SEO
6 Easy Steps to Choose the Right Ones

To help you, we’ve mapped out six steps you can follow to find the right influencers.
But before that, let’s understand whom you’d describe as the “right” one for your brand and why it’s so important.
Simply put, the right influencer is one whose followers are:
- Authentic.
- Relevant to your brand and consistently resonate with the content produced (including sponsored posts).
While it’s easy to get carried away with an influencer’s audience size, it’s important to analyze followers further to check whether they’re a right fit for your brand or not.
Failing to collaborate with the right influencer can end up burning money and hurting your brand’s reputation. Remember, today’s influencers are considered brand ambassadors.
Whether you’re looking for influencers for your very first campaign or have been through the process multiple times, it’s recommended that you don’t avoid any step. Below are six easy steps you can follow to find the right influencers.
1. Define the campaign objective and goals
The objective behind your influencer marketing campaigns and the goals you want to achieve determine which influencers and channels you should go after. Hence, it’s important to define them before starting your research.
Today, brands run influencer marketing campaigns for new product launches, promoting a sale, brand-building, and more. The goals also vary—from getting more app installs, to website visits, to impressions, to lead generation.
For example, for promoting a Christmas sale, you’ll look for Instagram influencers who promote different products on their stories, hence driving instant traffic. Remember, these goals will also help you evaluate the performance of your marketing campaign after you run it.
2. Figure out your budget
The next step is to allocate a budget for your campaign. Your budget depends on various factors, including the:
- Type of influencer (mega, micro, macro, etc.) you’re collaborating with.
- Number of influencers.
- Niche.
- Platforms you’re targeting.
- Etc.
While there’s no one way to figure out the budget, you can calculate potential conversions from your campaign and accordingly allocate the budget. But this solely depends on your goal. Sometimes, brands run influencer marketing campaigns solely for brand awareness; for this, calculating ROI can be difficult.
In some cases, brands run influencer marketing campaigns to get a better ROI (when compared to paid advertisements). So you can keep that as a benchmark when calculating the budget too.
Type of influencers
The easiest way to group influencers is on the basis of their audience size. Knowing the different groups will help you plan your strategy better. Here’s the breakdown:

3. Look for influencers
A. Look for people who’ve written about your topic
A quick way to find influencers is by creating a list of people who actively produce good content in your niche. Just a few searches on Google and YouTube can help you discover popular content pieces and their authors.
However, a simpler way of finding authors is by using Ahrefs’ Content Explorer, a searchable database of ~11 billion pages. Here are steps you can follow:
1. Open the tool and search for your topic
2. Switch the search mode from “Everywhere” to “In title” for the most relevant results and then hit “search”

3. Click the “Authors” tab to see a list of top authors and the number of content pieces they authored

You can also export the list and further filter the list to find relevant influencers according to your criterion. For example, you can filter authors who have more than 10K Twitter followers.
B. Search through popular platforms
If you’re looking for influencers in a particular niche, there’s no better way than to go through the platform itself and search for relevant topics and hashtags. In addition, you can also try the below tools and strategies.
Social Blade (for YouTube)
Social Blade is a platform that tracks statistics and analytics for YouTube channels. You can easily use it to find the top YouTubers in your niche and across different regions. It also helps you narrow your search by searching your topic as a tag.
The lists of channels can be further sorted by Social Blade rank (its own influencer score), subscriber count, and video views. Social Blade’s paid tier starts at $40/per year.

Followerwonk (for Twitter)
Followerwonk is a lightweight search engine for Twitter accounts. Just drop a keyword into the search bar to find profiles matching your desired follower count, tweet frequency, account age, and “Social Authority,” which is Followerwonk’s own influencer clout score.
Followerwonk’s free tier covers 50 searches daily, which should be enough for most people. For unlimited results, upgrades go for $29–$79/month.

