A Complete Guide to Social Media Influencers | HackerNoon

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A Complete Guide to Social Media Influencers by @akritigalav
A Complete Guide to Social Media Influencers
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Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy to reach a target audience through a credible and relevant influencer. The objective is to drive brand awareness and increase brand value, product sales, and inbound leads. Celebrity influencers have a large social media following and endorse products or brands using their platform. Companies often pay influencers to promote their products, and they can be very effective in driving sales. In recent years, celebrity influencers are increasingly popular, and companies are paying big money for their endorsements.
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This guide is intended to provide an overview of influencer marketing and the different types of influencers. It will help you understand the concept of influencer marketing and its various aspects. It will also give you a brief overview of how different types of influencers work and collaborate with brands.
Introduction to Influencer Marketing
One of the most well-liked and lucrative social media trends, influencer marketing, has quickly established itself among the audience. Influencer marketing is a social media marketing technique whereby businesses collaborate with well-known figures in their sector to promote their goods or services. These influencers might be well-known on social media or regarded as authorities in their industry.
Social Media Influencers. Source: iStock
In simple words, influencer marketing involves finding people who have attracted a strong following on a particular channel and asking them to post about your product or service. If you want to attract 2,000 new customers, you can try to target them through a range of different channels, including TV advertising, social media campaigns, and search engine marketing. But all these can be costly and may or may not work. An alternative approach is identifying and working with people with a high social media presence or many YouTube subscribers. If these influencers agree to work with you, they may post about your product, do an ad, or do both. Their followers will see these posts and may be persuaded to buy the product.
Influencer Marketing is a marketing strategy to reach a target audience through a credible and relevant influencer. The objective is to drive brand awareness and increase brand value, product sales, and inbound leads.
Things to consider when thinking about influencer marketing
Influencers should fit well with your brand: Make sure the influencer you select fits well with your brand. Their target market should be pertinent to yours, and their ideals should be compatible with yours.
Review collaboration goals: Be specific with your collaboration goals. What do you hope to accomplish? How will you assess your progress?
Prepare for a budget: Be ready to make a financial commitment. Influencer marketing might be expensive depending on the size and reach of the influencer you choose to work with.
Be tolerant: It takes time to develop connections with influencers and produce content for them. Don't count on outcomes right now.
Types of social media influencers
There are many types of social media influencers, including:
Celebrity influencers
Celebrity influencers have a large social media following and endorse products or brands using their platform. Companies often pay influencers to promote their products, and they can be very effective in driving sales.
While anyone can be an influencer, celebrities tend to have the most influence due to their large social media followings. In recent years, celebrity influencers have become increasingly popular, and companies are willing to pay big money for their endorsements.
Some of the most popular and biggest celebrity influencers are:
Selena Gomez for Coachto promote its handbags and accessories. Having more than 100 million followers on the social platform Instagram, she also designs a few pieces of her own that inspire her followers to buy more products.
Alia Bhatt for mCaffeine, a personal care brand from India. The brand roped in Alia Bhatt as its celebrity influence to drive sales and create brand awareness.
Alia Bhatt promotes mCaffeine saying ”Every shower you take, is now a coffee break”
Mandira Bedi for Mother Sparsh, a baby care brand founded in 2016. The company decided to have Mandira Bedi promote their products to showcase the strong women/mothers and promote their pure baby products without artificial scents and chemicals.
These are just a few of the celebrity influencers. Brands are nowadays working with celebrities to have a promising presence in the market.
Successful Celebrity Marketing Campaigns
MAKEMYTRIP: #OneTripAtATime
This campaign won many awards in different categories in India. The brand created an IGTV video featuring celebrity influencers who encouraged them to take trips by asking, “How they would not like the upcoming years to be like 2020” as a part of their new year's resolution. The campaign had celebrities like Shenaz Treasury, Gaurav Taneja, Barkha Singh, and more who reposted the IGTV post and encouraged their followers to answer the question.
Source: Facebook
The campaign went live on New Year’s eve and helped generate more than 11 million impressions across Instagram. Make My Trip received approx. five thousand actions through the campaign.
