The talk of the town today is influencer marketing and businesses throughout the world are trying to tap into the influencer space, but are confronted with a ton of smoke and mirrors. In particular, who’s truly an influencer and what’s the cost vs reward.

After being in the influencer game for 15+ years before “social media influencers” were a thing and people were simply influential on message boards (forums), multiplayer video games (e.g. Call of Duty in the earliest days), etc. due to their presence, knowledge, and ultimately how they can read/react to the room — I thought it would be cool to post about things to look for when scouting influencer marketing agencies.

For one, I will say this: The proof is always in the pudding. Nowadays everyone is a social media expert and influencer whether it’s your neighbor’s co-worker’s friend’s kid or a company claiming to deliver magic. And my response is always don’t tell me what you’re going to do, show me what you’ve done.

Secondly, think about humans operating in pods with likeminded people where they have their own linguistics, inside jokes, and everything else that comes with having interests in specific topics like art, beauty, cars, food, travel, etc. But on the flip side, each of these pods operate differently and becoming the cool kid at school (in the group) requires knowledge in these areas otherwise you’ll be viewed as an outsider from the get go.

Lastly, don’t be fooled by the numbers and think about human behaviors in a natural setting — how algorithms work in both the real and digital worlds. For example, if someone has 500k followers why are they only getting 5 comments on each Instagram post? These things don’t make sense, but are also why companies fail when going down the influencer marketing path.

In a nutshell, everything comes down to algorithms and analytics, and when looking for an influencer marketing agency to take your business to the next level you better make sure they talk the talk, but also walk the walk.