Have you heard how Micro-Influencers can boost engagement for your content?
Are you having trouble figuring out where to find these powerful local influencers?
In this article, I give you tips on how you can find micro-influencers in your community that will help you powerfully interact with your audience.
What is a Micro-Influencer?
At Scrunch.com, they define a micro-influencer as someone who has an audience within the follower range of 2,000 followers up until about 50,000 followers on a particular social media channel, usually comprised of a focused passion, topic or niche market.
It is someone in your community that when they speak, people listen. When they post on social media, people share their content. They have “Influence” over a niche market or consumer. People trust what they have to say.
“Because they are personally invested in their crafts, micro influencers are trusted sources of recommendations for followers.” – The Startup
There is no need to go after the high-priced influencers anymore. With Kylie Jenner charging $1.2 million an Instagram post, businesses have gravitated to the more affordable micro-influencer with an impressive return on investment.
Local businesses and school districts can not afford A-List Celebrities for their campaigns. They can not even afford C-List celebrities like James Van Der Beek of Dawson’s Creek fame. Your ROI diminishes when you chase top dollar influencers.
However, there are many influencers that we can afford. Some social media influencers have extensive interaction with the local community.
“Marketers have noticed that once an account is over a certain size, however, fewer people bother to engage questioning the value of a multimillion army of fans. The ratio of likes and comments to followers peaks when an account has around 1,000 followers.” – The Startup
Trust is a huge factor when it comes to influencers. Your audience tends to question influencers when there are too many followers. Who needs fans in Alaska when you are a local business in Dallas? You don’t need a celebrity when a local mommy blogger has substantial influence over your target audience.
Why Micro Influencers?
Did you know that a recent article by Adweek confirmed that cosmetic company Estée Lauder spends 75% of its marketing budget on Influencer marketing, and most of those dollars are on social media? Why? Because it works.
“These investments are mainly now in digital. Seventy-five percent of our investment now are in digital, social media influencers, and they’re revealing to be highly productive.” -CEO Fabrizio Freda
And according to Adweek, much of those dollars are going toward working with micro-influencers on YouTube and Instagram. If it can work with a cosmetic giant like Estée Lauder, why couldn’t it work for local businesses?
According to reports, 82% of consumers are highly likely to follow a recommendation made by a micro-influencer. That is a significant number! You are not going to find many marketing campaigns with that much influence.
With word of mouth also being a strong influence of consumers buying decisions, micro-influencers has become an excellent opportunity to spread messages and content at a local level.
How to Find Micro-Influencers
The big question you are probably asking is, where do I find these micro-influencers? Are there tools to search for these influential, local celebrities?
Here are three tips to help you find a Micro-Influencer:
1. Social Listening to Your Audience
Social listening is an under-used social media strategy. Social listening is about using your social media channels to learn more about your audience by “listening” to their online conversations.
If done right, you can gain much knowledge about how to improve your engagement and get a better understanding of who they resonate with online. Listening is an excellent way to find micro-influencers that make an impact on your audiences.
Start this process by clicking on your followers and fans profiles to see what they are saying and how they are interacting.
Follow Your Followers
Social listening is easier on Twitter, but you will be surprised how many of your fans on Facebook and Instagram do not have private accounts. Examine who they follow, who they retweet, and what people they follow and like on Facebook and Instagram. You will most likely see local influencers your fans follow.
Follow the Hashtags
Hashtags are other excellent ways to find micro-influencers. What are the common hashtags your followers are using on Twitter and Instagram? Click these hashtags, and then follow the rabbit-hole to see what local influencers connect to the category.
A great way to do this is to start a spreadsheet with your follower’s favorite hashtags. Then you can connect these hashtags to the appropriate influencer. After you feel you have found positive micro-influencers, you can now reach out to them and make a connection.
How Do They Mention
Similar to the hashtag strategy, see who your followers are mentioning in their posts. Is there a common local-influencer they tag on their social media? Add these names to your spreadsheet and reach out to them just like you did with your hashtag mentions.
2. Facebook Audience Insights
Another underused social media tool is Facebook’s audience insights. With the amount of data, Facebook collects, this a valuable tool to analyze audiences in your community. However, many businesses and school districts do not use this section on Facebook.
How to Get Started on Audience Insights
You can access Facebook audience insights in the drop-down menu on the top right corner under “Business Manager.” Click on “See More” to go to the business manager menu.
From the business manager menu choose “Audience Insights.”
By clicking on “Audience Insights,” you open a treasure trove of information about people in your community. Facebook allows you to drill-down and tap into your different audience groups. Within these groups, you can gain valuable insight into which influencers resonate with specific groups.
You have several options to narrow your audience to find your micro-influencers. As you can see in the menu on the right, you can use these options to find data on a particular group in your area. Some of those options include:
- Country, City, Region
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Connections including People Who Like Your Page
- Language Spoken
- Relationship Status
- Education
- Job Title
- Multicultural Affinity
- Parents
- Political Views
- Life Events including Recently Moved
- Tap Into Your Employees
After You Narrow Your Audience
The most valuable resource when it comes to finding micro-influencers is the “Page Like” tab that appears after you narrow your audience. This section provides you with a list of pages your niche audience likes and who they interact with on Facebook.
In the above example, I narrowed my audience to Spanish-speaking parents who live in Dallas and are between the ages of 25 to 45. As you can see, Facebook gave me valuable insight into the likes of this audience. The first thing I would do is invite these realtor groups to tour our neighborhood schools to educate them on our district and specialized programs.
My next step would be to hire the DJ Mean Mauri to play music at some of our events. Knowing he is popular with the Hispanic parents in our community will draw these people to events our schools and district will hold.
I would also ask the manager of the El Rio Grande grocery store to set up a booth in front of his store. We could use the weekends to educate his customers of the great things happening in our district. You could do the same with your business or school district.
3. Using Your Influential Employees
It is my theory that parents tend to care more about their child’s school than the district as a whole. Their feelings are why your teachers are your most valuable micro-influencers. The same holds true with an individual franchise compared to the corporation. Building your employees personal brand is a great way to develop their influencer clout.
Helping them understand the importance of consistent content on social media is a significant first step in building their brand. They need to tell the stories from their classroom. It would also be a great idea to help educate parents by providing them with valuable and relevant content. This process is called Content Marketing.
To learn More About Content Marketing here is a video from a Keynote I did in Minnesota:
Learning how to effectively create content marketing is key to building an impressive personal brand.
Conclusion
Micro-Influencers are a significant upcoming trend in marketing, especially for local businesses and school districts. The better you are at finding these local influencers, the better you will be at having them spread the great things happening in your organization.
You can learn more about Micro-Influencers by watching my thoughts in the video that is in this post:
