How To Find Micro Influencers To Spark Conversations About Your Clients Product

You want to deliver a micro influencer campaign for your client because you know it’s going to spark real conversations which will turn into traffic and sales. But you have know idea how to go about finding, identifying and building a relationship with a micro influencer.

Before we get into the detail of how you can find micro influencers let’s identify what exactly we mean by micro influencer.  Because, this is a relatively new term.

A few years ago marketeers talked about influencers and bloggers.

Influencers were those people who had amassed a celebrity like following of millions of fans.  They could be a youtube star, Instagrammer or blogger. Usually they’d have a presence across  multiple platforms.    

Working with an influencer is likely to cost anywhere from $50,000 and up for a campaign. But for that, if you work with the right one your brand is likely to take off.

Gary Vee for example just did a collaboration with K-Swiss. They sold out in a matter of days.   And created a lot of exposure for the brand.

Then marketeers talked about bloggers.  Of course split down into different levels, but mostly split by the domain authority of their website.   

Influencers were about brand awareness and driving direct traffic and sales. Bloggers were about building links and organic traffic.

That has shifted.

Because now Marketers are recognising the huge opportunity that some small blogs represent.   And that is small but very engaged and loyal following of readers.  So, there are now two categories we talk about.

Bloggers

And

Micro Influencers

What Is A Micro Influencer?

A micro influencer is someone who has a highly engaged audience. They are everyday people with an authentic following of 3000 people or more.

What To Look For In A Micro Influencer

When looking to engage a micro influencer there are two main areas you must focus on.

1. Relevancy
   
   

You need to dig deep into the type of content they post and what they speak about on their social media channels.  This research needs to go further than categorising them into “lifestyle”, “beauty”, “fashion”.   

Just because one person writes about beauty doesn’t make them a great fit for your brand.  For instance, say you are promoting a natural skincare product like Bull Dog.

You don’t want to work with an influencer who doesn’t care about using natural / organic products.  So, it is very important to really look into who you want to work with and why.  Make sure you understand what they are about further than a top level scan of their site.

      2. Engagement

It is also vital to understand how engaged their audience is.  They cannot be categorized as a micro influencer if they don’t have anyone listening to what they have to say.  

​Remember, we are talking micro here, so it doesn’t need to be a landslide of engagement.  But a blog which doesn’t have any comments or social shares should raise alarm bells.

The best micro influencers also engage with their audience in the comments. They take the time to offer additional value and get to know their audience.  This is where the real value comes from working with a micro influencer.

How To Find Micro Influencers To Spark Real Life Conversation

So, now that you are all clued up on what a micro influencer is, how do you find them!  Since there are different ways you can work with them to promote your clients products or services its going to change depending on your campaign.

Some influencers have a bigger presence on one platform over another.  Let’s go through some different techniques now!

How To Find Micro Influencers On Instagram

Instagram is a great place to go and it is very easy to tell who has engagement and who doesn’t on this platform.  Search for influencers by using hashtags relating to your product or service.  Make sure you build your list on engagement levels instead of just pure follower count. 

Or,  use a marketplace like Starngage which connects brands with influencers.

Use an outreach or a relationship management tool

Another way you can find micro influencers is through an outreach or relationship management tool. There are a few different ways you can do this.  And these work best if your campaign revolves around producing guest post content on the influencers website.  Let’s go through a couple of those tools now.

1. Buzzsumo

This is every content marketers central tool!  Enter a keyword and discover the most popular content on that topic. For the basic tool Buzzsumo is $79 per month which gets you an unlimited number of searches. The paid plan is needed if you are looking for micro influencers because rarely will they appear on the first few results you get when you trial the tool for free.

2. Pitchbox

I used Pitchbox for several months and found it a fantastic tool for outreach. The great things about Pitchbox is it can integrate your email management which can get to be a bit of a nightmare when trying to connect with hundreds of influencers.  

What I didn’t like so much was their prospecting, I found that I was doing a lot of manual work and creating lists which the platform told me it could do. So, I moved on.

3. Ninja Outreach

I moved on to Ninja Outreach.   This is a tool which is focused more on the prospecting than it is on the emailing.   

This tool will help you discover micro influencers and build lists of potential contacts to reach out to an engage with.  You can also conduct your communication through the platform as well.


4. Tribe

For a different way to go about prospecting Marketplaces like tribe are really intuitive and easy to use.  You don’t have to mine a ton of data.  

​The influencers are already inside the platform and willing to work with you! Pricing is already set and everyone is clear on expectations.  I find it a lot easier to go about prospecting in this way.

5. Guest Bloggers Wanted

This platform is one that we at Ginger Marketing built! It helps companies hook up with micro influencers from the UK specifically for the purpose of creating epic blog content.   

It is still a small community but that is actually beneficial in many respects as there is not a ton of contacts to go through and sort through.

​ I love using Guest Bloggers Wanted for our our content marketing campaigns at Ginger Marketing.  A marketplace is definitely the type of tool I personally like to work with.

As usual let us know your thoughts in the comments below!