media pow­er­hous­es, but about find­ing the ones with the best fans/followers for a giv­en brand.

That means that instead of just look­ing for mom­my blog­gers, for exam­ple, brands need to drill down and find the 35-year-old moth­er of two who lives in Los Ange­les and is pas­sion­ate about healthy fast food, Brown said.

This, in turn, leads to bet­ter con­nec­tions and con­tent.

“Good influ­encer mar­ket­ing is about earned media. It should not be about paid media. If you have to bribe [influ­encers] overt­ly or covert­ly to love your prod­uct, it’s not real influ­ence,” Brown said.

3. Use Tools & Big Data To Find Influencers That Will Activate Buyers

Pater­son said brands should seek influ­encers that are going to inspire buy­ers to take action and notes the mar­ket now has many tools that make these influ­encers eas­i­er to find.

These tools help brands pin­point those very pre­cise influ­encers, Brown adds.

And this may be some­thing of a David/Goliath sit­u­a­tion in which some larg­er agen­cies are at a bit of a dis­ad­van­tage.

“Tra­di­tion­al demo­graph­ics are what ad agen­cies are good at sell­ing,” Brown said. “The inter­est and pas­sion points of influ­encers I think is hard­er, but the returns are greater and good mar­keters will start shift­ing more time and effort toward those.”

4. Make Sure That ‘Influencer’ Is Actually An Influencer

At the same time, Thomases points out that tools like Klout, which can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly mea­sure and iden­ti­fy influ­encers, can be gamed, so “mar­keters need to be wary and do their own due dili­gence to ver­i­fy that some­one who appears to be influ­en­tial in their cat­e­go­ry real­ly is.”

5. Consider Communities When Looking For Influencers

Dig­i­tal mar­keters need to look at com­mu­ni­ties much more close­ly than they have in the past because com­mu­ni­ties are a pow­er­ful and over­looked tool, Brown said. But this is where con­sumers are engag­ing around prod­ucts, ser­vices and pas­sion points. And it’s where they are cre­at­ing and shar­ing con­tent and expe­ri­ences.

“It’s not some­thing eas­i­ly sold by an agency. There is no IAB stan­dard for­mat for a com­mu­ni­ty,” Brown said. “It’s high­ly cus­tomized, high­ly per­son­al­ized, high­ly tai­lored for an audi­ence.”

And tools and big data can help tap into these com­mu­ni­ties as well, Brown adds.

6. Look At The Quality Of Content & Audience Engagement

Engage­ment is a crit­i­cal met­ric. Some influ­encers may have small­er reach, but have audi­ences that are super-engaged and very loy­al and that are on the influencer’s site every day and are act­ing on the rec­om­men­da­tions of that influ­encer, said Hol­ly Hamann, CMO of influ­encer mar­ket­ing plat­form Tap­In­flu­ence.

“It’s the engage­ment that will move the nee­dle – not nec­es­sar­i­ly the dig­i­tal foot­print. Real­ly scru­ti­niz­ing influ­encers for active com­mu­ni­ties is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant,” adds Mar­cy Mas­sura, senior vice pres­i­dent and dig­i­tal prac­tice lead at PR firm MSLGroup. “It’s not just about how pop­u­lar they are any more. It’s about how pop­u­lar they are and what is the qual­i­ty of the con­tent they create…That’s a shift in 2015. I see it grow­ing. It will be a big year for the influ­encer.”

7. Interact With Consumers How They Want To Be Interacted With

That means brand should take the mes­sage they want to share and put it into the hands of peo­ple con­sumers know and trust, Pater­son said. Con­sumers don’t want mes­sages shoved down their throats.

“Influ­encers can share prod­ucts with some­one, but it doesn’t feel like they are being sold to,” Pater­son adds. “If you do it right, that’s the poten­tial that you have. You can enter con­ver­sa­tions with the buy­er and it’s a two-way street and buy­ers can learn from you as well and make sure the prod­uct works for them.”

8. Utilize Influencers Who Produce Personal, Relevant Content

Because shar­ing on social net­works is so focused on per­son­al con­tent, there is an expec­ta­tion among con­sumers for com­pa­ra­ble con­tent from brands. There­fore, influ­encer mar­ket­ing requires a high­er lev­el of author­i­ty, and, sub­se­quent­ly, more per­son­al and rel­e­vant con­tent, which is in part why celebri­ties are less pow­er­ful here than cit­i­zens who like­ly have more per­ti­nent expe­ri­ence with a giv­en prod­uct, Brown said.

