The Top 10 Ultimate Influencer Platforms to Use In 2020

Are you planning to use influencer marketing in 2020 to grow your online business? If you’re an online influencer, marketing platforms can make it much easier to connect with brands within your niche. 

Rather than picking through brands one at a time, marketplaces easily allow you to search and discover multiple brands that would be worth your while to promote. This easily increases your likelihood of finding incredible brands to work with, and those brands are able to gain better reach and new followers from your promotions.

Are you wanting to know more about being an influencer? Read our articles on micro and macro influencers.

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a specific type of social media marketing that allows brands to connect with popular influencers that have dedicated social followings and are considered highly regarded within their specific niche. 

The influencers then market that brand through endorsements and product mentions. This practice opens up new audience possibilities to the brand, as well as building new followers for influencers. Brand recommendations from highly regarded individuals can also serve as social proof for the brand’s future customers.

Why Use Influencer Platforms?

Marketing platforms give the ability to brands and influencers to connect with one another in a centralized location to build new relationships and endorsements with one another. This significantly simplifies the process for both influencers and brands. Rather than searching on social media for marketing potentials, brands and influencers alike can determine on the platforms if future collaborations would best meet their needs in one single place.

What are some of the pitfalls of using an influencer platform?

Not all platforms are created equal and many – to this day – organisations work through agents or direct pitches. Those that go through platforms can often underpay the influencer significantly. It doesn’t take much to see this happen.

Another downside of these platforms is many ask you to log in using your Instagram – this ends up meaning that if something happens on the site, and an non-approved 3rd party app, you run the risk of losing you instagram account completely.

What Influencer Marketing Programs Should I Use?

There are hundreds of influencer marketing platforms out there and it’s ridiculously easy to get overwhelmed trying to research them all. I’ve gone ahead and pulled the 9 most recommended marketing networks to help build and grow your brand, all vetted by brands who utilize these tools in the industry.

What platforms do influencers use and recommend?

Find Your Influence (FYI)

FYI, or Find Your Influence, considers itself the industry’s leading influencer marketing solution. It allows brands to identify influencers in the market, launch campaigns, as well as utilizing proprietary technology to track performance and report results. Brands are easily able to identify influencers within their niche and select the best choices based on results.

From FYI Directly

Tami Nealy, VP of Communications at Find Your Influence, has this to share about why you need this influencer marketing tool:

“The FYI platform allows brands to identify influencers, launch campaigns, track performance and report results.

FYI has the exclusive ability to survey influencers to qualify them on specific criteria, ensuring the content they create is organic. FYI’s surveying technology allows brands to validate assumptions before moving forward with a set of influencers. Once the ideal influencers are selected, FYI’s technology enables brands to launch scalable campaigns that produce targeted results.

When campaigns are live, the FYI dashboard provides real-time insights, and anytime access, into campaign progress and performance. Upon completion, the dashboard allows brands to export performance results including, but not limited to, ROI and campaign value. The FYI platform integrates stochastic modeling, a form of probability modeling, to aid in the development of campaign guarantees.

Find Your Influence is driven to remaining ahead of the curve in advancing technologies and innovation applications with a dedicated in-house technology team.”

From an FYI User

Holly Ozanne,Director of Public Relations at Venta Marketing, also shares her direct experience with FYI. “While searching for the right company, I knew that we wanted more than a platform, we wanted an invested partner. So when we found Find Your Influence in our own backyard, we had a feeling that they would be able to help us take our campaigns to the next level. And they did!

Find Your Influence has helped us leverage social media’s powerful voices and amplify our client’s brand awareness campaigns. Thanks to their all-in-one platform, we can search, survey, and find the right influencers in just a few clicks. **Prior to joining FYI’s Advertiser program, communicating and negotiating with influencers via email and phone was messy and difficult to track. The FYI Message Center and Dashboards have eliminated all of our influencer frustrations and we’re managing more influencer campaigns than ever.*

Our team’s favorite FYI features include great metrics and reporting capabilities, ample influencer search filters, negotiable price points for individuals, and FYI’s agency management resources. The FYI blog is a hub of valuable insights, campaign tips, and advice for influencers. In addition to the platform, FYI offers in-house talent management services that give us direct access to television and social media’s top tier

influencers.

