When you think of online influencers, you’ll probably think of celebrities or top YouTubers like PewDiePie and Tanya Burr. Maybe even throw in a Kardashian or three. They’ve carved out a career for themselves in being a channel (or running channels) that enable big brands to position their products to a large audience.
These influencers may have a huge online following. They might have an Instagram audience or YouTube subscribers in the millions. But does the largest following equal real results? Not necessarily so. Or at least, it doesn’t necessarily translate to being great value for money. Having such a huge following actually shows a lower engagement rate from their followers, because the numbers don’t quite add up. And the important thing to remember is that only a small selection of those followers is actually going to be interested in the product brands are trying to promote through the influencer.
With so much sponsored content down people’s news feeds, you want to be reaching the right audiences and using the right influencers to do this.
The future of brand awareness might just lie with micro influencers. So, who are they exactly?
Who are Micro Influencers?
Micro influencers are like typical online influencers. They’ve got channels – on Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat – and they have an audience based around a certain interest. Typically, a ‘micro’ influencer is someone with between 10,000 – 100,000 followers across their social media platforms or blogs. That’s according to some definitions. But you could drill down even more and look at influencers with just a thousand followers, because you get ten of those on board with your brand, and you reach a much larger audience.
They tend to focus on more specific topics or industries, rather than just covering as much as possible. Instead of being just a generic lifestyle blogger, they’ll find a niche within that market and build or join that community. That’s good for you, because it means you tap into a highly relevant audience.
What’s so good about Micro Influencers?
They’re more likely to get involved
Compared to the macro influencers, who tend to be more interested in the major brands, micro influencers are more likely to want to get involved with brands. They get excited when opportunities arise and will build a strong relationship with those who get in contact. Bigger influencers get tons of companies contacting them every day, with offers that might not be that interesting to them. With micro influencers, you’re often dealing with enthusiasts who don’t often get contacted by companies. That means you can nurture a great relationship.
Small but highly engaged audiences
Their audiences may be far smaller than the Macro’s, but they are more engaged in what the micro influencer has to say. Their followers have more trust in what they put out on their channels, therefore being more likely to show interest the product or service being featured. This also allows you to reach your target audience more effectively, especially if you can do it at scale.
Authentic posts
As the micro influencer is more likely to be enthusiastic about the collaboration, they will be mire inclined to help create more interesting content with your product or service. Social media users are likely to be following a lot of influencers and if they see a group of influencers all creating the same style post with the same product or service, they will notice and this could diminish your brand’s reputation. Making sure that their content differentiates is really important.
Cost-effective
Finally, a macro influencer can now cost you many thousands of pounds, depending on how A-List you want to go, just for a small product feature. For a more reasonable budget – sometimes at the mere stock cost of your product itself – you could effectively work with a whole selection of micro influencers and potentially get a better return on investment.
And that’s the important part: doing things at scale. Going back to what we said above, someone with 1,000 followers on Instagram might not sound like much. But if you can find a dozen of those people, then that’s a significant, highly engaged audience that you can reach within your budget. What’s not to like about that?
