With social media becoming a more and more prominent part of our society, many people have carved out their own careers in this medium. While the top echelons of influencers can reach millions of people, it is the micro-influencers who can be of most use to affiliate marketers.
What are micro-influencers?
Micro-influencers are specialists in a certain niche. Whether it is fashion, lifestyle, travel, or something entirely different. However, they will have a sizeable following who are interested in their specific niche.
They have an audience that is bigger than the average social media user, but smaller than celebrities and other persons of interest. The typical micro-influencer audience is usually between 1000 and 10,000 people strong. They also tend to have a much higher rate of engagement compared to other influencers.
They are considered to be trustworthy and knowledgeable about their area, and they spend a lot of time building the relationship that they have with their audience. Nowadays, consumers want to buy from trustworthy sources – they want products and services that are going to do work for them. This is where the real value of micro-influences can come in as they can provide this trusted recommendation that can provide some credibility to a service.
Why use micro-influencers?
You might think it is of no benefit to target the smaller audiences of these influencers. Why reach out to an audience of 5000 when you could reach one of 50,000 with another influencer? However, engagement rates for that audience of 5000 are usually much higher.
Therefore, if you have a link to offer, there is actually more of a chance that more from the audience of 5000 will click it compared to that audience of 50,000 – and it will be more cost-effective overall compared to a post from that influencer with the higher follower count.
What to look for when choosing micro-influencers?
There are so many micro-influencers across various social media platforms that it is important that you hunt down ones that will be of value to you as a brand and a marketer. For this, you need to make sure that you find influencers with the following three criteria:
- Relevance
- Engagement
- Authenticity
They need to be relevant to your brand and niche. It would look very strange and unnatural for a cooking blog to suddenly start posting iGaming content links, as an example, and so you need to find ones that fit with your brand’s values. They also need to have a good level of natural engagement. A micro-influencer with a highly engaged audience has the audience ready and waiting to hear what you have to offer them.
Finally, you need to make sure that the audience is authentic. Too many influencers try to cut corners and inflate their followers with fake accounts. The engagement rate should always be a key indicator that their audience might not be the most authentic.
The rise of micro-influencers has opened up many opportunities for marketers, and this should be something that you spend time exploring. It could be a pathway that generates many interesting leads and options for your affiliate brand.
