How Micro Influencers Can Help Your Social Marketing Strategy

Influencers have become an essential part of brand influencer marketing. Entire marketing campaigns are created with influencers in mind, and those campaigns can be pretty spendy. This leaves brands want to know what is best, influencer vs. micro-influencer?

Celebrity and well-known influencers can charge up to $200,000 per social media post. In fact, it’s reported that the price tag for a single post by celebrity influencer Kim Kardashian can be in excess of $250,000.

That’s pretty insane. Obviously getting Kim Kardashian to promote your product is extreme.

The general breakdown for most influencer posts on Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat is like this:

• Instagram is around $1,000 per every 100,000 followers the influencer has.
• YouTube is around $2,000 per every 100,000 followers the influencer has.
• Snapchat is around $500 to $1,000 per campaign within a 24-hour period.

Pricey Snapchat campaigns from a top influencer . . .

These numbers are just a baseline. Celebrity and well-known influencers can cost a whole lot more. The good news is that you may get more value from micro-influencers then any celebrity or social media influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers.

Not the best news for those big time influencers . . . 

Whether you’re brand is big or small, micro-influencers have a lot to offer. And this holds true for pretty much every industry. Who is a micro-influencer exactly? The main indicator is follower count. According to a Gartner report, micro-influencers are social media influencers with a follower count between 5,000 and 25,000. 

However, follower count isn’t the only calling card of a micro-influencer. In fact, when doing your research on influencers for your brand, you want to look at a number of attributes. Anyone can get an Instagram account today and have 10,000 followers in a week. How is that possible? You can buy followers.

Before paying any influencer to promote your brand, product, and/or service, do your due diligence. A few key areas to research when choosing a micro-influencer are:

• Age of social media account vs. followers
• Number of likes on posts
• Comments on posts
• Posting frequency
• Engagement on influencer posts similar to your brand

These key areas can tell you right away if a micro-influencer is legitimate or not. Now that we have all that out of the way, it’s time to really dive into how micro-influencers can help your social marketing strategy.

There are more micro-influencers to choose from

This is a very important benefit when it comes to using micro-influencers for your social marketing strategy. Getting past gatekeepers to access celebrity and well-known influencers can be a tedious and often unsuccessful endeavor. With micro-influencers, you don’t have these gatekeeper issues.

Why? There are plenty of micro-influencers to go around. For example, after using #running, we found three micro-influencers in the health, fitness, running niche within 10 minutes. 

This is a good trick for you to employ when looking for your industry/niche micro-influencers. Simply search a popular hashtag for your industry/niche and start doing your research, as outlined above.

Micro-influencers are more cost-effective than mega-influencers

Working with an influencer of any kind will probably cost you money, or at the very least, products. Remember, this is their job. You wouldn’t work for free, and neither should anyone else. However, that doesn’t mean you deserve to be taken advantage of.

You certainly want an ROI positive brand influencer marketing campaign. Research in the past has noted that influencer ROI is $6.50 per every dollar spent on the campaign. This may be a bit high, and not every brand tracks influencer ROI the same way. Here’s some example metrics from Content Marketing Institute:

But anyway you slice the influencer pie, micro-influencers are more cost effective than mega-influencers or celebrities. Once you find a few influencers you would like to work with, DM him or her and negotiate. You may be surprised how easy going it is.

Followers are cult-like loyal to their micro-influencers

When it comes to loyalty in social influencer marketing, micro-influencers are at the top of their game. Yes, a micro-influencer may not have 100,000 followers, but the small army of 20,000 they do have are incredibly loyal. In fact, they hang on every recommendation their influencers post. 

To highlight this point, we can look at @malsfitkitchen, an Instagramer with a meager 3,600+ follower count. 

Nearly every post has 300+ likes and 70+ comments. Here’s one of her middle of the road posts . . . 

Now let’s look at iHop’s post of a waffle . . . 

Yes, the mega-brand known for pancakes and waffles got more likes. This is pretty predictable, considering iHop has nearly 700,000 followers. The takeaway is the comments. The micro-influencer had 3x more comments.

How is this possible? Loyalty. Followers of a micro-influencer want to be part of the conversation, because they know their influencer cares, so they care back. 

Micro-influencers are just easier to collaborate with

One of the biggest benefits of working with micro-influencers over celebrities and well-known influencers is that they are down to earth. There’s definitely no “Ground Control to Major Tom” moments. 

In fact, this is one of the little idiosyncrasies most brands love about micro-influencers. You can bounce ideas off one another, get their expert insight, and even build a long-lasting relationship. Here are a few on-boarding tips to ensure collaboration is seamless:

• First and foremost, make them feel like they’re part of your team
• Build up the excitement level for the project
• Let them develop a plan based on experience
• Be transparent about your campaign goals
• Have very clear expectations in place to ensure success

If you have the above in place, the micro-influencers you work with to help your social marketing strategy will be more than willing to collaborate. This equates to a better campaign, more engagement, and most importantly — More conversions. 

Maximize your social marketing strategy with Scalefluence micro-influencers

All of the above sounds great, right? It’s not difficult to see why micro-influencers are beneficial, possibly more so than mega-influencers. However, you do have a business to run. This makes time spent finding, vetting, and working with influencers a challenge.

What if you didn’t have to do all the grunt work? What if there was a micro-influencer platform that simplified the journey? With Scalefluence in your brand’s corner, you don’t need to. By taking the guesswork out of influencer marketing, you can get back to running your business while we grow it via influencer marketing campaigns with maximum reach, engagement, and ROI.

You can choose from a list of Scalefluence micro-influencers, give us your campaign guidelines, and we get to work.

Our Scalefluence team serves up . . . 

• Micro-influencers with a proven track record in your industry/niche
• On-point brand messaging aligned with your campaign goals
• A consistent posting schedule to keep audience interest redlined
• Social media posts that grab attention and have shareability among followers
• Engagement across social channels, letting followers know you care
• Real-time influencer campaign analytics via your Scalefluence dashboard
• ROI positive data-driven results on each campaign

Influencer marketing is no trend. It has become an intricate part of many brands’ marketing strategies. In fact, a well-crafted influencer campaign can be the most powerful and effective marketing asset available to brands, both large and small, in today’s digital age. 

Are you ready to inspire consumers to take action? We are ready to help. Tether your marketing message with a micro-influencer and deliver meaningful content to loyal followers that hang on every word. Don’t let your brand message get lost in the noise, amplify your message with Scalefluence.