Search for sponsored hashtags (for Instagram)
One quick way to find Instagram influencers is by searching for sponsored hashtags of successful sponsored campaigns in your niche. Oftentimes, brands use a unique hashtag for all posts as part of a campaign.
trendHERO (for Instagram)
If you’re looking for a platform that helps you find, analyze, and outreach Instagram followers, then you need to try trendHERO.

Apart from the above features, there’s a fake follower and competitor analysis tool. trendHERO provides a 14-day free trial with the option to analyze one Instagram account (up to 10K followers) for free. Its paid plan starts from $10/month.
Social Blade (for TikTok)

Apart from YouTube, Social Blade also allows you to search for specific TikTok accounts and analyze their audience growth. You can look at metrics like monthly gained followers, daily follower growth, and more.
C. Leverage tools
Apart from the above list of tools that help you discover influencers, there are a few tools that can help you manage your influencer campaigns end to end, right from analyzing followers to outreach.
SparkToro
It’s one of the best tools to find influencers in your niche. You can get started by just entering what your audience frequently talks about. For every search, it lists down popular social accounts, podcasts, and websites the audience follows.
Unlike other tools that rank influencers on the basis of followers, SparkToro provides you an estimation of the percentage of audience in a particular niche following a certain account. See what Rand Fishkin, co-founder and CEO of SparkToro, had to say about the same.

To further analyze, you can explore the social, websites, podcasts, and YouTube tabs on the left side. When searching for social media influencers, you can remove business accounts by setting the account type to individuals only.
To help you further understand the engagement and relevance of the account, the tool gives a SparkScore to each influencer.
If you’re looking for B2B influencers, you cannot go wrong with LinkedIn. It provides multiple parameters to filter your search. For example, you can filter the influencers on the basis of their industry, language, and more.

However, you may need an additional layer of filtering after exporting data from LinkedIn.
Heepsy
Heepsy is a platform that allows you to find, analyze, and organize Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Twitch influencers. It has a database of over 11 million influencers.
It’s one of the few tools in the market that can help analyze your audience and aid in outreach too. If you’re looking to scale up your influencer marketing, you should definitely explore Heepsy.
Klear

Klear allows you to manage your influencer marketing campaigns under one roof. It not only helps you discover, analyze, and manage influencers but also communicate with and measure the impact of your influencer marketing campaigns.
4. Reverse competitor backlink research
Most influencers link back to a common URL when promoting the product/brand from their content.
For example, Skillshare, which is a popular sponsor among YouTubers, has 3,000 backlinks to its sign-up page. Just by analyzing these backlinks, you can discover potential influencers.
You can easily accomplish this using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer. Here are the steps you can follow:
- Go to Site Explorer and enter the common URL on the search box with “Exact URL” selected
- Click on “Backlinks” to look at all the backlinks
- You can choose additional filters like DR and type of backlink (nofollow or dofollow) to further narrow your search

Most of the time, influencers link to the sign-up page or the homepage. You can also set up alerts on new backlinks using Ahrefs Alerts.
5. Look for brand ambassadors proactively
A lot of the time, collaborating with brand ambassadors can have a larger impact than influencers. Unlike influencers who’ve never used your product/service before, brand ambassadors already understand the value of your product/service. Hence, they can go above and beyond when promoting it.
While discovering brand ambassadors may not be hard, as they’ll eventually reach you through email or social media, we recommend finding them proactively through the following popular methods:
1. Monitor social media for people who’ve given a shout-out to your product/service or sent you a message – To automate this process, you can leverage social media monitoring tools such as Mention.
2. Keep an eye out for reviews or mentions in the form of an article or a YouTube video – To automate the process, you can set up an alert for web mentions on Ahrefs. Just set up a new alert for mentions by adding relevant keywords and choosing how often you want to receive these updates.

