Introduction
An influencer, in the internet world, is someone who is able to persuade its followers/fans to do, buy, or use the same things that they do. They have the ability to affect the behavior of other people as a result of the size of their audience. Therefore, these individuals are hired by companies to promote their brand/service through social media. For this, they must have the skill of content creation and fully use their imagination. As a result, they’ll provide creative images, captions, videos and blogs that really show a brand in its best light and catch people’s attention. There are three main types: Celebrity, Micro and Macro Influencers
According to Statista, Influencer marketing, which is a form of social-media marketing that involves product placements and endorsements from online creators, increased massively last year, by 5 billion dollars. Influencer marketing has tremendous potential to power your brand’s visibility. More people are finding products to buy, places to eat and even travel destinations from influencers.
Micro Influencers
As said above, the influencer culture has become pervasive in the age of social media. Not only the number of influencers keep increasing, but also the number of founders who use this strategy. Startups as well. They might not use celebrity or macro influencers, as they wouldn’t be able to afford it. However, they could get the help from a micro-influencer.
Micro influencers are defined as accounts with anywhere from 1,000-50,000 followers and macro-influencers as accounts with 500,000-1 million followers. Therefore, micro influencers are cheaper, based on their lower audience, more flexible, based on their low demand compared to macro, and more authentic, which makes them perfect for startups that are just beginning and niche markets. Due to micro influencers being cheaper to work with, a brand can expand its reach by working with multiple influencers that cover many different market segments. In addition, these types of influencers have stronger relationships built on expertise and trust with their followers.
Many brands still don’t believe the benefits. For them, using micro-influencers seems a little counterintuitive. Why would you seek out someone with a smaller following to promote your brand? However, apart from the benefits above, micro influencers have proven to generate better engagement rates, as they receive more likes and comments, and they better target their audience.
How to look for a Micro influencer?
There are different ways in which founders can look for micro influencers: the best ways are:
- Hashtags: You can browse the platform by searching specific hashtags that are related to your brand, and find the influencers using those hashtags in their posts. Hashtags can be a great way to identify what crossover an influencer has with your brand.
- Followers: Looking at your brand’s current followers might be quicker than typing lots of different hashtags. There is a high chance that some micro-influencers have already discovered you and followed your brand. You could easily get a list of prospective influencers to hire from your followers list that are already posting content related to your brand.
- CRM and other tools: There are now different search tools intended to make your influencer search easy and convenient. Different tools that have features such as filters, engagement overviews, and follower counts can be used. They can accessed to easily locate prospective creators for your brand.
- Location: Using locations to filter influencers can be a great way to partner with someone that can get a more first-hand experience with the brand. This can facilitate in-person meetings, shootings, trials, etc.
Step to find the right Micro influencer
- Have a clear goal: we must have a good idea of what kind of result we expect from a micro-influencer. What are we booking for? What are your KPIs? Which platform you’ll be using? etc.
- Define their role for the campaign. Decide on the content you would like them to show, ways of interaction, times and days, partnerships, etc.
- Check hashtags and keywords. As said above, hashtags are really important as well. They are an excellent tool for making content.
- Connect with bloggers. Get in touch with bloggers who create blog posts about your industry, and get them to mention your business among your target audiences.
- Look through their followers: Nowadays it’s easy to discover whether an influencer’s list of followers is fake/bought or real. In addition, they must be relevant. If you are looking for a woman to promote your makeup brand, but most of her followers are boys, you should keep looking.
- Compile a list of influencers. Make your top 10 list and compile a list of every influencer that meets your criteria. Add some notes to make them easier to remember and, later, choose.
- Have the pitch ready: How will you sell your business to them? Most of the pitches include an introduction of the brand’s product/service, details of their role and payments, and a confirmation message to summarize what they are agreeing for.
- Set your DM/Email schedule: Don’t get in contact with all of them all at once. Determine how many messages you feel comfortable sending in a day and how long it will take you to message the entire list.
Conclusion
In conclusion, using micro influencers is a great idea for startups to innovate their marketing strategy. Although they count with fewer followers than macro and celebrity influencers, they are more affordable, flexible, efficient and authentic. Once you look for them, you must follow the right steps to get in contact and get the best results from them. Remember, as we say at Entrepreneurs Collective, small can be powerful.