If you join the FYI agency community you will appreciate the user-friendly platform design, simple campaign brief set up, and the number of happy influencers available to work with your clients.

Intellifluence

Intellifluence markets itself as one of the largest warm contact influencer marketing in the world. They help brands and influencers collaborate with ease. 

Brands are easily able to connect with influencers using a Discover tool, as well as send pitches and make offers to influencers. 

Influencers are easily able to get free products or money in exchange for reviews. Influencers get immediate accessibility to a marketplace to find offers.

Joe Hughes, owner of DogProductPicker, says this of Intellifluence: “I like how I’m able to easily connect with a lot of social media influencers in my niche. I’m able to filter what kind of influencer I’m looking for, such as a blogger or social media influencer, with ease. They also recently introduced their own form of an Escrow system. This greatly reduces the chance of a brand getting scammed out of their money. Their owner, Joe, is fantastic. Whenever I have a problem, I send him an email and the issue is quickly addressed. I haven’t seen that level of support anywhere else.”

AspireIQ

With three recommendations from marketing professionals, AspireIQ is a well rated and highly recommended marketing platform for Influencers. Aspire IQ enables marketers and content creators to build the brands of tomorrow.

Influencers are able to sign up and become part of a database for brands to search for when they are looking for new promotional opportunities. Influencers are easily identified by brands through the influencer database and recommendation engine. Aspire IQ provides opportunities for brands by showing influencer possibilities they may not have found from their own searches. Their “Quickmatch” feature, which they say is like ‘Tinder for Influencers’, easily identifies with any influencer that falls into your preferences, along with critical information and pictures that help brands determine who they want to work with. 

They also work with extremely powerful brands known worldwide.

Here are three specific recommendations as to why you should use AspireIQ as an influencer platform in 2020.

Austin Iuliano, social media consultant, states that

“One of the better platforms I’ve found for influencers to find work is called aspireIQ.com As it allows you to find business that are looking for influencers and you can pitch yourself for the work. it will give you guidelines on what they think your content is worth based off following size and engagement levels.”

Most influencers who are looking to make this full time have a hard time of finding brands to work with. This can be a great platform and resource for them.

Brynn Tweeddale of BXE Creative also agrees, saying that “my favorite platform is AspireIQ <https://www.aspireiq.com/>. It’s extremely easy to use, both for influencers and brands. It has a great chat feature for communicating with brands and also provides contracts for all collaborations. The brands they work with are all vetted, professional companies, too! Some of the campaigns I’ve worked on from AspireIQ include Rue21, Reef, and L’Oréal.”

Olga Mykhoparkina from Chanty, shares why AspireIQ is a necessity: “One platform that I can definitely recommend is AspireIQ, since it works well for B2B and B2C audiences. The first reason is that their database of influencers is massive, with hundreds of thousands of different influencers in different industries. Of course, it’s super easy to sort them and find exactly what you need within minutes from signing up. And it’s not any kind of influencers either – they collect only those with a large following and high engagement.

The second part is the CRM. Having all of those contacts in one place is useless if you can’t reach them easily. Thanks to their intuitive CRM, we can contact the influencers that we need and maintain our conversation history to see whom we contacted for what. Back in the day, we used emails and it gets inconvenient when you go back and forth all the time.

Third, the analytics. Once you start working with an influencer, you can easily see what kind of results they are driving for your business. You can track their performance in regards to sales, the number of followers they get you, as well as the engagement that they create.

Finally, the content library is extremely useful. You can use it to export your content from Facebook or Instagram and keep it there as a central hub. The point is to track how well a certain piece of content is doing on these platforms.