3. Keep an eye on newsletter mentions in your niche – The most effective way to do this is to subscribe to all the popular newsletters.
Generally, a good practice is to keep a record of your brand ambassadors so you can reach out to them when you plan to run a new campaign.
6. Get recommendations from your audience
Sometimes, finding influencers can be as easy as putting out a social media post or email to your subscribers and asking them which influencers you should partner with.
I know this sounds too good to be true, but Ahrefs did exactly that on Twitter and was overwhelmed with responses.
Not only did it find influencers quickly, but its tweet also went viral and got hundreds of responses.
We’ll be reallocating our paid traffic budget (~$200k💰) for December away from the Google/Facebook—and into sponsoring the industry’s best creators and thought leaders.
— Ahrefs (@ahrefs) November 24, 2021
Remember, when writing the post, you need to provide enough information to your readers so that you only get relevant suggestions. For example, Ahrefs mentioned the following in the post:
- Budget
- Type of influencers
- Channels
Also, remember to ask your readers to amplify your tweet to increase your reach.
After building your influencer list, don’t start your outreach instantly. I recommend going through an extensive vetting process. This is because the last thing you want your campaigns to reach is fake followers.
During the vetting process, you should look at metrics like:
- Engagement rate – This number denotes the level of engagement generated from a piece of content. You can calculate this at a post level or an account level. For example, the average engagement rate on Instagram is 0.98% (Sprout Social).

- Engagement quality – This is the percentage of real/active followers among the total engaged followers. While finding this manually is difficult, multiple tools can help you find the engagement quality for a certain account.
- Growth rate – This shows the number of subscribers added by an influencer in a certain period of time. Social Blade, for example, shows the growth rate for an influencer both daily and monthly.
A lot of the tools we’ve covered above can easily help you find the above metrics. However, you can also find these metrics manually by going through the profiles. Sometimes, just a glance is enough to differentiate an authentic influencer from a fake one.
Also, remember the niche also has an impact on the engagement rate and growth. Hence, compare influencers and their engagement rate/quality only within the same niche.
Before reaching out to influencers, you should also look at the sponsorships they’ve done before and if your brand values align with theirs. If they don’t, you’re better off not collaborating with those influencers.
In a digital world, everything you publish online is reflective of your brand. One small mistake is enough to create outrage and tarnish your brand. This holds true for whom you collaborate with too. Hence, it’s important to take enough time to analyze influencers before collaborating with them.
Final thoughts
If you want to run successful influencer marketing campaigns, you need to look beyond relevancy and follower count.
Even when you have the budget to collaborate with a mega influencer, you can get a better result by collaborating with multiple micro influencers.
Hope our guide helps you find the right influencers and that it answered a few questions you had before reading this article.
Got more questions? Ping me on Twitter.
SEO
4 Ways To Try The New Model From Mistral AI

