Identifying Social Media Influencers in Influencer Marketing: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Influencers on social media are important for digital marketing. They help brands to reach more people, increase engagement, and build trust through their popularity and credibility. Brand collaborations can only be successful if the right influencer is selected, since they act as a bridge between the brand and its target audience. So, selecting the right influencer is one of the crucial tasks in today’s digital market landscape. Quantitative metrics are the primary focus of current research for the selection of the influencer, but there is a growing demand for qualitative metrics as well.The objective of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of current metrics, methods and tools used to identify influencers across different industries. This paper also focuses on both quantitative and qualitative metrics to be used for identifying the most suitable influencers in addition to future research directions to expand qualitative metrics. This paper also focused on research challenges in current influencer identification approaches. As an outcome of study this paper introduces a detail case study for influencer identification and provides actionable insights for brands and researchers.