I think that the best aspect of AspireIQ is that it doesn’t charge you per transaction. You work directly with influencers and the price you pay is the final cost, without any added fees. That way, I always know my exact marketing budget and I don’t have to worry about spending more than I can afford on a campaign.”

Obviously

A full-service influencer marketing agency, Obviously is built to guide users through every step of the marketing process. They tailor every marketing campaign to suit your business needs. 

They work with hundreds of influencers to help brands find the right fit for their target audiences. 

They also work with well known worldwide brands. Here is what Brynn Tweeddale has to say about why she loves Obvious.ly.

Brynn Tweeddale adds that “their platform is even simpler to use than AspireIQ, and I love that they send emails any time a new campaign opens up. They make it easy to submit content and metrics to brands compared to other platforms, plus they have an additional rewards program to earn more for participating in any Obviously campaign. Some of the brands they work with are Movado, Sephora, and Plato’s Closet.

Glambassador 

What if you have a small but highly dedicated following? How can you connect with brands for potential relationships as a micro-influencer?

Glambassador allows influencers and creators to easily connect, collaborate, and grow their businesses. Glambassador sees the rising value of using micro-influencers to replace popular celebrities for brands to promote their products as competition grows more challenging in the industry. While they also work with popular, worldwide brands, they also work with boutiques and startups. This is a good opportunity to try out new brands and build strong relationships with newer businesses who have a lot of room to grow, hopefully with you working with them.

Brynn Tweeddale says that “ For smaller brands and influencers, my recommendation is always Glambassador. My favorite part about Glambassador is that as an influencer, you can send personalized pitches and messages to brands. Many of the brands on the platform are boutiques or startups. It’s always fun to help a new brand that inspires you to grow! Many of these brands don’t mind working with people who have smaller followings, so the platform is a great way to get started with collaborations.”

IGnation

If you’re an influencer strictly on Instagram, IGnation is a terrific option for you. With Instagram getting smart about bots with better AI, you need a platform with real people to help give you real engagement. Instagram is a powerful tool for influencers to get in touch with brands looking for people to promote and try out their products and services. 

Jessica Higgins, MBA and Entrepreneur, says “the best influencer platform for 2020 and beyond is IGnation (www.ignation.me) because it’s the only growth platform that complies with Instagram’s algorithms. Thanks to Instagram’s artificial intelligence engine, anyone who violates IG’s terms and conditions will be banned or shadow banned. In fact, our research shows an 80% chance of you being penalized by Instagram within six months or less of the activity. You cannot share your password or pay for traffic in 2020, making IGnation the only way to go if you want to become an influencer or grow your influence. “

Zoomph

Zoomph is a platform for social audience intelligence and sponsorship measurement and evaluation. It’s considered a complete platform option for brands who want to gather as much information about their target audience as possible. Information about demographics and other important analytics to help you learn who is promoting you can be a powerful tool to find the right influencers to promote your business.

Morgan Taylor, Finance Expert & CMO for Let Me Bank, says this about Zoomph: “This platform is nice because it utilizes social media sites to promote marketing campaigns. It provides analytics and data to consider who you need to get in touch with to properly promote your business, but it also allows you to access multiple social media sites via one centralized location.”

Adly

Adly is a digital marketing software and services company that helps brands generate leads and sales. They help brands connect with influencers and celebrities to expand their reach and increase sales. They also help influencers get paid by connecting them to work with brands they already know and love. Their targeted engagement strategy allows you to create a campaign, and they will do the work to connect you with the right brands and influencers.

Morgan Taylor additionally recommends because Adly “is useful, because it connects the brand with influencers who are appropriate for that brand. You create a content campaign; they figure out how that connects to potential influencers.”

