One of the best ways to promote your business is to leverage micro-influencers. Not only is it easier to get them to advertise you, but the results are also often better. Micro-influencers are influencers who have a relatively lower number of followers compared to celebrity influencers. When celebrity influencers have millions of followers, micro-influencers have a few thousand. But don’t let the number of followers lead you to think that their followers are less engaged. It may surprise you that the followers are even more responsive than that of celebrity influencers. Why’s that? Well, it is all because of the community. The micro-influencers community is small and more engaged, while that of celebrity influencers is often huge but disconnected from each other. This fact doesn’t mean that all celebrity influencer followers are disengaged. But there are more chances for engagement if you go for micro-influencers.
How to Find Micro-Influencers
Now that you have seen the value of micro-influencers in your business, you may want to know how they can help your business. But before you can do that. You need to know where to find them first. In this section, you will learn more about micro-influencers and where you can find them online.
Look at Who’s Engaging With Celebrity Influencers
The best place to find micro-influencers is in celebrity influencer channels. This strategy may seem counterintuitive, but it works. Micro-influencers often look to celebrity influencers for inspiration. Because of this tendency, they tend to hang out in celebrity influencer channels by liking and commenting. This strategy allowed me to find more micro-influencers than if I searched them on Google. The best part is they are engaged, which means they are far more likely to respond to my emails.
Look for Posts with the Most Shares
The content that micro-influencers make may not always have tons of likes and shares, but you can find them easily if you use tools that tallies the best posts in the industry. Where can you find them? You can find them commenting or liking these posts.
A tool that I love to use for this purpose is BuzzSumo. It is a tool that crawls the web for a topic and returns the best posts on social media with tons of engagements. You’ll find people commenting as pages in these posts. You can then follow these and uncover some micro-influencers that can work with you.
Look at the Recommendations When You Follow Someone
You can also find micro-influencers in link lists. You can often find these as sister websites in a sidebar of the homepage of your favorite blogs. Or you can find it as a separate post that showcases some of the best people in the industry. This is a great way to uncover some micro-influencers in your niche.
How to Get the Attention of Micro-Influencers
You don’t need to bend backward to get a micro-influencer’s attention. But there are some things that you can do to stand out. Here are some of them.
Follow Them on Social Media
The first step in establishing a relationship with a micro-influencer is to follow them on social media. You can follow them on their Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram account to get to know them. Plus, it puts you on their radar. This tactic lets them know that you are looking at them.
PRO TIP: Want to command more attention? You can do it by going another mile. You can do this strategy by liking their posts and pictures when you follow them. By doing this, you will pop up in their feed, and they will take notice.
Comment on Their Blog and Social Media
Another way to get the attention of micro-influencer is to comment on their blog or social media posts. If you can, try to strike a conversation with the micro-influencer. Build the relationship before asking for anything and looking for ways to get to know them.
You can also Email Them.
Once you got their attention and built a relationship with them, you may want to email them to let them know that you are interested in working with them. It would help if you mentioned why – mention how you think their audience is the perfect fit for your products and services and how you think they are the best person to promote your business. Make it natural. Don’t just ask for a promotion. Ask if they are interested in partnering with you instead.
How to Convince Micro-Influencers to Promote You
Now that you have already taken the first step in building that relationship with your target micro-influencer, here are some ideas that will make your pitch better than other business owners.
- Host a Contest – Influencers love contests, and it is because it gives them something exciting to share with their followers. You can provide the prizes, and all they need to do is share the event with their followers.
- Invite them to an Offline Event – You also have the option to invite them to an offline event. It doesn’t have to be anything grand. You can ask them for a simple meetup over coffee to discuss possible partnerships.
- Collaborate on Content – You can also collaborate on content. Offer to sponsor one of their content by asking them to feature your products within the content. Or you can invite them to create content for your website like an infomercial.
- Collaborate on Products – If you want to get an influencer chasing you for your offer, invite them to create a made product in their name. They will be excited to take the offer.
Is Micro-Influencer Marketing for You?
Micro-influencer marketing can work for any business. But it works incredibly well for eCommerce. So if you are looking for ways to promote a Shopify store or are looking for referral program examples to get more people into your business, you can use it. It is not that complicated. You don’t need a fancy Wix affiliate app, and new websites like Drum Set Lab and Hunting Bow Lab were able to see the instant benefits in their business in terms of traffic and sales. It is truly an effective marketing method worthy of adding to your marketing arsenal this 2020.
