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Micro influencers have been all the rage in the digital marketing world, and for good reason. Marketers can scale their campaigns further with micro influencers, who have a comparatively lower cost and higher engagement rates than their mega influencer and celebrity counterparts.
But not all micro influencers are created equal, and not just any micro influencer will do. We broke down the five qualities that make for a good micro influencer to help you find the best influencers for your next influencer marketing campaign.High quality engagement
Having a higher engagement rate than an influencer with a larger following doesn’t mean much in a vacuum. A good micro influencer needs to have quality engagements with their audience – they need to be an active participant in their own community.
While macro and mega influencers tend to have lower engagement rates for logistical reasons, the same can be said for a micro influencer’s higher rate. Simply put, fewer people have to engage with a micro influencer’s post to inflate the number. As such, the engagement rate doesn’t tell a marketer much without context. A micro influencer who stewards their community, interacting with their followers in a personal and authentic way, will go further than one who meets your benchmarks with no deeper thought. With fewer followers to interact with, it’s theoretically easier for micro influencers on the whole to do this, but not everyone does.
Look for influencers who carry out Q&A’s, live stream, or reply to comments on their posts.
Unique content and offerings
A good micro influencer ought to target a unique audience with a unique content offering. One of the advantages a micro influencer can have over others is the ability to hyper target specific niches, interests, or communities. For example, @alexandriaslens is a photographer, mother, and visual artist who features her family in hypnotic, fantastical image creations on her Instagram. Her audience is primarily women in their mid-20s with an interest in the arts, parenting, and the outdoors.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Alexandria (@alexandriaslens) on
Alexandriaslens, like thousands of other micro influencers, has a unique style of content that can attract a particular audience, with particular interests. Leveraging a micro influencer who can reach specific archetypes of people that align with your brand can help maximize your campaign’s results. You don’t need to look for an influencer who reinvents the wheel – not everyone can be a Da Vinci. You should, however, look for influencers who share authentic interests in things. They should in essence resemble people in the real world, with dynamic interests, ideas, and nuances.
Professionalism
Given their size, micro influencers can be a bit of a grab bag – not every influencer will ascend to the ranks of celebrity. Some might be on the rise, while others may lack the time or the commitment to grow their brand beyond their current lot. As we found in our State of Influencers Report, even though the industry is professionalizing, the majority of influencers still see social media as a side–hustle.
When searching for a micro influencer, their background doesn’t matter as much as their professionalism. Regardless of whether it’s their full time job, a good micro influencer takes their partnerships seriously and acts in good faith, whether they’re actively growing their brand or happy to stay put. Professionalism can mean a lot of things to a lot of people – what matters is that they can work with you to meet your campaign’s needs, and are willing to take your campaign seriously. The stereotypical diva influencer is not the kind to hedge your bets on.
Passion
Having the capacity to influence people, especially on social media, requires earning their trust and attaining credibility with them. An influencer who expresses passion for their content, whether it’s a hobby, a career, or a lifestyle, can elevate their opinions through engaging and magnetic content. The same can be said of their product recommendations and reviews.
Passion can appeal to any person’s base emotions, transcending and traversing boundaries of any kind. An influencer who is willing to share their passion gives off a sense of vulnerability – the willingness to share themselves – which can help create a bond between them and their audience through a fundamentally and inextricably human emotion. Harnessing this passion can help associate your brand with this passion.
The right fit
Partnering with a passionate, professional influencer with quality engagement and unique content will be a waste if they don’t align with your brand. What makes influencer marketing special is also what makes it difficult – an influencer has to have influence over your target audience. Influence is composed of a series of moving, interacting parts, including the qualities listed above.
The right influencer for your campaign should authentically reach to your target audience and have a genuine, believable interest in your brand. They should speak the vernacular of your target audience, be an active part of their community, and be taken seriously by them. The right influencer will ultimately look different from brand to brand and campaign to campaign. What matters is that you do your homework to ensure your influencer meets your (and your audience’s) requirements.
Working with micro influencers can be tricky. They can appear as an unknown quantity, with so many variables that, while making them unique, can make a marketer’s life difficult. Many of the most successful influencer marketing campaigns look for these five qualities in an influencer to make the most of their efforts, and many use solutions like Julius to help them get there.
