Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that is often considered an absolute necessity in Poland. Even small brands use it, promoting the idea of micro-influencers (for example, bloggers in Poland from specific niches with a smaller audience). But what does it look like in public relations when the strength of a PR campaign is reputation and impact, and not necessarily the influencer’s reach? Here is the guide on choosing an influencer for your PR campaign in Poland.
Step 1 - set the goals of the PR campaign in Poland
Without clearly defined Influencer PR goals, you can lose yourself checking the social media profiles of the most popular Polish bloggers and YouTubers. The most frequently used goals of PR campaigns with influencers in Poland are:
Building brand awareness,
Increasing trust,
Changing the brand image,
Reaching a new group of clients,
Educating clients,
Raising awareness of a specific product/service.
Another goal worth mentioning is using PR as a way to increase sales. There is a very blurry line between using influencers in PR activities and classic influencer marketing. It is one rule worth remembering: in PR, selling via an influencer should not be an end in itself. It’s obvious that positive reviews from an influencer or even hiring him as a brand ambassador contribute to increasing sales, but you should not be guided by this when choosing an influencer for a PR campaign. Otherwise, instead of the image, you will start thinking only about selling.
Step 2 - Choose the Right Person
Choosing the right influencer for your PR campaign in Poland is one of the two most important challenges that await you. How to do it? Start by building a campaign strategy.
Specify precisely:
What’s your budget?
What reach are you interested in?
How many people do you want to collaborate with?
What do you want to convey in the campaign?
Are you interested in influencers only from a niche or more general industry?
What type of platforms must they run (Do you want bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, TikTokers, etc.)?
Once you have answered these questions, you can move on to research. Notice how many people you have already excluded at this stage. How to search for influencers in Poland and check their reach? It is where tools such as BuzzSumo, Upfluence, etc., will come in handy. The platforms WhitePress, LifeTube, ReachaBlogger, and Hash.fm are also popular in Poland. Research can also be done manually - by searching for influencers on your own, for example, by tags on Instagram or YouTube. It is quite effective when you know the reality of this industry in Poland, at least a bit. Notably, many bloggers in Poland publish detailed statistics, for example, monthly visits to their blogs. It is a huge help, so keep checking these tabs.
Step 3 - verify the data
When you have a list of influencers who potentially match your PR campaign in Poland, it is time to get them verified. Here, it is good to use tools that collect analytics and create influencer rankings. One of the most effective tools used by PR experts is indaHash. It helps to determine the real reach of Polish influencers. Many automatic tools verify to what extent the number of fans indicated by social media platforms is real and how artificially driven by bots. Tools such as IG Audit or Facecheck come to the rescue. This type of “dirty work” is also worth doing manually, comparing the number of followers to the engagement under their content. Too low involvement (for example, no Instagram photo likes) with a very high number of followers should be a warning lamp that either the influencer is buying followers or had some failure.
Step 4 - analyse the influencer’s history
It is time for qualitative analysis after the quantitative analysis (such as statistical data). It means the quality of content and the values represented by an influencer and their image in the past.
It’s a good idea to analyse the influencer’s social media channels by answering the following questions:
Did the influencer recently have a failure?
Does he collaborate with or recommend other brands in my industry?
Are the recipients interested in industry content?
Does he not declare antipathy towards topics close to the brand’s philosophy?
What content does he share on his social media?
Does he post controversial content that may transfer into the brand image?
Does his content only include sponsored materials?
Step 5 - analyse the influencer’s current deals
The easiest way to assess whether an influencer can cope with the task you entrust him with is to... analyse his campaigns with other brands from the past. Of course, many PR campaigns in Poland result from poorly planned strategy (for example, the cooperation of the Polish influencer Macademian Girl with the Lenor brand), but participation in such campaigns may indicate that the influencer takes every deal. If he doesn’t care about his image, is he the right person to support your company’s image? Industry experts often discuss successful PR campaigns in Poland as a case study of good practice. An excellent idea for research may be to follow the statements of marketing experts, industry websites, and top lists with the most interesting PR campaigns.
As you can see, PR cooperation with influencers in Poland is complex. Before the campaign starts, you should plan how it will run. Its effectiveness depends primarily on selecting the right influencer whose reputation, philosophy, and recipients are consistent with what you care about as a brand. You have to know what you want before you try to achieve it.
Before choosing specific tactics for your campaign, it is worth seeking advice from an experienced consultant. Feel free to request a free consultation with the experts at Awesome PR girls using the button below.