Influencers are a key part of your brand’s marketing strategy. Not only do they help with engagement and reach, but some collaborations and partnerships can result in a flurry of new sales.
Micro influencers are a specific type of influencer and are worth considering as part of your influencer strategy this year. Whether you’ve worked with influencers before or not, it is useful to know what classes as a micro influencer, how to choose them and the best tips for maximising your success with any collaboration campaigns you run this year and beyond.
Understanding Micro Influencers: Why They Matter
So what is a micro-influencer? A micro influencer offers higher engagement, cost-effectiveness and authenticity for brands, compared to macro-influencers.
Micro influencers have a smaller but more dedicated following within specific niches. This leads to more trust and a greater chance of their followers acting on the recommendations made by the influencer.
Their reliability and ability to connect with the audience they’ve spent tirelessly nurturing are certainly worth exploring as an opportunity to grow your business.
Why are micro influencers so influential?
Authenticity and trust
Audiences are smaller and much more focused on a particular niche. From the audience’s perspective, they’re often viewed as peers and genuine experts, so this builds a level of trust that makes their recommendations more credible.
Higher engagement rates
Micro influencers usually have higher engagement rates in comparison to larger influencers. On Instagram, the average engagement rate for micro influencers will sit around 3.86% in comparison to 1.21% for macro influencers. That means more content will be seen by their audience and engaged with actively, too.
Cost effectiveness
By collaborating with micro influencers, it’s generally less expensive than having to work with celebrities or macro influencers, who sometimes charge an absolute fortune for just one or two posts.
That means brands, particularly on the lower scale of success and financial wealth, can work with multiple micro influencers as a result. This helps with a wider reach and potential for campaign success.
Niche marketing targeting
Micro influencers will often operate within specific niches, whereas macro influencers will likely have a broader scope of advertising and marketing to their audience.
With micro influencers being so niche in their approach, it makes it easier to reach highly targeted and engaged audiences.
User-generated content
With user-generated content, micro influencers help to create authentic, relatable content that many brands will then be able to repurpose and make their own for the purpose of marketing. UGC is becoming a sought-after service, particularly because often those who are creating the content are charging a lot less than what it would cost with traditional marketing companies.
Identifying Your Brand’s Niche and Audience
Identifying your brand’s niche and audience is the first step to working with influencers. Before you can work with them, you need to know what your niche is and who your audience is.
With that being said, here are some helpful tips to identify your brand’s niche and audience.
- Define your brand and unique value
First and foremost, it’s important to define your brand. Having a good idea of who you are as a company and what your values are will align you successfully with the right influencer..
Look at combining your strengths with your passions. Start with what you’re best at and what your company would consider itself to be, its top selling points. Look at what your business resolves when it comes to your audience’s issues and highlight those so that they’re marketable opportunities.
- Research your market and audience
Next, you’ll want to research your market and audience in general. This is an important step not only for your influencer collaborations but also for your own marketing efforts.
Analyse your existing customer base and identify any demographics that you might not have considered to be relevant until now.
It’s also a good idea to do some market research and to use tools like Google Trends and social media analytics in order to gauge the interest in your business.
Developing detailed profiles of your ideal customers, including their demographics, can all be helpful in understanding who they are and ultimately, what they’ll want from you. By doing that, you’ll then be able to look for influencers who have that exact customer base.
- Start searching for influencers
Once you’ve identified your brand values and know exactly who your audience is, you’ll now be able to explore the wonderful world of influencers, of which there are lots.
Picking out influencers isn’t something you do randomly, either. It’s important that you’re being mindful when it comes to picking the right options based on their following, their engagement levels and rates.
Utilising Social Media to Discover Potential Influencers
With that being said, how do you find potential influencers? There’s a lot out there, which can make it challenging to focus on the very best for your brand and campaign requirements in particular.
Finding influencers is fairly easy because they’re found exactly where they thrive – on social media.
To find micro-influencers on social media, you can start by using a mixture of both manual and organic methods. Hashtags, for example, are one way of searching for influencers, and that’s something to go into more detail about further down.
It’s worth analysing your own following to begin with. Look who is already engaging with your brand’s content, because it’s likely that many of your followers might already be potential micro influencers that you could work with.
You could look at exploring other platforms, too, beyond just Instagram or TikTok. There is a wealth of other platforms, including blogs and podcasts, that you could also explore as a form of media to advertise on. Don’t just limit your search to what’s a popular social media platform, as it’s good to be seen across multiple formats to impact a larger audience.
There are several tools that you could be utilising when it comes to finding influencers. For example, Hootsuite is a popular platform used by many and offers databases of influencers that you can filter down to niche, location and even engagement rate. You’ve also got plenty of platforms and tools that can help you assess the quality of influencers. too.
When it comes to picking out micro influencers, focus on engagement over follower count. The higher the engagement they have, the more influential they’re likely to be because this often indicates a more loyal and trusting audience.
It’s always good to look for influencers who provide authenticity within their content, and that aligns with the style of content that you put out regularly. A genuine connection will often lead to a more authentic promotion as a result.
Leveraging Hashtags and Keywords on Instagram
As mentioned briefly above, hashtags are incredibly effective for finding influencers, especially on platforms like Instagram in particular.
One of the longest-running social media platforms, it still remains to this day one of the most used, with 2 billion people across the world using it.
Start with niche-specific hashtags
To leverage hashtags and keywords on Instagram, it’s good to start with the niche-specific hashtags. Again, search for what’s relevant to your brand, your products and services, as well as your audience.
Searching for hashtags that directly relate to your industry or products in question will help to find creators in that space. You should also explore broader and more specific terms like #microinfluencers to cast a wider net, and then you can narrow it down to those that are relevant to what you need.
