微影响者营销：综合指南

Has a celebrity ever convinced you to buy something?

It’s okay if the answer is yes -- we’ve all been there. In fact, just recently, a famous dog helped convince me to purchase a GoPro camera. For a creature who can’t speak, he’s a pretty effective marketer.

Loki the Wolfdog’sInstagram帖子is a successful example of影响者营销, which involves developing relationships with influential personalities to promote your brand to the influencer’s audience. Loki the Wolfdog has over 1 million Instagram followers GoPro may not have otherwise been able to reach with posts on its own profile.

A newer concept known as微型影响者营销最近加入了社交媒体现场。这与影响者营销, but on a smaller scale: Brands partner with individuals with smaller followings on social media to promote products with authentic, visual posts instead of sponsored ads.

In this blog post, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about micro-influencers, including what brands are using them successfully and how you can connect with these individuals to promote your brand.

与典型的名人，专家或公众人物不同，微影响者是社交媒体用户。他们是工作或专门从事特定垂直行业的个人，并且经常分享有关其兴趣的社交媒体内容。与传统的“影响者”不同，微影响者的追随者数量更少 - 通常在成千上万或数万美元中 - 但他们拥有超级参与的受众。

For example, a yoga influencer might boast millions of followers and operate several yoga studios. A yoga micro-influencer might have only a few thousand followers and post instructional videos on Instagram for their fans to try at home, but their average post receives a healthy amount of engagement relative to the size of their follower base.

Influencer vs. Micro-Influencer

有影响力的营销是在组织与顶级内容创作者合作（拥有数千甚至数百万追随者的人）来向内容创建者的受众推广其产品或服务时。当品牌与影响者合作时，公司就能利用影响者受众的既定信任。消费者更有可能从认识和信任的人那里购买，因此在诸如口碑营销或增加社交证明之类的策略方面，影响者非常有效。品牌通常会向有影响力的人支付以其产品为特色的内容或赞助他们的活动，从而捕捉影响者的巨大影响力。

An excellent example of influencer marketing is the partnership between Diageo, parent company of Scottish whiskey brands Lagavulin and Oban, and actor Nick Offerman. Best known for his role as a gruff, hyper-masculine government official onParks and Recreation, Offerman appears in a45-minute parody videodrinking a Lagavulin single malt whisky next to a traditional holiday Yule Log. The video went viral and won multiple awards, rocketing an older brand into one cultural relevance.

Micro-influencers, on the other hand, have a more moderate backing -- compared to influencers, mico-influencers usually have fewer than 100,000 followers. However, the rate of audience参与内容达到1,000名关注者, making a partnership with a micro-influencer incredibly valuable to companies looking to increase brand awareness. Micro-influencers generate a ton of content that appeals to their audiences and become well-established in their area of interest. Over82% of surveyed consumerssaid they were likely to buy something a micro-influencer recommended. Companies can partner with micro-influencers to write a post about a product offer, publish a review, or share the product with their social communities.

The Value of Micro-Influencers

Using micro-influencers may seem counterintuitive. Why would you seek out someone with asmallerfollowing to promote your brand?

There are several reasons to believe micro-influencers might get better results for your brand.

微影响者的参与率更高。

标记studied Instagram engagement and found a surprising trend: As an influencer's number of followers increases, their number of likes and comments from followers decreases.

In its analysis,标记determinedthe following:

• Instagram用户少于1,000个关注者产生的时间像8％
• Users with 1,000-10,000 followers earned likes at a 4% rate
• 拥有10,000-100,000名关注者的用户达到了2.4％的喜欢率
• Users with 1-10 million followers earned likes only 1.7% of the time.

Check out Markerly's graphical breakdown of how likes and comments decline as followers increase:

来源：标记

标记推荐品牌在1,000-10,000范围内以Instagram的关注来追求微型影响者。有了微型影响者，品牌可以在足够多的受众中实现更高的参与率。在最近的一项研究中Experticitylearned micro-influencers have 22.2X more conversations than the typical Instagram users -- largely because they're passionate and knowledgeable about their particular interest area.

Micro-influencers have more targeted audiences.

标记also notes that micro-influencers havemore targeted follower basesthan influencers with follower numbers in the hundreds of thousands and millions.

想想看:如果一个服装品牌合作a celebrity with millions of followers on Instagram, the celebrity could reach their huge pool, but a large portion of them might not be interested in fashion. Instead, if the clothing brand connected with 100 fashion bloggers with 1,000 followers apiece, it would be able to connect to a smaller but far more targeted and engaged audience.

标记CEO and co-founder Sarah Ware告诉Digidaythat partnering with the Kardashian and Jenner sisters to promote a weight-loss tea on Instagram led to a significant number of conversions. However, Ware also noted that working with 30-40 micro-influencers achieved a higher conversion rate than when the celebrities were promoting the tea. In fact, 82% of customers surveyed byExperticitysaid they would be very likely to follow a recommendation from a micro-influencer.

Micro-influencers are more affordable.

Micro-influencers are typicallymore affordable比有数百万追随者的名人或个人资料。名人有时会收费最高$ 75,00for a single Instagram post promoting a product. In contrast,97% of micro-influencerson Instagram charge less than $500 for a promotion post. Granted, brands usually work with more than one micro-influencer to maximize reach, but even 100 micro-influencers would cost less than a single celebrity on Instagram at these rates.

