Influencer promotion has many segments such as micro, macro and nano and it is what makes or breaks a brand on the internet.
You can utilize this by using popular celebrity-status individuals/organizations on the internet.
Who have a strong following and influence the characteristics of their audiences.
In this article, we’re going to talk about the Micro Influencer and the difference they input to a brand in terms of promotion.
Micro Influencers are those that have a minor following around the 50k to 999k mark.
In contrast, Macro Influencers have a following of around 1 Million to 10 Million.
There are also those risky to invest, Nano Influencers that i mentioned earlier.
Nano Influencers on average have subscribers in the thousands, and pose a volatile following count.
Generally, their voice is not as active as a Micro or Macro Influencer.
So in this article I’m going to discuss about the Micro Influencer.
Definition
Implementing Micro Influencer Promotion into your Marketing Strategy is painstaking.
Unlike the macro Influencers who help to promote products to millions of their followers.
Micro-Influencers do not posses such a large following.
Which is why most brands do not wish to work with them that often.
But this actually an opportunity.
Because micro influencers have a much deeper connection to their audience than the macro influencers.
They also posses a deeply rooted following in a specific topic.
This helps us to collectively gather micro influencers in promoting our brand under different segments of users.
This helps to construct a diversified approach to our marketing strategy.
Diversity has been a key factor in promotion.
International brands like Coca-Cola, Apple and Microsoft use customer diversification to ensure scalability in their marketing efforts.
Brands receive the opinions of many and have worked personally with Influencers from all around the world to help grow their business.
In a similar way you could also use a Micro Influencer for the promotion of your brand, Here are some important steps.
#1 – Where to look? Finding the right platform for a micro Influencer promotion
Before we get on with identifying a Micro Influencer Promotion strategy for your brand.
We must establish the platforms in which we find our Influencers.
In short, YouTube and Instagram aren’t the only platforms out there for promotion.
You can also grow your business with other platforms.
Such as Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and even bloggers.
A good marketer knows who has to see an advert and who doesn’t.
No one can sell to all, right?
Create a persona of the product / service of your business.
Also, start thinking as if you were the customer, what platform would you use the most.
If your ideal customer was a teenager, who loved to hang out with their friends online and post moments of their life online, where would they do it, Instagram of course.
But then again if your ideal customer was middle-aged, married and enjoyed finding and reading informational articles online, where else would they be, but Pinterest.
Now, don’t misinterpret me, the roles here could be reversed as well.
The middle-aged married individual could be on Instagram and the teenager would prefer Pinterest.
But, this is what we call an outlier, and targeting them on the internet is difficult.
That is, if you’re using paid promotions and running adverts on the platform.
But with Influencers, the challenge is completely futile.
Every Influencer that is out there has a specific personality to them and shares their opinion more often than others.
In doing so, they influence the opinions of their followers when purchasing products.
This is why we use Influencers in promoting our products, especially by implementing a Micro Influencer promotion into our marketing strategy.
We can expect to see higher engagement and better ROI (Return on Investment)
Micro Influencer Promotion 101 – Influencer Marketing Platforms
Awesome, You’ve got your customer persona and a basic idea about your customers online journey.
You’re almost ready to start searching for Influencers.
But where, you may ask?
Well, I’ve listed down some of the common characteristics of people who browse the following Social Media Platforms.
And also have mentioned how they react to a Micro Influencer and engage with their product promotion.
TLDR Table of Platforms and their purposes
| Platform | Influencer Audience Interests |
| Users like to increase their self-image, make sure your product can boost this for the influencers audience. | |
| YouTube | A YouTuber builds a relationship with their audience. If your research predicts that you can help increase or take part in this relationship. You’re all set to go. |
| TikTok | TikTok offers consistent content, and is mostly popular around teenagers. Be sure that you can work consistently with your freelancers. Think in the long-term, this isn’t a hit and run platform. |
| An unpredictable platform. Not much can come from using an influencer here. But, you can receive feedback, information and useful data. To help build / develop your product. | |
| The underdog of social media with long term at its core. You can expect to grow not only your brands presence here, but also your content strategy. Get Insights into what people like the most of topics. Probably the only platform here that teaches a brand more about its customers. |
Instagram users are highly active. They want colorful images and impressive content.
They live to capture the moment and to share about what they care for.
A Micro Influencer utilizes this for promotion of brands and opinions. Additionally, Instagram users also prefer to use the platform for relaxation. Instagram is visually driven.
Also, the platform doesn’t have much to read or write about.
Mostly, It allows users to engage with their friends, families and favorite hobbies all together in one platform.
So, when you’re looking for a Micro Influencer to help with your brand promotion. Look for someone that can make your brand express these three feelings, which are:
- Boost the Prospects Self-Image – Make sure the post gets the prospects to feel like a boss after purchasing it. Never fail to impress.
- Easy to Consume – The Micro Influencer should promote the product like they never got paid for it.
- Relationships – Make sure to use your own channel to answer prospects queries. Have an answer ready for any question that an individual might ask on the post.
YouTube
YouTube is a platform of relationships, even the way audience members connect to their influencers is called subscribing.
To develop this connection a channel should give a great self-disclosure and be more open to their audiences on reviews, purchases and their overall content types.
By simulating their intimacy you can trigger a stronger “dopamine hit”, you can read more about this phenomenon in an article posted in Psychology Today.
Locating a Youtuber
So now with that in mind, its time to find someone who can glue-in your product to their connection.
Let’s say you were selling old memorabilia in your e-commerce store.
