Finding an influencer to work with
Just like you, influencers need things to talk about – they NEED content. And if your company is truly remarkable, and they know that their audience will think you are amazing too, then they are a lot more likely to engage. It can be easy to get a little star-struck when thinking about reaching out to the influencers that we follow daily. But you need to remember that vegan influencers are not film stars. Most have thousands of followers rather than millions but watching them every day means we build up their level of celebrity in our minds. Most mid-level vegan influencers are a lot more approachable than your traditional YouTuber or Instagram star. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a number of vegan influencers and YouTubers and I can say without exception they are all surprised when people think they are famous. They spend every day leading a normal life and not being recognised until they go to a vegan fair or event. I first met vegan fitness influencer Paul ‘Hench Herbivore’ Kerton at the Vegan Campout event but couldn’t get near him! He had a group of people all running up and hugging him. His partner Gemma later told us that it’s a surreal experience, and she still thinks that when someone runs up to say hello that it must be someone they know but have just forgotten meeting them, not that it’s a loyal fan from their YouTube channel.
And it’s this niche superstardom that makes them so approachable. Vegan influencers are usually the most wonderful people you can imagine. If the platform they have chosen to stand on is to bring around the end of suffering for animals then you know this is going to be someone who has a huge deal of compassion.
So, if you think that you have a business or product that is genuinely worth talking about then working with influencers can be a good way to get it in front of an engaged group of people who you know will have a specific interest. From your customer research you should already know which influencers your customers follow. YouTube is also a search engine, so use it to search for topics linking to your product and find people who are producing content about it. Although it is far easier to approach a vegan influencer because of your joint ethics, you might also look at some non-vegan influencers if they are still talking to your audience.
Some vegan and plant-based influencers are reaching huge audiences. Ella Mills, known better as Deliciously Ella, has close to 2 million followers on Instagram. ‘Fully Raw’ Kristina Carrillo-Bucaram has over a million subscribers to her YouTube channel. We know that these people are talking to audiences far beyond veganism, which means that even if you have a product that goes straight to their heart, you’re unlikely to be even able to start a conversation with them. Influencers that are explicitly talking to vegans such as ‘Earthling’ Ed Winters or Joseph Armstrong (Joey Carbstrong) may have hundreds of thousands of followers rather than millions, but because their audience is so defined, so targeted, so engaged and hold them in such high-regard, they get hundreds of approaches each day by companies wanting to tap into that. If you have approached people like this in the past and have been disappointed that they didn’t engage with your worthy cause don’t hold it against them. If you saw the sheer amount of requests they receive daily then you would understand why you never got a reply.
So, look a bit further down the table. Find the influencer who has thousands of followers instead of hundreds of thousands. Five thousand people hearing about your product is still great publicity as long as those five thousand people are all potential customers. Find the influencers who could have some affinity with your company and can see some relevance for their audience. If they are a health-based vegan influencer then you are unlikely to get far with your vegan junk food takeaway. Also, look back over their recent content and see how often they are mentioning products. If they feature a product similar to what you sell they will be unlikely to work with another company offering the same thing. Exclusivity agreements are usually in place, meaning if an influencer is already affiliated with one brand of protein powder, for example, they won’t take on another.