For micro-influencers with smaller followings, brands may even be able to compensate them in the form of free products.根据Digiday，La Croix闪闪发光的水（在下面的更多信息）向免费产品发送了一个微型影响凭证。

Micro-influencers are more authentic.

Micro-influencers are real people, so their Instagram content is real, too. Instagram users with a few thousand followers likely post their own content, reply to comments, and behave more authentically than a brand or a celebrity with a social media manager might. If a micro-influencer engages with a promotional post on Instagram, their followers might be more inclined to click to learn more about the brand they're posting about.

It's also worth noting thatInstagram最近更改了其算法镜像Facebook的。现在，用户关注和互动的个人资料的帖子首先在Instagram feed中显示，而真实的优质内容优先于大品牌的促销内容。如果算法确定用户可能对它更感兴趣，这可能会使微型影响者的内容比名人的内容更明显。

One note: If you were wondering why we’re only mentioning Instagram in this blog post, it's because micro-influencers as a marketing strategy has taken off primarily on that platform. Because Instagram is so visual, it's easy for micro-influencers to post photos of products and brand experiences instead of writing a promotional tweet or Facebook post. That's not to say that micro-influencer marketing can't be done on other social media platforms, but Instagram's Explore tab helps users find and interact with micro-influencer content easily.

You'll see what we mean when we dive into different micro-influencer strategies brands are using successfully below.

4 Brands Using Micro-Influencers Successfully

1) La Croix Sparkling Water

La Croix Sparkling Water startedtapping into micro-influencersto promote its brand in a competitive marketplace. It relies primarily onsocial media marketingto get discovered, especially by millennials.

La Croix identifies micro-influencers on Instagram and asks them to shareproduct awarenessposts on Instagram. It finds micro-influencers by searching branded hashtags, such as#livelacroix,当用户标签Instagram的品牌。它specifically targets profiles with lower follower counts to maintain a feeling of authentic "realness" that appeals to millennial Instagram users. Then, La Croix reaches out to them with product vouchers or other offers to post pictures with the sparkling water.

If you check outLa Croix的Instagram页面, you'll see it features a lot of content posted by micro-influencers, such as this photo below:

By tapping into smaller, more targeted networks of micro-influencers, La Croix cultivates a social media presence that's authentic and fun, and ensures its product is in front of the eyes of similar users. If you have a physical product that looks great on camera (like an eye-popping can of La Croix), try engaging with micro-influencers by sending free product forInstagram promotions.

2) Kimpton Hotels

精品酒店连锁kimpton使用Instagram接管sto connect with micro-influencers. These consist of micro-influencers creating original content for the brand's Instagram and posting the content as themselves. Takeovers connect new audiences with the brand and help generate new followers, more engagement, and eventually, new potential guests at Kimpton Hotels.

Curalate营销Director布伦丹·洛瑞（Brendan Lowry）wrote about taking over some of Kimpton's Instagram accounts and posting photos of his own, like this one:

The caption links easily to his personal Instagram, which links back to the Kimpton account, helping his more than 27,000 followers find and interact with the hotel's content.

Try anInstagram接管by a micro-influencer to provide behind-the-scenes or unique looks at a brand or product. It's more creative to feature photos taken by different people, and it directs Instagram traffic between the brand's and the photographer's accounts for mutually beneficial results -- namely, more engagement and more followers.

3) Stitch Fix

Personal shopping website Stitch Fix invites micro-influencers to贡献内容that the brand then promotes on Instagram.

In the post below, Stitch Fix's Instagram biolinked to a postfeaturing a Q&A with a fashion blogger micro-influencer about how she dresses for her body type:

The micro-influencer also shared the image, mentioned Stitch Fix, and shared the blog post link on她的个人Instagram个人资料.

This micro-influencer strategy works because it drives traffic to a brand's blog and Instagram profile. Try reaching out to micro-influencers and offer topublish their contentand cross-promote it on social media to generate engagement from their followers and readers.

4）夏威夷旅游部

Hawaii's Department of Tourism tapped into the power of micro-influencers for its#LetHawaiiHappen Instagram campaign. It partnered with Instagram users who are travel bloggers or Hawaiian natives to share content促进活动和目的地so visitors and Hawaiians would be interested in traveling to check them out.

Hawaii's Department of Tourismconnected with photographerRick Poonto showcase his visit to Hawaii and attract his audience to come visit.

After the campaign,65% of peoplewho saw the posts said they wanted to visit Hawaii (talk about effective). If you want to attract new followers and Instagram engagement, try reaching out to micro-influencers to促进活动或位置that their followers might want to check out.

Think Small

您是否与微型影响者在一起？在回答之前，请考虑以下内容。

There are a few downsides to this strategy. Notably, micro-influence works well on Instagram with visual products, such as a bright can of sparkling water or an eye-catching outfit. This might not be the best strategy for promoting complicated software or other technology. But remember, you can be creative. As long as you can find a micro-influencer to share an Instagram post that's compelling, you might be able to generate much more engagement.

此外，与几位微型影响者一起工作是很多工作。品牌必须在Instagram上与他们联系并管理几种不同的关系。但是，我们认为对于真实且引人入胜的Instagram帖子，收益值得。

Keep an eye on Instagram users tagging your brand or using a branded hashtag -- they might just be your next biggest promoter. And if you want to learn more about影响者营销或者Instagram content promotion, read our guides on these topics next.