Now, you want to find a micro influencer to help with the promotion of your store.
Find someone who can offer to review your site, ask them to say something positive about your platform.
Also, ask them to credit a feature your store has, that their audience would like.
Your instructions must be clear.
This might also bring honest comments that are negative from their audience, which might hurt at first, but as you improve your service based on the audience feedback.
You will start seeing tremendous improvements in terms of engagement.
TikTok
Ever been addicted to something. Well take that sensation and spread it across the teenagers around the world, you’ll get TikTok.
TikTok is a platform for the Youth. The platform is used by many around the world to share their creativity. Enjoy content that is bright and entertaining to watch.
The “For you” feed provides an endless assortment of videos that are made by creators from all around the globe. TikTok keeps you entertained.
If your brand can fulfill this purpose of entertainment and is geared towards making random teenagers happy. Then TikTok is the right place for your brand.
Persuading a TikToker
Start with some swag. TikTok influencers are usually persuaded by receiving merchandises for free. This makes them feel happy and positive about their status.
Everything in TikTok is about building a status. You cannot survive in it if you didn’t care about anything. So offer to make your influencer and their community feel good about themselves.
Create a promotional campaign that can satisfy their audience.
Maybe give the creator a promo code for their first 100 viewers to receive an insane offer on your product.
Keep a consistent relationship with your influencer and offer promotions consistently by collaborating with them.
It will get their users to watch their content faster, which satisfies the micro influencer and helps with the promotion of your brand.
Remembers, a Win-Win strategy always Wins.
Where the minority is the majority. Twitter is a platform that speaks its mind on anything and everything.
Engaging your audience on a informative level has never been this easy before. By using twitter, you can receive great feedback.
But, keep in mind that since its an Eco-system of active users.
You should always be on the lookout for negativity as well.
The Pew Research Center identified that 80% of tweets from the U.S were from 10% of the users.
While the remaining 90% only tweeted 20% naturally.
This goes to show how narrow the voice of twitter is.
But also how powerful an influencer can be for growing a product / service.
Twitter is a great platform to get started, with or without an influencer.
It can help you to receive information that is crucial to grow.
But honestly, twitter is a platform that emphasizes on politics and opinion sharing.
Which doesn’t help with promoting a product much.
So do be careful when you approach a micro influencer on twitter in regards to a brand promotion.
The underdog of social media. Pinterest doesn’t receive much recognition in regards to building a micro influencer promotion plan on the network.
This is because Pinterest is considered a platform for sharing and receiving information. Tips and Trick, Multiple methods of doing something, etc etc.
But here are some interesting facts from hootsuite to get your interests:
- A Monthly User Growth of 45% in 2020 – While everyone was mostly on quarantine during the Covid-19 epidemic of 2020. Seems they took interest in reading and finding information.
- Gen Z users grew by 40% – Generation Z (Gen Z) is considered a part of the generation born after 1997 up until 2015 according to Pew Research Center. This is interesting because the last place to expect Gen Z’s is Pinterest, but yet. Here they are.
- 95% of top searches are unbranded – This gives a huge boost to our Micro Influencer Promotion plan since it ensures that the platforms users are very experimental. And ready to try something new, say, maybe something you might have to offer.
- Always looking for something “new” – Pinterest users have engaged more with products that are new. Or a new in terms of its conceptualization.
If these facts didn’t get you excited to work on Pinterest, i don’t know what will.
Catching the right fish in Pinterest
You can start by finding someone who has good taste in pinning content to their profile.
They should be able to amplify pins to encourage re-pins which would help to gain recognition in the Pinterest Search Engine.
If the Micro Influencer pins pictures or videos as a promotion of your brand.
Their followers might recognize this and take notice of it, due to the trust they have over the influencer.
But the big picture with Pinterest is that its long-term.
You’ll start receiving visitors and views to your website over the course of time.
This foundation is impossible to break.
This is the perfect platform for a brand looking to make a strong reputation.
And also to make itself trustworthy.
Micro Influencer Promotion 102 – Making your move
Now that you’ve got your persona, your preferences of platforms for influencer promotion and your list of micro influencers for promoting your product.
Let’s find out how we can approach them.
Maybe, you can offer a free product for testing.
Or you could contribute to their growth with a tool that they could use in their everyday content development.
But don’t ever forget that influencer promotion whether it be micro or macro, Is a collaboration.
Both entities involved in it, the brand and the influencer expect to make goals meet.
Making goals meet
Say, if you were a company selling hiking gear.
And you found a Micro Influencer to help with the promotion of your brand.
You could try offering him/her free merchandise to protect themselves while filming.
And don’t give them something cheap.
Always represent your brand to them in the most sincere manner.
Once you win their trust, you can easily win over their audience.
This phenomenon is similar to how friendship works.
So make friends with your Influencer, send them regards on content releases and achievements.
Even those not related to your sponsored posts, videos and etc.
Let them know you care.
In Conclusion
Whether your brand is selling clothes or a digital service that offers sales analytics.
You can implement a Micro Influencer marketing strategy in your promotion. But, be sure to appreciate your influencers contribution to your brand or product.
Learn to appreciate their effort.
By building a connection to your influencer, you can make your brand a part of the connection that the influencer has with their audience too.
A brand like SquareSpace was able to approach Youtubers who were highly technical and offer promotions for their prospective viewers.
In short, guess your customer, choose your platform, find your influencer (a close collaborator who appreciates your product) and make it all work together and go back to guessing your customer, do this on repeat.
This is the secret sauce of Micro Influencer marketing for product promotion.