Micro influencer marketing is on the rise. With exceptional & high conversion figures, that’s hardly a surprise. It’s time for brands to start paying attention to micro influencers.

Let’s tell you more about who micro influencers are, and how you can work with them to improve your social media customer acquisition.

What’s A Micro Influencer?

Micro influencers are people of influence with a social media following of about 10,000 to 100,000. Though the amount of followers these influencers have is not huge, they make up for it with the deep engagement they enjoy with audiences.

Whereas influencers tend to broaden and branch off their audiences exponentially and into often unrelated directions, micro influencers are more targeted in their approach, and hence are known to deliver much more conversions than influencers with substantially more followers.

Now, onto the strategies you can use.

Choose The Right Micro Influencers for Your Social Media Campaigns

Micro influencer social media campaigns can deliver superior ROIs than routine social campaigns, provided you choose micro influencers with a firm focus on your campaign goals. Here are some key selection variables to keep in mind.

Niche

Which subjects are at the core of your branding and content strategies? These are the micro niches that become the starting point of your micro-influencer search. Look for influencers that are not likely to branch off into peripheral niches.

Engagement versus Followership

Micro influencers, because they need to engage with a manageable number of followers, are expected to spend more time in establishing personal connections with subscribers. Use a tool such as Twitter Report Card to get a quick snapshot of the engagement and followership aspects of any Twitter account.

Audience

You need to understand the kind of audience that a micro influencer has, and map it to your social media campaign goals. For instance, with a social campaign that aims to get more brand awareness for your organic foods brand, you want a fitness-foods niche micro influence whose audience is aligned to the idea of ‘organic’ as a lifestyle choice, instead of those more focused on bodybuilding.

The Content They Share

Starting a whole video production effort, just because that’s what a micro influencer prefers, is not really the best way forward, especially when you’d want to repurpose your content for your micro influencer powered social media campaigns. So, get an overview of the content formats that the micro influencer operates in, to be able to quickly ramp up social media visibility, using content that’s already done well on your blogs.

Plan Ongoing Micro Influencer Campaigns

When your goal is to reach more customers on social media, a limited period or one-off micro-influencer marketing campaign will not work. That’s because even the best micro influencers need time to be able to churn up a good quantity of impressive content to be able to make your brand and products stick in the audience’s mind. Here are some points to remember:

–   Look to sign long term contracts with micro influencers, with remunerations tied to number of conversions, revenue generation, etc.

–   Plan your micro influencer campaign keeping in mind that you’d need to keep it active for a few months; this will help you plan on content creation.

–   Look to work with micro influencers with a track record of long-term collaborations; for instance, Natalie Kay of @sustainablychic has been promoting eco-luxury shoe brand Atelier Alienor for some time now.

–   Avoid working with micro influencers who’re known to switch focus to their latest endorsements.

Sponsored Posts For High Impact and Instant Conversions

Successful micro influencer social marketing campaigns leverage a mix of subtle and sponsored promotions. So, throw in the odd sponsored post, such as a detailed product review, an event-coverage, or an interview with your brand’s CTO or CEO on the micro influencer’s page as a sponsored post for high impact. Some points to remember:

–   Look to leverage your micro influencer’s content creation capabilities for this.

–   Throw in freebies to have the micro influencer agree to the sponsored post, if that’s not a part of your contract.

–   Conduct social media searches using hashtags like #sponsored, #sponsoredpost, etc to check examples and see if you can manage your sponsored post campaign.

–   Don’t forget to add in an irresistible offer for your audience; for instance, an influencer specific coupon code (this incentivizes instant conversions, and also helps track the success of the campaign.

Final Thoughts

Remember, finding and reaching out to micro influencers is not a problem; there are easy and affordable tools to help you with that. Making sure that your micro influencer marketing campaigns actually reach out and engage with thousands of relevant and valuable social media users, however, is challenging. The strategic level suggestions shared in this guide will help you do better. Onward and upward!