#21Recipes21Days campaign by Kellogg’s with Ranveer Brar
Indians were getting used to a new way of life that was restricted to their houses during the 21-Day Lockdown in the year 2020. According to social listening, Indian mothers discussed their everyday challenge of deciding what to prepare. This was brought on by the widespread limitations on cafes and restaurants, which increased the number of people searching for recipes online.
At this time, Kellogg’s came up with a #21Recipes21Days campaign where Ranveer Brar, a celebrity chef, was taken to drive awareness about the Ready to eat range launched by the brand. Ranveer Brar has more than 1.2 million followers on Instagram, 1.7 million on Twitter, 2.8 million on Facebook, and 2.55 million on YouTube.
Source: YouTube
Ranveer Brar served as the host of a LIVE session on Facebook Live and YouTube. In this Facebook Live, he demonstrated simple meals that could be produced with Kellogg's cereals. Chef Ranveer Brar and his son prepared a live meal during this LIVE session, which promoted the benefits of cooking as a way to strengthen family ties. In this session, Kellogg's products, which were incorporated into the dishes, were also organically branded. A Q&A session with Chef Ranveer Brar was held on the LIVE video using branded plugins following each recipe's discussion.
Result:** There were 3.2 million unique views, 300,000 organic views, over 9 million impressions, a reach of 6 million, and 3.6 lakh engagements.
Why should you work with celebrities?
Although there are many types of influencers nowadays, brands still prefer to work with celebrities for their influencer marketing campaigns. Why? A study by the Journal of Advertising Research found that brands that roped in celebrity influencers saw a weekly increase in their sales of 4%. It adds status and value to your brand that is difficult to achieve otherwise.
Are there any drawbacks to working with celebrity influencers?
If you rope in a celebrity for your brand, it connects the value of the two. If the value or image of the celebrity tanks, it hampers your brand image too. For example, when Tiger Woods, a golfer, was embroiled in a scandal, the companies he endorsed were also criticized and lost their shareholders. Also, if a celebrity has fake followers, it will not drive any results for you.
If you're looking to use celebrity influencers to promote your brand, it's important to find ones that align with your values and who have a genuine interest in your products. Look at the quality of their content, engagement ratio, relevance to your brand, and budget you can afford.
Choosing the right influencer can make a big difference in the success of your marketing campaigns.
Micro-influencers
Micro-influencers are social media users with a large following who are considered to have influence over their followers. They are often experts or enthusiasts in their niche who are able to generate high levels of engagement with their content. Every day social media users with a smaller but highly engaged following. They have a following of 10000-100000, which is very low in comparison to a celebrity influencer but can be very effective.
Why are Micro influencers gaining momentum? Micro-influencers can be a valuable asset to brands as they can help to promote products or services to a large audience. However, it is important to consider the type of influence that a micro-influencer has before working with them. Some micro-influencers may have a more negative influence on their followers, so it is important to vet them before working together.
Examples of Micro-Influencers and Micro-Influencers Campaigns
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola is such a giant brand. It still works with Micro-influencers to engage more targeted audiences. Coca-Cola has involved some micro-influencers in travel, food, fashion, and other verticals. The campaign targeted to show how Coca-cola fits into the lives of different individuals. It helps brands to reach more markets, especially in Europe.
Sugar Cosmetics
One of the leading Indian cosmetic brands, Sugar, regularly partners with micro-influencers to promote Their new range of products. These "micro-influencers" are beauty bloggers and influencers who often post their pictures and videos wearing Sugar Cosmetics products.
After conducting market research, the company recognized the need for a comprehensive program including a large number of influencers who would review SUGAR goods and promote them sustainably and naturally.
Source: Instagram
Why choose micro-Influencers
Choosing micro-influencers has a lot of reasons. One of the reasons is that they cost far less than macro influencers or celebrity influencers.  They have high engagement rates, and according to a study, they generate
7 times more
than the average engagement generated by all the influencers.
Also, Micro-influencers tend to convey more authenticity when they promote a brand because they promote the products or services they believe in and use.
