If you’re unfamiliar with influencer marketing, it is the term used to describe brands using influential individuals to promote their products.

Influencer marketing is fast becoming one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience as consumers are trusting third party recommendations more than traditional outbound marketing efforts.

The term influencers can cover a wide range of people including celebrities, sports stars, bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers and more. However, often when the term influencer is thrown around we think of A-list celebrities with millions of followers and fans.

Yet, brands are increasingly stepping away from the most well-known influencers and looking towards a new type of influencer – the micro influencer.

What is a micro influencer?

A micro influencer is someone with a following of 3,000 – 100,000 – otherwise known as the sweet spot for engagement. Micro influencers are very successful in terms of interaction, engagement and conversation. This is because social media users aren’t as keen to interact with celebrities compared to someone they can relate to and influencer marketing is most effective when the individuals are viewed as peers.

Why you should be using micro influencers

Engaging with micro influencers is the perfect way to promote your brand’s offerings though genuine and authentic content. As their audience is very valuable to them, the micro influencer will only post content they know their audience will want to see and a lot of their success depends on authenticity. As a result, sponsored posts will feel more genuine if they align with the usual style of content posted by that influencer.

Generally, studies have shown that the larger someone’s following is, the lower levels of engagement they received from their followers. Someone with 1,000 to 3,000 followers is likely to receive, on average, 8% post engagement in relation to their followers whereas, someone with between 500,000 and 1,000,000 is more likely to receive 1.7% – 2.4% post engagement on average.

Despite having a smaller following, micro influencers are likely to have a much more engaged, targeted audience because they are more likely to share content related to a particular niche as opposed to just being followed for being ‘them’. Examples of this include travel instagrammers and fitness bloggers. As the user will follow that micro influencer due to their interests, they are much more likely to engage with the content – much more valuable than hundreds of thousands of eyes scanning a post yet not registering it in any way.

Based on this, using micro influencers is proving to be cost effective for brands. Micro influencers generally charge significantly less than an influencer with a much larger following. Therefore, it is likely you will be able to engage with several micro influencers for a fraction of the price of one celebrity, yet see higher engagement and more effective results.

How to find and choose the right influencers for your brand

To find influencers who are right for your brands, the following tips are useful:

• Use relevant hashtags to find micro influencers who are interested in what your brand offers
• Research on social media to see who has a large following and is already interacting with your brand
• Search on Google for influencers in your target area. An example of this could be ‘travel blogger in London’
• Research the influencer’s audience – are they valuable to your brand?
• Look for a community or network relevant to the niche that your micro influencer works in. Such as ‘mummy Facebook accounts UK’