In a significant leap in large language model (LLM) development, Mistral AI announced the release of its newest model, Mixtral-8x7B.
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:5546272da9065eddeb6fcd7ffddeef5b75be79a7&dn=mixtral-8x7b-32kseqlen&tr=udp%3A%2F%https://t.co/uV4WVdtpwZ%3A6969%2Fannounce&tr=http%3A%2F%https://t.co/g0m9cEUz0T%3A80%2Fannounce
RELEASE a6bbd9affe0c2725c1b7410d66833e24
— Mistral AI (@MistralAI) December 8, 2023
What Is Mixtral-8x7B?
Mixtral-8x7B from Mistral AI is a Mixture of Experts (MoE) model designed to enhance how machines understand and generate text.
Imagine it as a team of specialized experts, each skilled in a different area, working together to handle various types of information and tasks.
A report published in June reportedly shed light on the intricacies of OpenAI’s GPT-4, highlighting that it employs a similar approach to MoE, utilizing 16 experts, each with around 111 billion parameters, and routes two experts per forward pass to optimize costs.
This approach allows the model to manage diverse and complex data efficiently, making it helpful in creating content, engaging in conversations, or translating languages.
Mixtral-8x7B Performance Metrics
Mistral AI’s new model, Mixtral-8x7B, represents a significant step forward from its previous model, Mistral-7B-v0.1.
It’s designed to understand better and create text, a key feature for anyone looking to use AI for writing or communication tasks.
New open weights LLM from @MistralAI
params.json:
– hidden_dim / dim = 14336/4096 => 3.5X MLP expand
– n_heads / n_kv_heads = 32/8 => 4X multiquery
– “moe” => mixture of experts 8X top 2 👀Likely related code: https://t.co/yrqRtYhxKR
Oddly absent: an over-rehearsed… https://t.co/8PvqdHz1bR pic.twitter.com/xMDRj3WAVh
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) December 8, 2023
This latest addition to the Mistral family promises to revolutionize the AI landscape with its enhanced performance metrics, as shared by OpenCompass.
What makes Mixtral-8x7B stand out is not just its improvement over Mistral AI’s previous version, but the way it measures up to models like Llama2-70B and Qwen-72B.
It’s like having an assistant who can understand complex ideas and express them clearly.
One of the key strengths of the Mixtral-8x7B is its ability to handle specialized tasks.
For example, it performed exceptionally well in specific tests designed to evaluate AI models, indicating that it’s good at general text understanding and generation and excels in more niche areas.
This makes it a valuable tool for marketing professionals and SEO experts who need AI that can adapt to different content and technical requirements.
The Mixtral-8x7B’s ability to deal with complex math and coding problems also suggests it can be a helpful ally for those working in more technical aspects of SEO, where understanding and solving algorithmic challenges are crucial.
This new model could become a versatile and intelligent partner for a wide range of digital content and strategy needs.
How To Try Mixtral-8x7B: 4 Demos
You can experiment with Mistral AI’s new model, Mixtral-8x7B, to see how it responds to queries and how it performs compared to other open-source models and OpenAI’s GPT-4.
Please note that, like all generative AI content, platforms running this new model may produce inaccurate information or otherwise unintended results.
User feedback for new models like this one will help companies like Mistral AI improve future versions and models.
1. Perplexity Labs Playground
In Perplexity Labs, you can try Mixtral-8x7B along with Meta AI’s Llama 2, Mistral-7b, and Perplexity’s new online LLMs.
In this example, I ask about the model itself and notice that new instructions are added after the initial response to extend the generated content about my query.


While the answer looks correct, it begins to repeat itself.


The model did provide an over 600-word answer to the question, “What is SEO?”
Again, additional instructions appear as “headers” to seemingly ensure a comprehensive answer.


2. Poe
Poe hosts bots for popular LLMs, including OpenAI’s GPT-4 and DALL·E 3, Meta AI’s Llama 2 and Code Llama, Google’s PaLM 2, Anthropic’s Claude-instant and Claude 2, and StableDiffusionXL.
These bots cover a wide spectrum of capabilities, including text, image, and code generation.
The Mixtral-8x7B-Chat bot is operated by Fireworks AI.


It’s worth noting that the Fireworks page specifies it is an “unofficial implementation” that was fine-tuned for chat.
When asked what the best backlinks for SEO are, it provided a valid answer.


Compare this to the response offered by Google Bard.


3. Vercel
Vercel offers a demo of Mixtral-8x7B that allows users to compare responses from popular Anthropic, Cohere, Meta AI, and OpenAI models.


It offers an interesting perspective on how each model interprets and responds to user questions.


Like many LLMs, it does occasionally hallucinate.


4. Replicate
The mixtral-8x7b-32 demo on Replicate is based on this source code. It is also noted in the README that “Inference is quite inefficient.”


In the example above, Mixtral-8x7B describes itself as a game.
Conclusion
Mistral AI’s latest release sets a new benchmark in the AI field, offering enhanced performance and versatility. But like many LLMs, it can provide inaccurate and unexpected answers.
As AI continues to evolve, models like the Mixtral-8x7B could become integral in shaping advanced AI tools for marketing and business.
Featured image: T. Schneider/Shutterstock
SEO
OpenAI Investigates ‘Lazy’ GPT-4 Complaints On Google Reviews, X

OpenAI, the company that launched ChatGPT a little over a year ago, has recently taken to social media to address concerns regarding the “lazy” performance of GPT-4 on social media and Google Reviews.

