A micro-influencer is someone who has about 10k to 100k followers. From a marketing perspective, this is ideal because micro-influencers have a more targeted and niche audience, with a lot more engagement than more prominent influencers.
So, where should all aspirants begin? In the age of social media, it's become all too common to go "accidentally viral." But what about those who actively try to achieve influencer status?
Well, here are the 3 (and a half) steps you should take to kick off your micro-influencing journey!
0.5. The Step Before the First
Before becoming a micro-influencer, you need to determine what your purpose is. Is it getting brand deals, or do you have something you’re passionate about that you want to share with an audience?
To be sure, the former is perfectly fine. However, if it is your main and only focus, it will be difficult to keep going and stay authentic with your audience when things pick up. Authenticity is key, and that’s what makes micro-influencers a lucrative option for businesses. Focus on your audience and authenticity, and the brand deals will come in!
1. Determine Your Niche
So you know what your ultimate goal is, but now you need to decide on your niche. For those of you who don’t know, a niche is a small part of the main market, such as sports, makeup, or fashion. At the beginning of your journey, it may be easier for you to keep things broad; this lets you explore the niche and find what works for you.
Later on, however, you can "niche down" further. For example, some book influencers on Instagram only focus on fantasy reads.
If you’re struggling to find a niche, think about what you’re passionate about and the things you enjoy in your day-to-day life. Your life could even be your niche. Lifestyle is a niche of its own and can be a great place to start!
2. Create Your Content
Creating content isn’t easy, and it’s not recommended that you start creating without a strategy or plan. Creating without a strategy can mean you run out of ideas, or you don’t reach your ideal audience. With a strategy, you can identify what your audience likes and how to engage with them.
First, you'll want to research what people in your niche post about, and what videos people gravitate towards. With this information, you can create your "content pillars." Content pillars are the three to five topics that will underpin all your content. For example, a fashion influencer could make the pillars their outfit of the day, clothing hauls, and brand reviews.
Below is an example of a content map based on five pillars I created for a university project. As you can see, content mapping gives you 20 more pieces of content ideas derived from your five pillars.
When creating your content, you also want to do so in batches. You may have heard influencers speak about their "content days." This is where you plan and create a bunch of content, then schedule your posts for release on the days you want. Content batching and scheduling mean you save yourself some time; additionally, your audience is smart and can tell when your content is rushed and has no heart in it.
3. Reach and Engage
On Instagram, your "reach" is the number of people who have seen your post, and your "engagement rate" is the summary of the interactions (followers, likes, comments, etc.) with your content.
To increase your reach, you need to work on your search engine optimisation (SEO) and content quality. SEO is all about keywords. These can come from your hashtags, your captions, the actual text in your post, and even the text in your bio.
If you want to get your content out to a romance reader, for example, your hashtags should include "romance" and other related tags, your content should include relevant keywords, and your bio should emphasise that you are a romance reader and reviewer. All this paired with good content and consistent posting is important for increasing your reach on Instagram’s algorithm.
Increasing engagement is all about encouraging interaction and creating interest. If you’re consistently posting good quality, relevant, and interesting content, your audience will want to follow you and have you on their timeline. To get people commenting, you need to have strong calls to action (CTAs).
These are things that encourage your audience to take specific actions like saving, commenting, following, and sharing. If you provide valuable information, such as a recommendation for a new venue your followers should visit, you are likely to receive extra engagement on the post.
These are all small examples of things that you can do to increase your reach and engagement. However, if you’re looking for even more information, search for these keywords and visit the blogs on marketing sites like HubSpot, Influencer Marketing Hub, and CopyBlogger. As a marketing student, these websites are gold, and as a micro-influencer, understanding these marketing skills will put you ahead of the curve. When you’re an influencer, you are the product; therefore, many marketing techniques applied to products can be applied to you.
A Few Bonus Tips to Conclude…
You don’t need to invest too much money to start with. If you can, great, but if you can’t, don’t feel too bad— you can use what you have! Phones have better cameras nowadays, and technology has gone far. If you don’t have the clothes in your wardrobe to be a fashion influencer, for example, you can simply create outfits in a collage, or produce videos where you show different items online that could make an outfit.
When the money comes in from brand deals, you can reinvest this back into your brand and level it up as you wish. Don’t go broke trying to live your dreams. Take care of your present self.
And lastly, make friends in your niche and have fun. Doing so can keep you accountable, help you collaborate and support each other, and push your content in front of a larger part of your niche! Remember to have fun and remind yourself of your purpose.
You’ve got this!
