Type of Influencer | Description | Key Insights |
---|---|---|
Celebrity Influencers | Well-known personalities from entertainment, sports, or other fields | Can reach a broad audience and provide credibility. |
Micro-Influencers | Individuals with a smaller but highly engaged and niche audience | Offer high authenticity and often have strong audience trust. |
Macro-Influencers | Influencers with a larger following than micro-influencers | Provide a broader reach but may have less niche-specific engagement. |
Nano-Influencers | Individuals with a very small, local, or hyper-niche following | Offer hyper-local targeting and authentic connections. |
Expert Influencers | Recognized authorities in a specific industry or field | Provide in-depth knowledge and credibility within a niche. |
Bloggers/Vloggers | Content creators who maintain blogs or video channels | Offer detailed, long-form content and a loyal readership/viewership. |
Social Media Influencers | Influencers primarily active on social media platforms | Leverage their large social followings for marketing partnerships. |
Brand Advocates | Customers or employees who promote a brand out of loyalty | Often have a genuine passion for the brand and can serve as advocates. |
Thought Leaders | Individuals who influence by sharing innovative ideas and insights | Gain followers through expertise and forward-thinking content. |
Cause-Related Influencers | Advocate for social or environmental causes | Attract followers who share their passion for the cause. |
Affiliate Marketers | Promote products or services and earn commissions on sales | Can drive sales through targeted marketing efforts. |
Niche Influencers | Specialize in a specific subcategory or niche within an industry | Can offer highly targeted audiences and expertise in a niche market. |
Creative Influencers | Artists, designers, or creators who showcase their work | Connect with audiences through creative and visually appealing content. |
Gamer Influencers | Focus on gaming content, reviews, and gameplay | Engage with a dedicated and passionate gaming community. |
Parenting Influencers | Share parenting tips, advice, and product recommendations | Appeal to parents and caregivers seeking trusted recommendations. |
Fitness and Wellness Influencers | Promote health, fitness, and wellness products | Inspire and guide followers in achieving their health goals. |
Travel Influencers | Showcase travel experiences, destinations, and tips | Inspire wanderlust and offer travel-related recommendations. |
Food and Cooking Influencers | Share recipes, cooking tips, and culinary experiences | Appeal to food enthusiasts seeking culinary inspiration. |
Fashion and Beauty Influencers | Focus on style, fashion trends, and beauty products | Drive trends and influence purchasing decisions in the fashion and beauty industries. |
Tech and Gadgets Influencers | Review and showcase technology products and gadgets | Influence tech-savvy consumers and early adopters. |
Environmental Influencers | Advocate for environmental conservation and sustainability | Promote eco-friendly products and practices. |
Health and Wellness Experts | Offer expertise in health, nutrition, and holistic well-being | Provide credible information for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. |
Mega Influencers
Mega influencers have a lot of pull power due to their large audience.
They may have very little knowledge about the subject, but they can publicize your product or service to reach millions in seconds.
Celebrities are major examples of Mega influencers.
Cristiano Ronaldo, for example, has 200 million followers on Instagram, and in a minute, his post can generate a million engagements.
Mega influencers are only hired by top companies because they are usually expensive to approach.
Even if the company has an ambassadorial deal with the celebrity, it still costs money to maintain that relationship.
Ronaldo is a Nike ambassador and may not collect any money to post adverts for Nike, as his ambassadorial duties may include that, but to get that deal signed, he would receive benefits in cash and in-kind.
Mega influencers, despite their reach, do not target specific audiences. In all honesty, a post from Cristiano Ronaldo may reach 30 million people, but how many of these people are really your target audience?
Well, you canโt tell. Mega influencers, despite their reach, arenโt the best for all campaigns, and if wrongly used, they can cause very huge losses.
A great example of a mega influencer is Kim Kardashian, which single post might cost as high as half a million dollars!
Macro-influencers
Macro-influencers also have very large audiences on social media, typically between a few hundred thousand to a million followers.
Unlike actual celebrities that got fame through sports, music, or other forms of art, Macro-influencers are usually popular as a result of the internet.
Popular Bloggers, Vloggers, Podcasters, and the likes fall into this category. Bloggers usually know the subject matter.
Even if they are not professionals of that field or niche, they have enough information that they feed knowledge-seeking internet users who visit their blogs because of the valuable content that they publish regularly.
They also utilize their large volume of social media followers to promote their blog content.
A good example is Pat Flynn, the Owner of the blog โSmart Passive Incomeโ boasting of a verified Twitter account with 158,000 followers; he also runs a podcast and a verified YouTube channel of 268,000 subscribers.
On his blog, he mainly teaches easy techniques for running E-commerce businesses and harnessing passive income opportunities.
