For research and direct outreach you are actually better of using special services which collect the data. Different ones have different benefits, but these are the most used ones
https://ninjaoutreach.com/
http://www.buzzstream.com/
http://pitchbox.com/

There are higher priced ones, but either way: be sure that they actually have current numbers and data. You are usually fine when you look at US influencers, but beyond that, be careful. You might come into the idea of using a CRM - but please note that no classical CRM system can really deal with the relation "person has a blog" as those are fully setup into "person works at company". I also highly recommend looking into Streak (Gmail addon) and Podio for constructing your own workflow, especially with stages.

Thanks for sharing these information, Nicole Simon (Berlin, Germany)! I've featured your comment so that others can read it easily.

Now that's a detailed one! Great read!

For us the trickiest part was the influencer selection, especially that there was one most important assumption in the campaign:

There is no budget for additional compensation for the influencers.

We were only offering free products from our client Arkana Cosmetics, which means that we had to dig deeper for these influencers that would be willing to cooperate in exchange for a gift. This called for a lot of manual evaluation with some help of tools like Sotrender and Brand24, but the results were far better then we could expect.
If yoou're interested, you can read the case study here:
https://adcookie.co/blog/in...

That's a great case study! Thanks for sharing, Pawel! I'm sure the process of manually finding and evaluating suitable influencers was really tough. Do you have any tips or recommendations for that? :)

Great article! I have noticed the increase of social influencers on my feeds. Just curious, do you think consumers are going to think of this as disruptive? When?

Thanks, Olivia Webb!

That's a great question! I personally think it depends on the content that the social influencers create. Generally, more experienced influencers are able to create content that are authentic and doesn't look too salesy. Did you find the social influencers' post on your feed disruptive? 😅

I also think the Instagram algorithm will be helpful on this. Sponsored content that are too disruptive would probably get less reach when they receive little engagement. What do you think? 😊

I agree with you saying it depends on what the influencers create. Personally, the people I follow are in college and not great social influencers yet, so it is kind of disruptive compared to the more organic posts from my friends. As a marketing student, I think that I notice this kind of marketing because I have learned a lot about it in class. I have found that I am more likely to engage with a company's sponsored content on Instagram than when someone tires to social influence.

I had not thought about Insta's new algorithm affecting it. However, influencers typically have more followers than the average college students that I follow, so I am thinking they will have more engagement than say my post, so I think it will be at the top of the feed. I need to read more about the new algorithm.

Have you used an influencer?

I see. Yeah, I'm also quite sensitive to such content and often scroll past them when it isn't too relevant to me. Personally, I like to engage with posts that are relevant to me (whether it's sponsored content from a company, a post from an influencer, or a post from my friends).

Oh, you might like this post on Instagram algorithm: https://blog.bufferapp.com/... 😊

Nope, I have not myself. That said, my sister is quite a social influencer 😅

What a great article with lots of use full tips.. and thank you for the email snippets to get me started on this.

Thanks, Mohsin! You're very welcome! All the best for your campaigns! 😄

It was pleasure to understand and being educated with this blog as several marketing strategies are for creating attractive and innovative campaigns for remarkable association with the competitors in the market. With the emergence of professional logo design many clients have sustained a reputation amongst the competitors.

Great post full of useful tips! It will really help me alot.

Thanks, Muhammad! 😊

Hi Alfred, great article! Thanks for that :)

I was wondering what are your thoughts regarding the location of the micro influencers? Does geographic location should be consider or it's just a matter of confirming their relevancy and influence in our target?

Hey, Julia, that's a great question! I think it depends on your business and your target audience.

If you run a local business (e.g. a restaurant), geographical location will be important. You probably only want to reach the people in your area, and micro-influencers in your area will be better than micro-influencers based elsewhere.

If you have a global customer base (e.g. a software company), you could possibly work with micro-influencers from anywhere. That said, you could look into your current customer base or following to see if majority of your customers are based somewhere. For example, most of our customers are in the U.S. If we want to reach similar people by working with micro-influencers, working with micro-influencers in the U.S. might be better 😊

Hope this make sense, Julia!

Thank you so much for your answer!

You're very welcome, Julia! 😊

Great article Alfred. We do see the value of micro influencers increasing over the big (and expensive) ones as well. A great and efficient way to identify these influencers and to set a price tag on them is to use the ShareIQ Analytics tool (www.shareIQ.com).
A good read in that context would be:
https://www.shareiq.com/blo...

Thanks for sharing about ShareIQ and the article with us, Klaus! Have you been running micro-influencer campaigns? It'll be great to hear about your experiences 😊

Thanks Alfred, great article. So many people think they need to get big name influencers to promote them but of course they are getting pitched all the time and are very selective about what they choose to promote. So much better to be targeted towards those that have a more tightly targeted audience as they are more likely to be interested and you'll likely get better returns on your time and money.

You're welcome and thank you, Jill Brennan! 😊

Yeah, those are great points. I think big name influencers are generally more suitable for big brands who have the brand reputation and a big budget and who are generally using influencers to raise their brand awareness. For small-medium businesses, micro-influencers might provide better ROI in terms of sales and sign ups, like you said.

Good article, @alfred. I find manual search (for Influencers) more powerful than tools and platform, which are still - in my opinion - immature to help in specifics.

Good luck brand heroes! 👍– #DearMishuDad ✊👨🏻‍🏫

Thanks! Do you have any tips on doing a manual search for influencers? 😊

Yes sure! Best is to start to follow daily the hashtags that are related to your product (best hashtags to followers are ones with less than 1M followers) and see which Influencer influences the most (by number of engagements and love back from followers?). After a week of doing so make a list of those that you like the most and follow them for a while. If you still like what they do, hire them to influence for you (sign a contract.. make it all clear..)

Thanks for the tip!

hey thank YOU, it was a real pleasure, my friend..

First of all, thank you Alfred for a constructive and informative article! I'm strongly agree with @Jill comment about macro-influencers. It feels that most of them are overpriced (well it happend with celebreties) and suitable only for big brands. But not so many knows about micro-influencers who personally I think is a great alternative for small business. Expecially when you're beginner and you need to get results fast. I guess marketing agency is the best opption to save your money and time. So, I did check your recommended list and also I followed your recommendation to search on Google for agencies that are based in my area. Thanks you, that lead me to agency which offers good price for small/unflexible budget business. I'm leaving the link here https://www.unboxed.social/... it might be helpful :)

You're welcome, Mėta, and thank you for sharing your thoughts and finding here! 😊

Thanks, Muhammad!

Great post on micro influencers. A friend of mine, Alessia, has an email course that talks about more creative ways to reach out to these micro-influencers, among other things like using them to get regular customers to your business, using data to find them, and much more. Here's the link:
http://www.audiencefinder.i...

Thanks, Tomiwa Adey!

That looks like a comprehensive course. Thanks for sharing it here! 😊

Anytime Alfred :)

Great topic. Micro-influencers marketing campaigns have been so helpful for marketers by helping them reach out to new audiences and promote products and services. Thanks for the guide. It's very informative!

You're welcome and thanks for the comment, Cheska Franco! Have you done micro-influencer marketing campaigns before? If yes, how have they been? 😊

Really helpful piece, thanks for sharing Alfred

You're very welcome, Sarah Blinco! What did you find to be most helpful in this article? 😊