CreatorIQ

CreatorIQ stands out as one of the highest performing influencer platforms out there. They believe that the most powerful brand messaging occurs when both marketers and creators are telling their stories together. This tactic significantly impacts how brands engage with and sell to their most dedicated consumers.

Beyond their ability to powerfully expand influencer marketing tactics, they also tackle significant issues in the marketplace, including issues such as inflated metrics, fake followers, and follower fraud. They don’t just look for keywords and hashtags, they focus on all aspects of content creation to match brands to the right influencers to meet each others needs.

Jeremy Harrison, founder and CEO of Hustle Life, says “the best value for your money and the one which can greatly help elevate your brand and your product is CreatorIQ.

CreatorIQ is the best in class when it comes to influencer marketing platforms today. The platform allows me to easily discover and categorize creators because they are presented in an industry-standard manner complete with content analysis fit for your campaign. It never occurred to me how much time I was wasting tracking my brand ambassadors’ posts, content, reach, etc before I used the platform.

As the platform is online, you will be able to get live updates and you can run reports any time of the day. A minor problem though is that due to the comprehensive information that is provided in a search or a report, oftentimes it takes a long time for them to load but that is thoroughly understandable.

The best thing that I liked about CreatorIQ is that even if the interface is a bit overwhelming, you can find extensive documentation on them and if all else fails, their support service is very helpful in getting your issue resolved.

The platform allowed me to do with things that I did manually and helped me streamline my influencer marketing processes a lot. The time saved doing those manual and tedious processes allowed me to focus more on what matters most for the campaign.

Tribe

Tribe builds their model on an innovative model that puts content as their front and center focus in a simple manner. Brands request what they are looking for and create a campaign, and the influencers who already use and love the products simply showcase their options. All brands do is select from the best options provided from influencers.

Leanna Beckford, fashion model, blogger and social media influencer, has to say this about why she loves Tribe.

“I have used many influencer platforms over the years, but by the far the best influencer platform I recommend is Tribe. Tribe is a free influencer app available for anyone to use with over 3,000 followers on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. The app is easy to install and set up and there is a large amount of information and resources available on the site. Tribe also has a dedicated support chat available 24 hours every-day to help with any queries or technical issues.”

Perfect for MicroInfluencers

Leanna also says that “Tribe focuses on micro influencers who are everyday people with between 3-100,000k followers. Micro-influencers tend to have more engaged audiences around a specific passion which works very well for brands. The thing I love most about Tribe is it allows me to express my creativity and create the images I love for the brands I love.

Tribe connects micro-influencers to many major well-known brands for various niches. The app is very clear and easy to use, you can choose a category and select which campaign you would like to apply to, or simply select ‘all’ and explore a wider variety of campaigns. Most campaigns require you to go and buy the product, which are usually products found at a local store or online. You can then read the brief and the visual mood board and create an image based around it. Brands on Tribe encourage you to follow their mood-board, but to be true to yourself by creating images in the style you would normally use on your chosen platform.

When an image is created it is submitted to the campaign brief section with a caption you intend to use. If content is approved you can click the submit link and post directly to your platform. If the content is declined the brand will send you the reason for this. You can also contact brands directly on the app if they feel there are adjustments to be made.

So why do I recommend Tribe? It allows me to set my own fee, which I have found that many other influencer apps automatically set for you. All campaigns on Tribe are paid, whereby most influencer app campaigns only offer gifted/paid campaigns. Gifted means that you promote the product in exchange for the brands product or service.

Best Influencer Networks To Use in 2020

Finding the right influencer platform to use to grow your following and brand can be a challenge because there are many amazing options out there in the market. No matter which option you pick, it’s recommended that you do your research. 

Reach out to the company with questions, check reviews, and ask for experiences directly from people who use those services. Each platform offers something different based on niche, social media network, sizes of accounts, and other factors. 

Which are your favorite influencer marketing platforms to use? If you don’t see your favorite in this list, tell us about it in the comments! We’d love to check out other options to promote to influencers and brands alike.