9. Tap Influencers Who Will Help Your Brand Create More Compelling Content

Face­book con­tin­ues to change the way it dis­plays con­tent because it is try­ing to find bet­ter ways to inte­grate dis­play ads into the News Feed. But con­sumers can still tell they are dis­play ads, Brown said.

“I think dis­play fatigue will lead mar­keters to think of new ways to reach audi­ences,” he said. “Dis­play fatigue online is like what’s hap­pened on TV.”

Adver­tis­ers have learned they must cre­ate more com­pelling TV con­tent if they want to cap­ture the atten­tion of view­ers that can eas­i­ly skip ads. “Some things are so bizarre, I see it on fast for­ward and have to stop to see it in real time,” Brown said.

Adver­tis­ers also know that con­sumers’ eyes are focused on the mid­dle of the screen as they fast for­ward and so even if view­ers are not pay­ing atten­tion to an ad per se, some­thing like Target’s logo in the mid­dle of the screen will still stick out.

This trend toward more engag­ing con­tent and ways to think out­side the box to cap­ture con­sumer atten­tion is one Brown expects to extend to influ­encer mar­ket­ing.

10. Work Collaboratively With Influencers

Influ­encers are influ­en­tial because they are good at cre­at­ing con­tent and they know their audi­ences well. Ergo, brands should work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly with them and let them have some cre­ative free­dom with con­tent, Hamann said.

“We’ve found over and over again, when brands work with influ­encers and give up some con­trol, they cre­ate con­tent that is bet­ter than they cre­ate on their own,” Hamann added.

11. Establish Some Limitations With Influencers

Mas­sura said MSLGroup puts “pret­ty wild­ly acceptable…brand guard rails” with stip­u­la­tions about top­ics and lan­guage to avoid into its agree­ments with influ­encers, but, at the same time, wants its influ­encers “to be cre­ative and do what is going to make their com­mu­ni­ties hap­py.”

“We want them to cre­ate stuff that will make sense for their com­mu­ni­ties,” Mas­sura said. “They have cre­ative con­trol with­in a guid­ed process.”

12. Define Success, Make Expectations & Objectives Clear To Influencers

When work­ing with influ­encers, brands must be very orga­nized, respon­sive and clear about their objec­tives and when they expect posts, etc., Hamann said.

“They have to be real­ly, real­ly clear with their expec­ta­tions so influ­encers are set up to suc­ceed,” Hamann said. “Fuzzy goals and objec­tives lead to unmet expec­ta­tions.”

Also, brands should make sure objec­tives are aligned through­out an influ­encer mar­ket­ing cam­paign so that they can track whether the cam­paign is suc­cess­ful or not, Pater­son said.

13. Compensate Influencers

Influ­encers are cre­at­ing con­tent like blog posts and pho­tos and that takes time and effort, Hamann said.

“A lot of times, brands assume influ­encers will cre­ate con­tent for free, but…as more influ­encers real­ize how valu­able their con­tent real­ly is, less will tol­er­ate that. It’s a well-accept­ed part of the ecosys­tem to com­pen­sate,” Hamann said.

14. Don’t Be Afraid To Modify A Campaign

“If a path isn’t work­ing out, if the influ­encer isn’t quite right, if you’re not see­ing move­ment in sales, change,” Mas­sura said. “It’s a very flex­i­ble mar­ket­ing approach.”

15. Don’t Put All Your Eggs In One Influencer’s Basket

“I don’t know many adver­tis­ers who only adver­tise in a sin­gle chan­nel and on/through a sin­gle pub­lish­er or net­work these days, pri­mar­i­ly because the adver­tis­er wants to reach as many rel­e­vant peo­ple as it can,” Thomases said. “So although the influ­encer may be very valu­able in terms of reach­ing his/her present audi­ence, there’s dimin­ish­ing returns on that audi­ence over time because it’s the same peo­ple receiv­ing the mar­keter’s mes­sage over and over again.”

In oth­er words, as Brown said, influ­encer mar­ket­ing is best as part of an inte­grat­ed mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that includes oth­er ele­ments as well.