Influencer marketing is a powerful marketing tool that can drive purchasing decisions and industry trends. It has grown tremendously over the past few years. According to Cognitive Market Research, the global Influencer Marketing Platform market size was USD 13812.5 million in 2024 and will expand at a CAGR of 38.00% from 2024 to 2031.

So, it’s not surprising that PR agencies extensively rely on influencer marketing to spread brand awareness and earn trust. This works well for businesses because influencers offer personal authenticity and direct connection with their followers through their social media content. Data also confirms this, as 81% of consumers reported being interested in products or services based on recommendations from influencers on their social media accounts.

However, as the demand for influencer marketing skyrocketed it brought associated risks along with it. For example, a PR agency must ensure the authenticity of the influencer's social media presence before partnering with them for their clients’  or else it can damage the brand's reputation. They also need to vet that their followers are genuine and not fake purchased followers. 

Influencer social media checks thus become necessary for PR agencies to ensure that they’re partnering with the right influencers and that the reputation of their clients’ brands is in safe hands. 

Why Social Media Screening is Essential for PR Agencies

Social media screening has become a powerful tool for PR agencies to screen influencers before partnering with them. Social media screening goes beyond traditional background verification and focuses more on the influencer's online behavior and work ethic. It takes into account screening the social media accounts of the influencers like Facebook public profiles and LinkedIn profiles, their past digital content, how they interact online, any past offensive content, and their online behavior in general. It gives a holistic view of the influencer’s character, lifestyle, and suitability for the client’s brand campaign. 

Pro tip: Do have written consent from the candidate before conducting their social media screening. 

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Partnering with the right influencer is crucial for the success of the brand’s campaign. Moreover, influencer-brand mismatches can lead to backlash, damaging the brand's reputation. 

For example, screening the social media accounts of the influencer can help PR agencies align the influencer’s followers with the brand’s target audience. However, a mismatch can lead to an ineffective campaign. 

Social media background check also helps to identify the right influencers who have the necessary expertise to talk about a product and endorse it. This is especially critical for products that can impact one’s health. For example, Kim Kardashian once made this misstep when she marketed some drugs without the necessary credentials. This led to FDA warnings against the manufacturers. 

Plus, running a social media check can identify how the influencer tackles offensive comments and if they have been associated with any kind of illegal activities that can be detrimental to the brand's reputation. 

Key Factors to Consider During Social Media Background Checks

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When it comes to social media screening, there are some key factors that PR agencies must consider not just to save the brand from putting its reputation at risk but also to make the best out of every influencer partnership. 

Content History and Brand Alignment

Brand alignment is a crucial factor to consider to ensure a successful influencer-brand partnership. A mismatch not just risks the brand reputation but also the efforts, money, and time spent in bringing out the campaign goes in vain. 

Through social media screening, PR agencies can evaluate content history. For example, scrutinizing past posts, tone, and consistency and identifying any controversial, off-brand content or potential red flags.

Engagement Authenticity

Brands spend anywhere between INR 5000 and INR 500,000 per post, depending on an influencer’s followers and reach. So, it’s crucial for the influencer to verify authenticity. Social media screening helps to identify bot-generated and fake followers and partners with the right influencers who have genuine organically grown followers. 

Previous Collaborations and Reputation

Reviewing the past collaboration history and performance of those posts gives a fair impression of the influencer’s reputation, brand partnership experience, and how they have performed in the past. It also allows PR agencies to check audience engagement and response. These all are some crucial factors that can help decide if it’s worth investing in the partnership. 

Red Flags and Potential Risks

Last but not least, PR agencies must scrutinize the social media profiles of the influencer to identify and raise red flags. Screening can help to dig into information related to involvement in scandals, spreading misinformation, aggressive behavior, or if the influencer has been associated with any incident of ethical concerns. Assessing the influencer’s professional life and behavior with their audience and other brands across various social media platforms also needs to be taken into consideration.

Tools and Techniques for Screening Social Media Accounts

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Now that we know the importance of social media screening let’s understand how you can do it efficiently. While manual research is an option, it’s painstakingly time-consuming. And if you’re working with multiple clients and various influencers, then it’s absolutely impossible to scout each influencer’s multiple social media platforms manually. The manual process is not just time-consuming but also prone to human error along with high chances of bias risk. Plus, with a manual process, it’s difficult to adhere to compliance regulations and is not a practical solution when scalability is in question.

This is where AI-driven vetting tools come in handy. 

It’s fast, accurate, reduces bias risk with unbiased algorithms, comes with in-built legal safeguards, and is easily scalable. It’s the perfect solution for PR agencies who have to deal with a large number of campaigns for multiple brands while partnering with different influencers.

For example, Phyllo enhances the social media screening process by streamlining and adding precision to what has traditionally been a challenging area for PR agencies. By automating the initial stages of data collection and analysis, Phyllo allows PR agencies to focus on higher-level decision-making rather than getting bogged down in the details of data gathering.