If you have a useful service in this field, such as SEO tools, Pat Flynn can dedicate a series of blog posts to discuss this topic, or a YouTube tutorial video while recommending your tool for use with several backlinks to your own website.
He can also discuss you in his podcast as he has several ways to reach his audience.
Macro-influencers are the best bet when you want to reach out to your target audience based on your subject while ensuring that you reach out to many people, especially in the awareness stage of your campaign.
Bloggers and Vloggers can work wonders for you due to their loyal audience, which looks up to them for information because they have found them trustworthy over time.
Pat Flynn is a rare one, as he engages in blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting. But many Macro-influencers use just one medium of sharing content with their audience.
Macro-influencers help you re-strategize content, boost your brand awareness, and you can find them for almost any category you want, fashion, gaming, technology, music, and so on.
Micro-Influencers
Micro-Influencers usually have followers ranging from a few thousand to 100,000 or, on some occasions, slightly more.
They are typically more invested in the subject matter and closer to the target audience because of closer interactions and engagement via social media.
They arenโt necessarily the best for awareness, but they are good for promotion campaigns.
They also work with cheaper and less flexible budgets, making them affordable for businesses with tighter budgets.
They also receive payments in different methods, cash, products, free services, and many more.
Some of these people are well-known professionals in their fields, and their followers see their recommendations as professional advice without appearing as a means of promotion at times.
A micro-influencer can be a dietician who gives expert advice on what to eat to improve certain things in the body or even lose weight.
A company in the food industry can adequately get promoted by such a micro-influencer through recommendation.
The dietician could recommend pleasant sugar-free edibles for diabetics, and companies who produce this can get huge promotions from this.
The trust gained from these people due to expertise makes them ideal for promotional campaigns as they can drive a large percentage of their relatively small audience to consume a product.
A lot of times, these micro-influencers are usually ignored or less prioritized.
This is, however, a wrong move because each level of influencers has their levels of engagement, and different stages in marketing require different approaches.
Nano Influencers
Nano influencers usually have a similar or slightly smaller range of followers as Micro-influencers, but they do not possess the knowledge and the professional touch of the micro-influencers.
They are very vocal with their advocacy for a brand and very convincing too.
Nano influencers speak about a brand positively at any chance they get, jumping under Twitter threads or social media posts that criticize or bring up a bad or wrong image about a brand to defend them publicly.
Because of their less professional approach, however, they might come off as controversial.
Still, they usually have loyal supporters who would take their words as it comes, because they believe these nano influencers do not see the posts as promotional, they see it as an honest opinion that they should follow.
They are also relatively cheap to deal with.
Mini Influencers
These influencers are usually respected due to their knowledge of the subject matter.
Micro-influencers, although not necessarily professional, have a good online reputation, and they are known to recommend your product or service to their followers and anybody who cares to ask.
Because of their reputation, their recommendations are usually followed.
Some of these categories can be mixed together to achieve good results. You can have a celebrity post a new product you have while running a side campaign with bloggers to make reviews on it, with a backlink to your page.
While the celebrityโs post is doing rounds on social media โ reaching millions of people in no time, the macro influencer can do a YouTube video comparing a product with other trendy products, highlighting and focusing on yours, making both campaigns effective the same time.
At certain times the influencers’ works will go so deep that even users of your product will join these influencers in promoting your product or service (provided it suits them), becoming a loyal customers, hence amplifying the jobs of the influencers on social media.
They are a very good source of social proof easily acceptable.
Locating Influencers for Your Campaign
After deciding on the type of influencer you want for your campaign, you need to locate them to pitch your brand to them.
Briefing them about what you want to do, how you want it done, your expectations, and the metrics by which you will judge their performance.
Mega influencers are the easiest to locate; all you need to do is go to the social media page of the influencer that fits your brand and check his/her bio.
Usually, they have many direct message requests from numerous fans, so it is best to get their email or business contact information from their bio. This way, you can easily get in touch with their managers to schedule an appointment.
Macro-influencers, too, are not difficult to find, as they are relatively small when compared to other micro and nano influencers.
Since they are typically Vloggers and Bloggers, it may be a good idea to do a YouTube research on topics that you find enthralling to your target audience.
Note the Vloggers that present them and check their subscriber count, from suggested videos and related videos too, you will see similar Vloggers.
This will help you locate the Macro-influencers in your niche, and you can easily contact them from links in their bio, most notably an email address.
You can also reach out to blogs that rank well on Google for your preferred content. Search for a series of words you think people who need your products/services will probably be searching.
Certain websites will show up repeatedly on Googleโs first page with different keywords searched.