This move comes after growing user feedback online, which even includes a one-star review on the company’s Google Reviews.
OpenAI Gives Insight Into Training Chat Models, Performance Evaluations, And A/B Testing
OpenAI, through its @ChatGPTapp Twitter account, detailed the complexities involved in training chat models.


The organization highlighted that the process is not a “clean industrial process” and that variations in training runs can lead to noticeable differences in the AI’s personality, creative style, and political bias.
Thorough AI model testing includes offline evaluation metrics and online A/B tests. The final decision to release a new model is based on a data-driven approach to improve the “real” user experience.
OpenAI’s Google Review Score Affected By GPT-4 Performance, Billing Issues
This explanation comes after weeks of user feedback about GPT-4 becoming worse on social media networks like X.
Idk if anyone else has noticed this, but GPT-4 Turbo performance is significantly worse than GPT-4 standard.
I know it’s in preview right now but it’s significantly worse.
— Max Weinbach (@MaxWinebach) November 8, 2023
There has been discussion if GPT-4 has become “lazy” recently. My anecdotal testing suggests it may be true.
I repeated a sequence of old analyses I did with Code Interpreter. GPT-4 still knows what to do, but keeps telling me to do the work. One step is now many & some are odd. pic.twitter.com/OhGAMtd3Zq
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) November 28, 2023
Complaints also appeared in OpenAI’s community forums.


The experience led one user to leave a one-star rating for OpenAI via Google Reviews. Other complaints regarded accounts, billing, and the artificial nature of AI.


A recent user on Product Hunt gave OpenAI a rating that also appears to be related to GPT-4 worsening.


GPT-4 isn’t the only issue that local reviewers complain about. On Yelp, OpenAI has a one-star rating for ChatGPT 3.5 performance.
OpenAI is now only 3.8 stars on Google Maps and a dismal 1 star on Yelp!
GPT-4’s degradation has really hurt their rating. Hope the business survives.https://t.co/RF8uJH1WQ5 pic.twitter.com/OghAZLCiVu
— Nate Chan (@nathanwchan) December 9, 2023
The complaint:


In related OpenAI news, the review with the most likes aligns with recent rumors about a volatile workplace, alleging that OpenAI is a “Cutthroat environment. Not friendly. Toxic workers.”


The reviews voted the most helpful on Glassdoor about OpenAI suggested that employee frustration and product development issues stem from the company’s shift in focus on profits.


This incident provides a unique outlook on how customer and employee experiences can impact any business through local reviews and business ratings platforms.


Google SGE Highlights Positive Google Reviews
In addition to occasional complaints, Google reviewers acknowledged the revolutionary impact of OpenAI’s technology on various fields.
The most positive review mentions about the company appear in Google SGE (Search Generative Experience).


Conclusion
OpenAI’s recent insights into training chat models and response to public feedback about GPT-4 performance illustrate AI technology’s dynamic and evolving nature and its impact on those who depend on the AI platform.
Especially the people who just received an invitation to join ChatGPT Plus after being waitlisted while OpenAI paused new subscriptions and upgrades. Or those developing GPTs for the upcoming GPT Store launch.
As AI advances, professionals in these fields must remain agile, informed, and responsive to technological developments and the public’s reception of these advancements.
Featured image: Tada Images/Shutterstock
SEO
ChatGPT Plus Upgrades Paused; Waitlisted Users Receive Invites

ChatGPT Plus subscriptions and upgrades remain paused after a surge in demand for new features created outages.
Some users who signed up for the waitlist have received invites to join ChatGPT Plus.

This has resulted in a few shares of the link that is accessible for everyone. For now.
Found a hack to skip chatGPT plus wait list.
Follow the steps
– login to ChatGPT
– now if you click on upgrade
– Signup for waitlist(may not be necessary)
– now change the URL to https://t.co/4izOdNzarG
– Wallah you are in for payment #ChatGPT4 #hack #GPT4 #GPTPlus pic.twitter.com/J1GizlrOAx— Ashish Mohite is building Notionpack Capture (@_ashishmohite) December 8, 2023
RELATED: GPT Store Set To Launch In 2024 After ‘Unexpected’ Delays
In addition to the invites, signs that more people are getting access to GPTs include an introductory screen popping up on free ChatGPT accounts.