Look for local and branded hashtags
If your business is location-based, then it’s worth using hashtags with city or country names so that you can track any influencers within your local area or within demographic locations you might be needing to reach.
It’s also worth searching for your own branded hashtags so that you can find customers who are already active fans of your brand.
Consider trending hashtags
Trending hashtags are helpful to look for when it comes to finding micro influencers. Use tools to find trending hashtags, but make sure they’re relevant to your content and audience.
Search for keywords
On platforms like YouTube, you should look at using keywords in the same way as a Google search. It can be helpful to use these social media platforms to help generate the right hashtags from those keywords.
Evaluating Micro Influencers: Metrics to Consider
What factors are worth thinking about when evaluating micro influencers? Here are a few to consider.
- Engagement rate
- Content quality and style
- Audience demographics
- Authenticity
- Audience quality and sentiment
- Brand safety
When it comes to evaluating micro influencers, there are a number of metrics that need to be considered. From engagement rate to cost per acquisition, it’s good to think about the following:
Click-through rate
If your goal is to drive traffic, then you should track the percentage of users who have clicked on a link to your website or landing page.
Reach and impressions
Tracking the total number of unique users who saw the content and the total number of times it was displayed is a good way of seeing how much traction the content is getting once published.
It’s therefore asking for a 7-day or 30-day analytics that they can screenshot from their dashboard so you can see exactly what level of engagement they’re getting in reach.
Conversion rate
For campaigns that are focused on sign-ups, sales or other desired actions, it’s important to monitor the percentage of users who have completed that goal. That’s where unique promo codes or affiliate links are good for tracking the performance of each influencer you work with.
Cost-per-acquisition
As a business, you want to get a good return on your investments, which is why calculating how much it costs to acquire each customer through the campaign is achieved.
Follower growth
If the campaign’s goal is to grow your following, then it’s beneficial to monitor the increase in your own follower count during the campaign to know exactly how influential the influencers were during said campaign.
Building Relationships with Micro Influencers
While finding and working with micro influencers is one part of the collaboration, it’s important that you’re building relationships with these influencers, too.
Prioritise long-term partnerships
Instead of focusing purely on one-off campaigns, it’s good to look for collaborations or offering ambassador programs where you offer gifted or paid opportunities in return for regular content. By having regular content churned out, you’re more likely to see a good ROI in the long run.
Building a consistent brand association is essential, and with that being said, establishing long-term partnerships is crucial. With that in mind, look at setting up partnerships with influencers that you could work with over time.
Treat them as collaborators
When it comes to micro influencers, it’s important to treat them as collaborators. That means involving them in product launches and campaign reviews, rather than just a product review or paid sponsorships.
There are many ways in which you can create authentic content on top of the paid or gifted content you offer as well.
Offer creative freedom
Once you’ve worked out how to find micro influencers, it’s beneficial to trust that they know best when it comes to their audience. Therefore, look to provide guidelines on key messages, hashtags and disclosure, but give them creative freedom to create content.
Engage with their content
Engaging with their content is imperative. It’s a self-sabotage on the campaign to not engage with the content that’s being created by these micro influencers. By engaging with the content they’ve created, you help raise their social media profiles, which in turn benefits your own in the long run.
Join the conversation in the comments, share the content where you can and engage in it all both during and after the campaign ends. It keeps the buzz alive for longer.
Provide mutual value
Mutual value is important to deliver for the influencer. Think about what benefits the influencer beyond just payment. This could include opportunities to showcase their talents. From collaborating on future projects to introducing them to ambassador programs or other influencers through brand events.
Communicate clearly and often
Communicating clearly and often is essential when running a campaign. Regular check-ins and updates will help maintain a strong and productive relationship.
Encourage community building
Community building is important to do, not just to your audience in general, but to your influencers, too. Ask influencers to host Q&As or challenges that prompt their followers to create content around your brand and business.
This will also be helpful to significantly expand reach, as well as deliver more user-generated content for you to repurpose.
Launch your campaign and collaborate
To help launch your campaigns with micro influencers, here are the next steps you’ll need to take to collaborate with them.
- Define campaign goals and budget
To help launch your campaign with success, you’ll want to start by defining your goals and budget. Setting clear objectives is important to understand what you want to achieve. As well as helping to increase brand awareness, improve engagement and drive sales.
Establishing KPIs helps to measure your success, as well as engagement rates and conversion rates to sales.
You should also set a budget and determine how much of this budget you’ll allocate to each influencer or to the campaign as a whole. You may want to pay more for certain influencers depending on their reach and the content they’re offering.
- Find and vet micro-influencers
Next, you’ll want to find and vet the micro influencers in question. As mentioned above, use social media searches, influencer marketing platforms and relevant hashtags.
Look for influencers that have a highly engaged audience and one that matches your target demographic, as well as the brand values.
Check their content too. Reviewing their past collaborations will give you an idea of the content quality and to ensure it aligns with your brand’s aesthetic and brand tone.
- Create a compelling campaign brief
A compelling campaign brief is important to create when it comes to influencer collaborations. With that being said, provide clear instructions within the brief.
Include essential information and be explicit about the campaign goals and any non-negotiables when it comes to creating the content, the timeline of publishing and any other guidelines.
- Collaborate and empower your influencers
Collaborating and empowering the influencers you work with is important. Building a relationship once you’ve learnt how to find micro influencers for your brand is helpful. Grant them creative freedom and provide resources throughout your collaboration.
- Monitor and measure performance
A key part of the process is to monitor and measure campaign performance. You’ll want to look at tracking the progress of the KPIs you’ve established. Engage with the community and make sure to respond to comments or questions on the influencers’ posts so that it builds a community and fosters a positive experience.
If you’re wondering how to find micro influencers on Instagram or other platforms, then use this guide. It’ll help you navigate the next campaign you do with micro influencers this year or next.
