On August 29, 2017, Bulldog Reporter presented a webinar by Shane Barker titled micro-influencers: a micro-webinar. Here is a recap of what the influencer marketing guru had to teach us.
Our recent webinar looked at a topic generating a lot of buzz lately among PR and marketing professionals — micro-influencers.
While we could easily devote an entire webinar to the stats of micro-influencer’s effectiveness (especially when you compare it to that of their bigger, more in-your-face counterparts, macro-influencers), we decided to instead spend the 25-minute webinar focusing on practical tips for PR and communications pros.
And, since many PR professionals are dipping their toes into the micro-influencer pool for the first time, our webinar aimed to answer the following 2 most important questions:
1) Where do I find micro-influencers?
2) How do I work with micro-influencers effectively?
Our guest presenter, Shane Barker, who has lived and breathed micro-influencers for years, used his expert knowledge to answer these questions.
Shane Barker
Finding Micro-Influencers
There are plenty of micro-influencers out there, but how do you zero in on the ones best for your brand? Here are some tips to begin finding your hidden gems.
- Use Agility, a global database of 800k followers to easily locate influencers by topic, location, or even job role. Within the platform, you can compile lists of micro-influencers for outreach, and dive into each influencer’s profile, including follower numbers, location, and their 20 latest tweets; this insight will give you an immediate sense of their current interests and how they craft their messages so you can see if they’re a fit for your brand.
- Find micro-influential fans from your follower list. Look across your brand’s social channels and take a hard look at who is already following you. You might be surprised what precious little nuggets are hiding right under your nose!
- Use relevant hashtag searches. When you’re diving into a topic, especially a niche one, this will help you find who’s got a voice.
- A simple Google search can be another great place to start finding bloggers and social media mavens in specific regions.
Working with Micro-Influencers
Once you have found your desired micro-influencers, what are the best ways to approach them and develop a plan to work with them?
In the webinar, Shane outlines his strategy with a step-by-step process, and also gives his best rules of thumb for working with these small but mighty influencers.
Here are his top tips:
- Just like with any campaign, start with a goal, so you can base other aspects of your campaign around it.
- Define your performance metrics up front. Based on your end goal, which metrics will be the best for measuring your micro-influencer’s performance?
- Even though micro-influencers are cost-effective, set a budget. This will help you understand how many micro-influencers you can work with and how much you can afford to pay each of them.
- Develop a compensation plan that benefits your brand and your micro-influencers. Don’t make the assumption that micro-influencers will want to work for free or free products alone. You may want to pay them a fixed amount, or pay them a percentage based on their performance.
- Promote transparency and ensure each influencer follows FTC rules, or other countries’ trade guidelines, for creating promotional content.
For more details on exactly why micro-influencers are the future of your brand — as well as some dos and don’ts when it comes to working with them — check out our webinar, micro-influencers: a micro-webinar.
