7 Ways to Work With Micro-Influencers
We’ve talked about how to find a great micro-influencer to help promote your product or service. This week, here are 7 types of campaigns you can run with your micro-influencer, to reach more of your ideal audience, build brand recognition, and establish a trusting and mutually-beneficial partnership.
Note that we’re not including suggestions here that are outright advertising (meaning that you’d pay the influencer to post content about you). You can totally do that, and with big influencers it’s required to pay for their posts (and pricey!), but with micro-influencers there’s more of an opportunity to offer up a free campaign that can have benefits for both of you. One, they are looking to boost their own audience, and two, they’re not so big that they can charge a lot.
The other thing to keep in mind is that even with unpaid campaigns the influencer needs to disclose when they’ve been asked to post content about someone else. Use this handy guide to determine what they’ll need to disclose following the FTC’s guidelines.
Here we go!
Do Some Cross-Promotion
This is the most basic way to work with an influencer: You’ll scratch her back, she’ll scratch yours. You design some content about your campaign, like an Instagram post and caption, for her to post, and she’ll do the same for you.
Typically, an influencer might say something like, “Hey loyal fans! I heard about this great business, and I wanted to share what they’re doing with you so you can get some kind of benefit. Check them out and let me know what you think!”
But for an influencer to say yes to posting something like this, there has to be a clear reason why their audience would be interested and how they’d benefit from knowing about you. For example, you could offer them a special discount on your services if they found you through this influencer’s post. Be willing to give something, and you’ll reap rewards.
Host an Interview
This one’s simple too: Set up an interview with your influencer on whatever channel you feel comfortable using. You could do a joint video on Facebook or Instagram, a Twitterchat, a podcast, record a video together… essentially, you’re hosting a conversation and sharing that with both of your audiences.
You can run this like a regular interview, or you can get a little creative with it. For example, one of our favorite fitness influencers, Cassey Ho from Blogilates, will ask influencers to try her workouts with her on her channel. It works best if you do this with influencers who aren’t totally random, of course, but who might genuinely be interested in meeting you! This also works best if you have an established audience who’d be interested in hearing about them.
Run a Joint Giveaway
This is just like cross-promotion, except your audience members can WIN. Before you do this, though, brush up on the guidelines for running a giveaway on a social media platform; here are examples of how to do this on Instagram, for example.
Good on the rules? Great! Design a giveaway that can be publicized to your followers and your influencer’s, and make sure you design the content that your influencer will share so all they have to do is post it.
And work with your influencer to determine what a good prize might be, too. A giveaway is no good if you’re not giving away anything that anyone wants!
Get Together
If you want to do a bigger campaign, take your engagement offline! Find a group of influencers in your city and bring them together for a co-hosted event. You can make it a party or just a happy hour, but hosting an event (and, of course, paying for the drinks/food, doing the planning, and creating the right ambiance) is a great way to connect with people and build a stronger relationship than just one you have online.
The key here, though, is to make this event absolutely worthwhile. Give your influencers a good reason to be there, and more than just free food. One event we attend regularly in Washington, D.C. is a happy hour, where digital marketers and communicators gather for free pizza and beer in exchange for offering free advice to a worthy organization who needed help. We marketers benefit by networking with each other and sharing our expertise, and the nonprofit gets a ton of tips and advice from qualified sources in a matter of just 90 minutes. (Okay, fine, the free pizza is a good bonus, too!)
Teach Your Audience Something New
What is your influencer’s audience interested in learning about?
If they’re a fitness instructor or a teacher of some kind, they might already be creating educational content. For example, our influencer Raka from our last post shares tutorials and videos walking through beauty stores, pointing out the best beauty buys to her fans and answering questions. Think about what you could bring to the table to show your influencer’s audience!
Celebrate Your SuperFans
If you’re still not sure who your perfect influencers are to work with, start with the people who comment the most on your own social media posts, who share content about your products, who ask you the most questions, and who frequently donate to your cause or buy from you. These are your SuperFans!
Throw them a party, interview them, and find other ways to make them feel special, and they’ll talk about you for a long time to come!
Let Your Micro-Influencer Drive
You may have an idea of what might work, but your influencer is the expert on the most effective message for their own audience! So why not give them the keys? Start your outreach by introducing your idea to your influencer and asking them if they think it’s a good fit. Let them know that you’re open to their input and welcome their creative ideas, and will support them in bringing those ideas to life. The right influencer will welcome this, because their priority is delivering content that their audience will find valuable and authentic, and you’re offering to help make that happen!
If you’re ready to reach out and you have a campaign in mind, use these outreach email templates to, well, outreach! We recommend emailing if possible, but you can also borrow this format for sending a direct message via Twitter or Instagram, too.
Next week, we’ll go over how you’ll know if your influencer campaign was a success, including the metrics and the engagement you should be looking for in your campaign.
Happy influencing!