To understand the nuts and bolts of influencer marketing, you must first grasp the importance of the social media influencer. A good place to start is by learning the difference between micro and macro.
What is an Influencer?
It’s not clear what makes some people influencers. One would hope that it would be expertise in a specific field but it doesn’t always work out that way.
The truth is pretty much anyone can be an influencer. That weird guy that lives next door and watches TV while licking Cheetos dust off his fingers could be an influencer.
There is no clear cut definition of an influencer except it’s someone that has a proven record of engagement with a specific group or community. Put simply, they must have an effective social media presence to get there. A hundred followers on Twitter does not make you an influencer even if you are the top of your field.
Consider Lele Pons who first made her name as a micro influencer on Vine. She currently has 35.4 million followers on Instagram.
How does that happen? She engages with her audience in a way get her likes and shares, so she can add even more followers. Since gaining social media fame, Lele Pons has made big money as an influencer for companies like Sprint.
I don’t wish to underscore her success, though. It takes natural talent and lots of work to gain influencer status and build that level of followers. At last check, I have a following of 100 people on Facebook and that took effort.
What is a Micro Influencer?
Followers are the milestone used to measure influencers. In marketing, we break them down into different categories:
- Micro
- Macros
A micro influencer has a following of between 10,000 to 99,999 people, more or less depending on who you ask, on a mainstream social media platform like Instagram, Twitter or Youtube.
Micro influencers focus on a target market, as well. For instance, Steven Onoja is one of the top Instagram micro influencers in the fashion world and has 96,000 followers. Recently, he posted a very artistic photo of Ecco Domani wine. At the bottom of the post is the hashtag #ad, indicating he is a micro influencer for this brand.
Micro influencers connect with their followers on a very personal level. They provide opinions on a product to build brand engagement within a target group.
Even though Steven Onoja is deemed a fashion connoisseur, he can work as an influencer for any brand that wants to connect with that market. Ecco Domani needed an influencer to reach a younger crowd of fashion conscious individuals.
A micro influencer can make anywhere from 75 to 500 dollars per post depending on their number of followers. The more they have the higher their worth as a brand asset.
What is a Macro Influencer?
Macro influencers build their following on existing fame. It doesn’t matter how they came to fame, i.e. the Kardashians, just that they are well-known and active on social media.
Some break this category down further into macro and mega influencers. A macro would have a following from 100,000 to 300.000 and mega would be anyone with massive social media appeal.
Engagement isn’t really the point with macro or mega influencers — it’s sheer numbers. A macro influencer’s following grows organically based on other career paths and name recognition level. Micros focus on personal style and audience appeal to find success.
One post by someone like Kim Kardashian, about as mega as you can get, reaches potentially 143 million people and likely makes her thousands of dollars.
How to Choose: Micro or Macro?
The average marketing agency that represents a small or medium-sized brand will go with the micro influencer because they want authenticity as well as cost savings.
It’s not hard to believe someone like Steven Onoja enjoys an 11 dollar bottle of wine. It’s not easy to convince the world that Kim Kardashian does, though. On the other hand, no one questions a Prada endorsement from a Kardashian because luxury is kind what they do for a living.
Micro influencers tend to have higher engagement rates, too. They connect with their followers 60 percent more than macro influencers. If you ask Steven if he liked the wine, he is much more likely to answer you. If you reply to Kim about her Prada purse, you’ll be lucky if her personal assistant even notices.
When shopping for the asset for your next campaign look for a micro influencer that works hard to engage your target audience and that is genuinely enthusiastic about your product. Next, pair that influencer choice with a WA content strategist who can maximize your marketing investment.
Darla F. loves a challenge and to experience new things, so, next, she tackled the website redesign for an automotive dealer in Florida. She taught herself to program in multiple languages and did all the graphic design, as well as creating copy for them. The website includes an automated purchase order system written by Darla and a real-time inventory program. Nowadays, she spends her time writing about veterinary medicine, healthcare, fitness, marketing and affiliate marketing along with tackling artistic projects like painting. Her first novel was published in 2009 and she is working on a second and third, while still creating engaging content for her clients.
