Do Nano-Influencers Mean Increased Engagement?
Social media influencers are a vital part of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. Working with influencers can do more than increase your sales. Ultimately, influencer partnerships help you build your brand.
So, how do you choose the right influencers to work with, and are influencers with the highest number of followers always the best choice?
Some social experts would argue that engagement rates are more important than the total number of followers. A profile with tons of followers looks impressive, but may not effectively reach and influence those individuals.
On the other hand, smaller accounts may have outstanding engagement metrics for likes, shares, and comments.
Nano-influencers are defined as profiles with 1,000–10,000 followers. Although those numbers aren’t off the charts, nano-influencers typically have a personal bond with their followers, resulting in better engagement.
Are you ready to find the right influencer for your brand? Instead of wasting your time with accounts full of fake followers and inconsequential engagement, consider partnering with a nano-influencer. Here are some things to consider along the journey to finding your perfect match.
What Is Influencer Marketing?
Is your business or organization currently taking advantage of the power of influencer marketing? According to Buffer’s State of Social report, over 88% of brands planned to continue investing in social media in 2019.
Source: Buffer
Social media influencers have built an online reputation based on their personality and expertise on a specific topic or niche. They typically produce content like photos, videos, graphics, and post captions to share their knowledge and discoveries with their audience. Their social media posts may point to longer-form content like blog posts, infographics, or YouTube videos.
Influencers can cover any topic you can imagine: travel, food, fitness, parenting, sports, fashion, lifestyle, and more. In addition, influencers can include industry experts, academics, business leaders, and celebrities.
When you’re considering what influencers to work with, analyze your audience’s likes and interests. Influencers who share the same passions and points of view are likely to be a great match. But don’t be deceived by the size of an influencer’s audience; sometimes, smaller is better.
How Are Nano-Influencers Different From Other Influencers?
Marketing experts usually classify influencers by their follower numbers. Mega-influencers are celebrity status individuals with follower counts over one million. Usually, they have gained their followers because of offline fame as actors, athletes, musicians, etc. The drawbacks to working with a mega-influencer are the high cost and competition for their attention.
You next have macro-influencers, mid-tier influencers, micro-influencers, and nano-influencers as you proceed down the list. Check out this visual breakdown of influencer tiers.
Source: Shopify
Although nano is the lowest tier based on the size of the audience, these influencers can still be mighty in impact. Nano-influencers are not necessarily working as full-time social media influencers. Sometimes, they are everyday people who have gained followers based on an extensive real-world social network, fascinating content, or a charismatic personality.
Other times, a nano-influencer account may be an individual just starting as a blogger, content creator, online business, or social media brand. They may be especially eager to work with your brand to earn income and enhance their image as an effective brand ambassador if they’re in the process of growing their account.
Nano-influencers have a closer personal connection and a higher level of trust with their audience. As a result, it’s more common to see them interacting in comments and DMs, having conversations, and interacting as friends with their followers.
Before you start reaching out to every nano-influencer you see, you should consider the potential drawbacks and how they could impact you. First, because these folks have smaller followings, the return on investment (ROI) may be too small to be worth your investment.
You may have to reach out to more nano-influencers to accumulate a sizeable enough total audience, requiring a more extensive time and organizational logistics commitment.
Most importantly, be sure to dig into metrics beyond follower count. For example, what is their engagement rate? According to Shopify, the average Instagram influencer engagement rate in 2020 was 2.2%, but the nano-influencers engagement rate is over twice as high, coming in at 5%.
Source: Shopify
How Do You Calculate Social Media Engagement?
Without a doubt, social media use has exploded and will likely continue to increase. Statistics show that in 2021, 3.78 billion people used social media worldwide.
Source: Oberlo
With all of the content flooding social media platforms, posting regularly is not enough; you must also ensure that posts are engaging.
Engagement rates are a vital metric and are usually measured as a percentage. Engagement interactions include actions such as:
- liking
- sharing
- commenting
- tagging
Here is how to calculate engagement rates. Take the total number of interactions per post and divide that number by the total number of account followers. Then, multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
For example, if an influencer has 2,000 followers and their post has a combination of 200 likes, shares, and comments, then their engagement rate is:
200/2000 x 100 = 10%
If a macro-influencer has 500 engagements and 500,000 followers, then their engagement rate is:
500/500,000 x 100 = 0.1%
You can see that the rate of engagement is substantially lower for the macro-influencer. Even though they have more than twice as many interactions as the nano-influencer, the vast majority of their followers are not interacting with the post at all.
You may wonder how fair this “classic” engagement rate formula is because social media platforms have algorithms that affect what posts followers see in their feeds.
In this case, you can use an advanced engagement rate formula to measure how well the post performed based on who actually saw it. Instead of dividing by the total number of followers, you would divide the number of interactions by the accounts reached (people who actually saw the post in their feed).
You can see the number of accounts reached in Instagram Insights. This metric can be more helpful for influencers and content creators to ensure that what they’re posting is appealing to their audience.
How Do You Select the Right Nano-Influencer for Your Campaign?
If you’ve decided to reach out to a nano-influencer, you still need to do additional research. Here are some questions to ask yourself about how to choose influencers for your marketing campaign.
- Have they gained their followers organically? If they’ve paid for followers or gained an audience using techniques like following to unfollow, their engagement will not be as high.
- Do they publish high-quality content? The posts the influencer creates featuring your services will appear to endorse your brand, so make sure their overall feed reflects your brand values.
- Do they have specialized knowledge and expertise in a specific niche that applies to your product or service? Proven expertise means their audience will be more likely to trust their opinions and recommendations.
- How do they engage with their followers? First, they need to be engaging and respond to comments. Secondly, you should measure whether they’re doing so in a respectful way that would be a good representation of your brand.
- What are their metrics and engagement rates? Using the calculations discussed above, ensure the influencer has a reasonable engagement rate, especially when it comes to sponsored posts. If they’re continually a walking billboard (promoting new products every week), their audience may be accustomed to tuning out these messages and scrolling past sponsored posts.
What Are Some Examples of Successful Nano-Influencer Campaigns?
If you think that nano-influencer campaigns are only for small shops or start-ups, think again. Big-name corporations are also tapping into nano-influencers’ power and resharing their content to their company accounts. Here are a few examples of how nano-influencers and big brands are working together.
With just over 4,000 followers, Alexis Baker has an account devoted to business, beauty, lifestyle, and fashion. She’s partnered with Clinique to promote their makeup and beauty products. Alexis is a prime example of a nano-influencer with great content and proven trust with her audience.
Dunkin’ (the company formerly known as Dunkin Donuts) successfully used a marketing campaign including nano-influencers to boost brand awareness with millennials and promote their rebrand. Influencers made natural, authentic posts featuring their favorite Dunkin beverages.
If you check out the Warby Parker Instagram account, you’ll see a number of posts from everyday people sporting their favorite frames. In fact, that’s part of Warby Parker’s marketing strategy: using everyday nano and micro-influencers who already love and use their product.
The number of people active on social media means brands can no longer rely on one communication channel. A company account can only reach so far. However, working through multiple influencers will expand your reach and broadcast your message to a broader audience.
As you consider what influencers to work with, remember that nano-influencers may have smaller numbers of followers but higher engagement rates, ultimately leading to great success for your brand.
Originally posted on Mentionlytics: https://www.mentionlytics.com/blog/nano-influencers-engagement