Through automation and AI-driven analytics, Phyllo streamlines the screening process. Its technology can automatically filter and prioritize data based on predefined criteria, focusing on credibility assessment. This reduces the burden of manual data sorting and minimizes the risk of human error. 

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Popular Tools for Screening Social Media Platforms

There are many social media screening tools available to PR agencies. Some of the popular ones include:

Phyllo

Phyllo helps in social media screening by automating the initial stages of data collection and analysis. Its technology lets you define criteria and calculate risk scores so that you can assess the safety and suitability of the influencers. 

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InsightIQ

InsightIQ gives PR agencies actionable insights about influencers’ profiles, helping them in decision-making. With these tools, you can pick the right influencers for your customers, deeply analyze audience and engagement metrics, and evaluate campaign success using robust data. Unlike standard IM tools with limited influencer options, this platform offers a comprehensive influencer database.

Upfluence

This influencer analytics tool offers you a unique search feature and discovery engine with agency support. You get a database of 3 million influencer profiles on Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, and Blogs.

Modash

Modash is another popular tool that helps PR agencies to conduct social media screening of different influencers. It gives you a detailed audience and performance analysis for over 200 million influencer profiles on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

BuzzSumo

It is a great analytics tool that gives an insight into what's trending on social media sites and allows you to search for the most shared content on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. You can search, analyze, and follow influences and sort their domain authority, number of followers, and more.

How Social Media Analytics Strengthens PR Strategies

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Social media screening is not just essential before partnering with an influencer. Gathering social media analytics is equally crucial for PR agencies to strengthen their PR strategies. By keeping a track of the social media analytics, PR agencies can:

• Guage the influencer performance by tracking impressions, reach, sales, clicks, views, likes, comments, and shares. This can help PR agencies to understand how a campaign is doing and tweak it if needed. 
• Measuring social media analytics helps keep track of influencer activity and audience sentiment. This includes all types of sentiments positive, neutral, and negative feelings about your brand. This also gives you an opportunity to understand what makes the customers happy and what you can do to make an unsatisfied customer satisfied. 
• Finally, PR agencies can monitor campaign impact and engagement rates by tweaking their future campaign strategies. 

Steps for PR Agencies to Implement Social Media Screening

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If you’re a PR agency keen to implement screening of social media accounts of influencers for your client’s brand engagement, here is a step-by-step strategy to get started. 

Define Clear Selection Criteria

Begin with defining clear selection criteria for social media influencers. This can mean setting benchmarks for engagement and authenticity. For example, you can target influencers in your niche with 500K followers and having 1K engagement on average per post.  Phyllo’s technology can automatically filter and prioritize data based on predefined criteria, focusing on content that is most relevant to the professional context. This reduces the burden of manual data sorting and minimizes the risk of human error.

Conduct a Comprehensive Social Media Audit

To ensure you’re not missing out on anything, plan for a holistic screening. This means that you must review the social media activity of the influencer across every platform they’re present and not just keep it restricted to a single platform. Don't just go for one or two viral posts, check for consistency in content quality across the platforms. This will ensure that you’re partnering with the right influencer with a decent track record. 

Phyllo generates comprehensive reports that summarize a candidate’s online presence in a structured and easy-to-understand format. These reports highlight key findings, categorize data types, and provide context where necessary, which aids in better interpretation of ambiguous information. This feature ensures that decision-makers receive all relevant insights without the clutter of irrelevant data.

Use Data and Insights for Decision-Making

Using AI-powered analytics tools lets you get a clear understanding of the audience sentiment analysis without any human errors and bias. You can also compare different influencers’ performance metrics to understand how each influencer is doing, and based on the findings, you can shortlist the right influencer for your client’s brand. 

Proactive Due Diligence is a Must!

For PR agencies, influencer vetting is a must to ensure the influencers have genuine and engaged followers, as fake followers can negatively impact the brand and the PR agency’s credibility. 

Comprehensive background checks through social media screening help identify past controversies and red flags that can damage the reputation of the client. 

Vetting influencers means you are partnering with the right influencers that can improve the ROI and the campaign's effectiveness. It helps you to gauge the potentiality for long-term engagement.

Every PR agency must conduct social media screening before partnering with any influencers to ensure you’re collaborating with the most suitable influencers for your clients’ brands. 

Phyllo offers advanced technology, AI-powered analytics, and comprehensive reporting features to help PR agencies run background screening fast.  

Phyllo’s Brand Safety feature automates the review of online social media posts across platforms. Its complete multi-modal review system is built with an AI model and is GARM-compliant. Its in-built flagging criteria include violence, substances, sexual indecent content, hate, speech aggression, visual attribute, audio language toxicity, caption language, toxicity, not safe for work, and hate symbols. This means the tool can detect problematic content in any format. 

The API allows for specific keyword inputs so you can search for specific topics, themes, etc, that a client may request. 

Ready to give it a try?

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