What is an influencer? 

• An influencer is an individual who has the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge, position or relationship with his/her audience.

What is a Micro-influencer?

• A micro-influencer is a person who has significant, but not massive, social media following. They normally have between 1,000 and 100,000 followers, but the exact number of followers will vary depending on who you talk to.

1. Transparency: The FTC put their foot down in 2017 and clarified what brands and influencers need to do when working together on sponsored content. If you want to avoid facing any type of legal troubles, make sure the influencers you work with clearly disclose that they’re being compensated for promoting your brand. It’s as simple as putting #ad or #sponsored in their post.
2. Be an Equal Channel Opportunist: A lot of brands and marketers automatically associate influencer marketing with Instagram. In fact, one survey found that Instagram was the No. 1 platform for 92% influencers in 2017.
3. Measure Influencer Marketing ROI: Give influencers unique promo codes to share with their audience. That way, each time a customer uses the special code, you can directly attribute the revenue to that influencer. Branded hashtags are a smart way to build your UGC, too. <UGC: user generated content>
4. Create Content, Not Ads: Great content entertains, educates or invokes some level of emotion from your audience. But for whatever reason, brands tend to lose sight of that when working with influencers. Don’t be that brand.
5. Instagram's Paid Partnership Feature: Instagram created its paid partnership feature: to bring greater transparency and consistency to sponsored content on Instagram. With that in mind, Instagram created a tool that A) helps influencers disclose when a post is sponsored, and B) helps businesses gather insights about how their sponsored content campaigns performed.
6. YouTube or Bust: One way to do that is by working directly with brands through sponsored content, product reviews and partnership deals.
7. Look for Mr./Mrs. Right: 2018 is the year of building long term relationships. Consumers see right through the #spon content posts. When influencers feel your invested in the relationship, they are more enthusiastic to create authentic content and continue to be loyal to your brand. PS #spon is no longer a best practice; rather #sponsored #ad

Let’s say you’re thinking about partnering with an Instagram influencer who has 1 million followers. One option is to pay them $10,000 for 1 post.

Or, you could pay $10,000 for 20 posts from micro-influencers who have 50,000 followers each, which also adds up to 1 million followers. 

But, followers do not equal reach.

You might not be able to afford the top 1% of influencers, but you’ll be able to work with micro-influencers who might have less than 10,000 followers.

Remember, the value of influencers isn’t their follower count. It’s their ability to capture the attention of their audience, no matter what size it is.

Two separate studies by HelloSociety and Markerly discovered that influencers with a smaller following have a much higher engagement rate than top-tier influencers, and both studies noticed a drop in engagement rate as the audience size increases.

Working with the lower end of micro-influencers is a great way to start. Sponsored Instagram posts from people with 5,000 to 10,000 followers can be as low as $50-100 per post, and you can also ask micro-influencers if they would be willing to trade product for promotion.

Ideas:

• Start a contest
• Have micro-influencers promote a unique hashtag and encourage fans to use the hashtag too.
• Host a giveaway to promote UGC content and build a relationship with the great content makers.

Create your KPIS and be religious about your metrics!

What's a KPI: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). A KPI is your selected metric that specifically measures the success of your content or campaign. How you determine your KPIs will ultimately depend on your business goals and what you want to achieve with Instagram.

Here are some common KPIS:

• Engagement rate – likes, comments, shares, etc.
• Brand sentiment – how people are talking about your brand
• Foot traffic – customers visiting your physical store
• Website traffic  – customers visiting your website
• Sales – conversions and revenues generated

Example: In 2017, Special K ran a campaign with influencers by tracking their branded hashtag, Special K can measure the impact influencers have on the campaign and compare it against their KPIs.

You can run similar campaigns using Sprout’s social media monitoring tools.

• Conduct a branded hashtag search on Instagram to find content created about your brand. You can then check out the profiles of these users and see if any of them would fit the role of your ideal micro-influencer.
• Use Influencer Discovery Tools – You can conduct your search for relevant micro-influencers using influencer discovery tools.
  • Some good options are Muses, Fohr Card, Influence.co, HYPR, NeoReach, Obviously Social, FameBity or Social Blade.

This is what it costs to partner with a celebrity:

This is what it costs to partner with REAL PEOPle <i.e. influencers>:

• Bloggers: $175 to $5,000+ per post with amplification on social channels (re-posting the content across other social platforms). Here are the going rates based on the blogger’s number of monthly impressions:

  • 10,000 to 50,000 monthly blog impressions: $175 to $250 per post

  • 50,000 to 100,000 monthly blog impressions: $250 to $500 per post

  • 100,000 to 500,000 monthly blog impressions: $500 to $1,000 per post

  • 500,000+ monthly blog impressions: $1,000 to $5,000+ per post

• Instagram influencers: $75 to $3,000+ per image. Here are the going rates based on the influencer’s number of followers:

  • 2,000 to 10,000 Instagram followers: $75 to $250 per image

  • 10,000 to 50,000 Instagram followers: $250 to $500 per image

  • 50,000 to 100,000 Instagram followers: $500 to $1,000 per image

  • 100,000 to 500,000 Instagram followers: $1,000 to $3,000 per image

  • 500,000+ Instagram followers: $3,000+ per image

• Video influencers: $500 to $5,000+ per video. Here are the going rates based on the influencer’s number of followers on YouTube:

  • 50,000 to 100,000 channel subscribers: $500 to $1,000 per video

  • 100,000 to 500,000 channel subscribers $1,000 to $3,000 per video

  • 500,000+ channel subscribers: $3,000 to 5,000+ per video