1. Know Your Market: The key to picking influencers effectively is understanding your market demographics – the age, gender, geography, and interests of your target audience. If you are selling a product for young moms, consider partnering with influencers who have an audience in that demographic group.

2. Use Platforms for Data: Platforms like Flinque, Klear, and Traackr can provide demographic breakdowns of an influencer’s followership. This information can help you pinpoint influencers who reach your target audience.

3. Check Content Relevance: An influencer’s content should align with your brand’s offerings. Look at the kind of content influencers are sharing and who engages with it. If they often post about fitness and wellness, and their engagement comes from health-conscious users, they could be the right fit for a health and wellness brand.

4. Consider Audience Engagement Rate: It’s not just about the number of followers, but also how actively they engage with the influencer’s content. A smaller influencer with a highly engaged audience in your target demographic might be a better choice than a larger influencer with less engagement.

5. Test with Small Campaigns: A good practice is running small campaigns with potential influencers to test the response from their audience. This will give you a real-world feel for what works (or doesn’t work) before committing to a larger campaign.

6. Evaluate Past Sponsored Posts: Look at earlier collaborations to see if they have worked with similar brands and what was the audience response.

Remember, shortlisting influencers successfully requires a good balance of hard data (analytics) and soft skills (creative judgment). The right influencer marketing platform can help streamline this process.