These blogs have a good ranking, and users will likely visit these blogs when finding answers to their questions; simply visit the blog and locate the contact information from there.
Looking for Micro-influencers and Nano influencers can be herculean. There are several hundred thousand of these on Instagram and Twitter, and selecting at random isnโt a good idea.
Hence it requires a more dedicated type of approach to locate these influencers.
It is important to know what has been trending online for a while and the people who create these contents.
Buzzsumo, Content Studio, SproutSocial, and HootSuite are good examples of tools that can help scan several social media websites, even with a streamline to your location, and understanding in general what content will work best for pushing your brand.
Some of these tools can also help you discover the people who get the most attention on these social media platforms, giving you a lead on who you should check their profiles.
Upon checking their profiles, you will find details on contacting them.
They donโt have overcrowded direct messages like influencers, so you can briefly engage them with a direct message to know their availability and see if they would love to be a part of your campaign before you proceed to send a brief via email.
Some popular micro-influencers do not manage themselves, and you need to get in touch with their management to pitch your brand. Other ways to locate micro, nano, and mini influencers include:
- Conduct a survey with your audience, asking which social media platforms they use the most, and focus on prioritizing your influencer hunt from there.
- Check LinkedIn for professionals who have a large following on other social media platforms, especially Twitter and Facebook, where interaction is high.
- Check Twitterโs โtrendingโ for hashtags and see the leading influencers from those tags. It is also a current indication of how active they are โ you donโt want an inactive influencer to run a campaign for you.
- Engage in competitor analysis to know the people your competitors are partnering with. Obviously, you cannot partner with those particular set of people, but it should give you an insight into who you should be on the lookout for.
- Use Famebit (a platform on YouTube) where you can find influencers for various niches; Famebit makes it easy for micro-influencers to sign up without asking for any fee and collects 10% of the fee the influencer gets, hence there are thousands of influencers on that platform. Using Famebit, you can sort through influencers by different demographics like age, follower count, impressions, and engagements. Famebit gives you an easy way to connect with micro-influencers, especially for long term partnerships with different influencers for your products.
Whether youโre in the fashion industry, beauty, technology, etc., there is always a pool of influencers from you to select from.
Key Highlights on Influencer Types and Finding Them:
- Mega Influencers:
- Have a large audience and significant reach.
- Often celebrities with massive followings.
- Can generate quick publicity but may lack subject knowledge.
- Expensive to work with and might not target specific audiences effectively.
- Macro-Influencers:
- Also have large audiences but gained fame on the internet.
- Often bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, etc.
- Engage with specific subjects and audiences.
- Good for subject-focused campaigns and brand awareness.
- Micro-Influencers:
- Have smaller but more engaged audiences.
- Closer interaction with followers and specialized knowledge.
- Affordable option for businesses with tighter budgets.
- Ideal for promotion campaigns and driving product consumption.
- Nano Influencers:
- Similar audience size as micro-influencers.
- Less professional but very vocal and convincing.
- Defend brands and products passionately.
- May come off as controversial but trusted by loyal supporters.
- Mini Influencers:
- Respected due to their subject matter knowledge.
- Known for recommendations followed by their audience.
- Offer social proof and strengthen brand reputation.
- Locating Influencers:
- Mega influencers can often be contacted via their social media bio.
- Macro influencers can be found through related YouTube research or blog rankings on Google.
- Tools like Buzzsumo and Content Studio can help identify micro and nano influencers.
- Conduct surveys, check LinkedIn, monitor Twitter trends, and analyze competitors for more influencer leads.
- Use platforms like Famebit for finding micro-influencers for long-term partnerships.
What are the 5 types of influencers?
The four main types of influencers are:
An additional category of influencers that are relevant to a micro-niche is Mini Influencers.
What is a good influencer strategy?
A good influencer strategy balances the reach and engagement of a potential audience by partnering up with the right kind of influencer. For instance, a campaign where you connect with micro or nano influencers might be way more effective for smaller brands as it might lead to brand awareness and conversions. For much larger campaigns where the main goal is to generate buzz simply, macro or mega influencers might be more beneficial for that, as they have much more reach. Thus, it’s critical to set what’s the goal of the influencer marketing campaign.
What are the 5 characteristics of a good influencer?
There are several ways to assess whether an influencer is in target with a brand’s audience. Some characteristics of a good influencer are:
Read Next: Influencer Marketing, SEO, Email Marketing, E-Commerce.
Read Next: What Is Influencer Marketing, How To Become An Influencer, Types Of Influencers, Instagram Marketing, How Does Instagram Make Money, How Does TikTok Make Money, TikTok Marketing.
Related Business Concepts
How To Make Money From A Podcast
Read Next: What Is Influencer Marketing, How To Become An