Overall, micro-influencers can be a great way to reach a large audience with your message. However, it is important to consider the type of influence that they have before working with them.
Macro influencers
A macro influencer is an individual with a large audience and high engagement who can significantly impact a brand or product. Compared to traditional celebrities, macro influencers tend to have more niche audiences and focus on specific topics or industries. This allows them to build strong relationships with their followers and become trusted experts in their field. They have a slightly smaller audience, between 500,000 and 1 million followers. They can be athletes, TV personalities, chefs, singers, etc., who gained popularity on the internet only.
As the importance of influencer marketing has grown, so has the demand for macro influencers. These days, brands are willing to pay top dollar to work with macro influencers who can help them reach their target audience and achieve their marketing goals.
Why macro influencers?
Macro Influencers can expand your social media and brand awareness campaigns because they are a renewable resource. Campaigns can endure for months to years with large returns on investment when macro social media influencers are utilized. According to
89%
of marketers, influencer marketing's return on investment is on par with or superior to that of other marketing channels.
Brands can use the reputation of macro influencers and can partner with them as brand ambassadors. Here are some popular macro influencers:
**Therealdrjackie:**Ob/Gyn Dr. Jackie Walters is a medical professional. She also appears on the Bravo television program "Married to Medicine." As a result of starting the 50 Shades of Pink Foundation after overcoming breast cancer, Jackie gained notoriety. Her Instagram account has more than 970k followers with a strong engagement rate. Dr. Jackie discusses feminine health on her podcast and her point of view on her Instagram account. She offers advice based on her experiences. She might be a great macro influencer to work with if your company is in the health sector.
Source: Instagram
Meganmayw: British model and influencer Megan Williams appeared in three straight Victoria's Secret Fashion Show in 2016, 2017, and 2018. She is a prominent figure in the fashion sector and has a sizable Instagram following (790k), making her a strong pick for brands in the same industry to work with.
Source: Instagram
Ashleygalvinyoga: Ashley Galvin, an American yoga instructor, rose to fame for her stamina, flexibility, and distinct style of instruction. With roughly 550k followers, she is one of the top Instagram macro influencers. On her motivational account, she frequently uploads yoga and fitness-related content. She will be a great candidate for you if your business has anything to do with fitness.
Source: Instagram
Examples of macro influencers and successful campaigns
Swarovski’s ‘Sparks of Love’ Campaign
Prestigious jewelry and accessory brand Swarovski ran the**"Sparks of Love"** Instagram campaign for their Valentine's Day collection. It inspired the audience to select a meaningful present from their selection to declare their love. Swarovski was able to reach a broader audience in a more focused way by collaborating with macro-influencers and digital celebrities.
Instagram influencers often produce their content with their closest loved ones in it, such as a spouse, a parent, or a close friend. They were required to adhere to a color scheme as well in order to preserve brand attractiveness. Sakshi of StyleMeUpWithSakshi, for instance, mentioned that she and her parents spent the momentous day together and that her Swarovski was a gift for them.
Source: Instagram
A similar campaign was run on Christmas 2019; influencer Kriti Vij stressed self-love in her Christmas post for the campaign, and content creator Viraj Ghelani posed with a Swarovski while suggesting it was a gift for his mother.
As a response, 12 influencers with a combined following of over 1.9 million participated in the Instagram campaign. They produced 24 original pieces of content in total, which collectively reached2.1 million+ Instagram users. With a combined 313K+ followers, the posts had a 16% interaction rate.
Challenges of working with macro influencers
There are a few challenges you might face when working with macro influencers. First, they can be expensive. Second, they can be difficult to contact and coordinate. Third, they might not have an engagement.
**They can be expensive:**Macro influencers can be expensive to work with. They often charge a high fee for sponsorships and collaborations, which can make working with them difficult if you have a limited budget.
They can be difficult to contact and coordinate with: Macro influencers can be difficult to contact and coordinate with. They often have busy schedules and might not respond to your messages right away. This can make it difficult to connect with them and set up collaborations.