Unfortunately, they still aren’t accessible without a Plus subscription.


You can sign up for the waitlist by clicking on the option to upgrade in the left sidebar of ChatGPT on a desktop browser.


OpenAI also suggests ChatGPT Enterprise for those who need more capabilities, as outlined in the pricing plans below.


Why Are ChatGPT Plus Subscriptions Paused?
According to a post on X by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman, the recent surge in usage following the DevDay developers conference has led to capacity challenges, resulting in the decision to pause ChatGPT Plus signups.
we are pausing new ChatGPT Plus sign-ups for a bit 🙁
the surge in usage post devday has exceeded our capacity and we want to make sure everyone has a great experience.
you can still sign-up to be notified within the app when subs reopen.
— Sam Altman (@sama) November 15, 2023
The decision to pause new ChatGPT signups follows a week where OpenAI services – including ChatGPT and the API – experienced a series of outages related to high-demand and DDoS attacks.
Demand for ChatGPT Plus resulted in eBay listings supposedly offering one or more months of the premium subscription.
chatgpt plus accounts selling ebay for a premium 🫡🇺🇸 https://t.co/VdN8tuexKM pic.twitter.com/W522NGHsRV
— surya (@sdand) November 15, 2023
When Will ChatGPT Plus Subscriptions Resume?
So far, we don’t have any official word on when ChatGPT Plus subscriptions will resume. We know the GPT Store is set to open early next year after recent boardroom drama led to “unexpected delays.”
Therefore, we hope that OpenAI will onboard waitlisted users in time to try out all of the GPTs created by OpenAI and community builders.
What Are GPTs?
GPTs allow users to create one or more personalized ChatGPT experiences based on a specific set of instructions, knowledge files, and actions.
Search marketers with ChatGPT Plus can try GPTs for helpful content assessment and learning SEO.
Two SEO GPTs I’ve created for assessment + learning 👀👇
1. Content Helpfulness and Quality SEO Analyzer: Assess a page content helpfulness, relevance, and quality for your targeted query based on Google’s guidelines vs your competitors and get tips: https://t.co/LsoP2UhF4N pic.twitter.com/O77MHiqwOq
— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) November 12, 2023
2. The https://t.co/IFmKxxVDpW SEO Teacher: A friendly SEO expert teacher who will help you to learn SEO using reliable https://t.co/sCZ03C7fzq resources: https://t.co/UrMPUYwblH
I hope they’re helpful 🙌🤩
PS: Love how GPT opens up to SO much opportunity 🤯 pic.twitter.com/yqKozcZTDc
— Aleyda Solis 🕊️ (@aleyda) November 12, 2023
There are also GPTs for analyzing Google Search Console data.
oh wow. I think this GPT works.
Export data from GSC comparing keyword rankings before and after an update and upload it to ChatGPT and it will spit out this scatter plot for you.
It’s an easy way to see if most of your keyword declined or improved.
This site was impacted by… pic.twitter.com/wFGSnonqoZ
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) November 9, 2023
And GPTs that will let you chat with analytics data from 20 platforms, including Google Ads, GA4, and Facebook.
Google search has indexed hundreds of public GPTs. According to an alleged list of GPT statistics in a GitHub repository, DALL-E, the top GPT from OpenAI, has received 5,620,981 visits since its launch last month. Included in the top 20 GPTs is Canva, with 291,349 views.
Weighing The Benefits Of The Pause
Ideally, this means that developers working on building GPTs and using the API should encounter fewer issues (like being unable to save GPT drafts).
But it could also mean a temporary decrease in new users of GPTs since they are only available to Plus subscribers – including the ones I tested for learning about ranking factors and gaining insights on E-E-A-T from Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.


Featured image: Robert Way/Shutterstock
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