They might not have as much engagement as you’d like: Macro influencers might not have as much engagement as you’d like. They often have a large number of followers, but their posts might not get a lot of likes or comments, and this can make it difficult to gauge their impact and reach.
If you're thinking of working with a macro influencer, it's essential to do your research and choose someone who aligns with your brand and marketing objectives. Once you've found the right influencer, you can start developing a long-term relationship that will help.
Nano influencers
Nano influencers are the influencers with a small number of followers. They are typically experts in their field or niche and have a high level of influence within their community. Nano influencers often have fewer than 1,000 followers and are considered to be more authentic and trustworthy than larger influencers.
While they may not have the reach of a celebrity influencer, nano influencers can still significantly impact their followers. They are often more relatable and accessible than bigger influencers, which makes them more effective at influencing purchasing decisions.
Examples of Nano influencers and successful campaigns
Yoga Bar
An online retailer of food and drink products in Mumbai, Yogabar focuses on picking up micro and nano influencers, people with a smaller following but a more engaged one. The company has worked with more than 100 micro and nano influencers across the health and fitness industries. See the below-given images:
YogaBar promoted by a Nano influencer
Source: Instagram
Here, @shuchitasharan and @theyashhegde are the nano influencers with less than 10,000 and more than 1,000 followers. These influencers are collaborating with Yogabar to promote their products.
Clinique
The most powerful subset of influencers in the influencer marketing industry is likely nano influencers. Nano-influencers' subscribers share common interests, making it simpler for brands to more precisely target their potential customers more than big influencers whose audiences share fewer similarities. Because of this, Clinique frequently employs indie bloggers like
to advertise their goods, and she collaborates with Clinique and promotes their products to her 3k subscribers.
Source: Instagram
Why do brands work with nano-influencers?
There are a few reasons brands work with nano-influencers.
First, nano-influencers tend to have high engagement rates, which means that when they post about a brand, their followers are more likely to see and engage with it.
Second, nano-influencers have more personal relationships with their followers, which means their followers are more likely to trust them and their recommendations.
Third, nano-influencers are more affordable than other influencers, making them a good option for brands on a tight budget.
Finally, nano-influencers can reach niche audiences that other influencers may not be able to reach, making them a valuable asset for brands targeting specific demographics.
Cons of using nano influencer
There are a few potential downsides to using nano influencers in marketing campaigns, including:
They may not have a large following: While nano influencers may have engaged audiences, they may not have a large following compared to other influencers. This means they may not be able to reach as many people as you’d like.
They may not be as credible: Since nano influencers typically don’t have as much experience as other influencers, they may not be as credible. This could make it harder for them to influence their audience.
They may not have as much influence: Since nano influencers have smaller audiences, they may not have as much influence as other influencers. This means their endorsements may not carry as much weight.
They may not be as professional: Since nano influencers are typically just regular people, they may not be as professional as other influencers. This could make it difficult to work with them and get them to adhere to your campaign guidelines.
If you're looking to reach a specific target audience, nano influencers can be a great way to connect with potential customers.
How to find nano influencers?
There are a few ways to find nano-influencers, but the most effective way is to use a tool like BuzzSumo. With BuzzSumo, you can search for content related to your brand or industry and then filter the results by the number of engagements (likes, comments, shares, etc.). This will help you identify the most popular content and the people sharing it the most.
How to become a social media influencer
There are some general tips you can follow to become a social media influencer, including:
Find your niche: Find a topic or niche that you’re passionate about and that you can share valuable content with.
Grow your social media following: Use tactics like content marketing and social media advertising to grow your following on social media.
Engage with your audience: Regularly interact with your audience to build relationships and keep them engaged.
Partner with brands: Work with brands that are a good fit for your audience and your personal brand.
Summing up
Finding a suitable influencer is key to the success of a brand’s campaign. Find your niche, identify what you want to achieve, review your budgets and choose an influencer that can do justice to your brand’s promotion.
What do you think about the article? Do let us know in the comments.
by Akriti Galav @akritigalav .Avid researcher with in-depth experience in digital marketing topics, creating a lasting impact on the audience.