How to Find Micro Influencers for Your Small Business

Wondering how to find micro influencers to promote your products and amplify your brand’s reach and sales?

Well, you’ve come to the right place.

By working with social media influencers, you can reach your target users and let them know about your products. Like celebrities, influencers already have a dedicated audience and that makes them easy modes of promoting your brand.

They also have highly engaged audiences and charge much lower for promotion than celebrities.

For these reasons, the influencer marketing market size has been increasing steadily from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $16.4 billion in 2022, according to a study by Influencer Marketing Hub.

Image via Influencer Marketing Hub

That said, the key to driving your ROI through influencer marketing lies in recruiting the right micro influencers. Often, the right influencer for your brand isn’t always the one with the largest following.

Better engagement and influence in niche communities is also valuable as it can drive sales.

That’s why we have created this guide to teach you how to find micro influencers for your next campaign. You will learn the easiest ways to find and recruit best-value influencers who match your goals and brand values.

So, let’s dive in.

Who Are Micro Influencers?

Micro influencers are social media users with a following of between 10,000 and 100K. These are users who share valuable thoughts on a particular topic with their audience and usually have a highly engaged audience.

Owing to the small following, they’re also more likely to be communicating well with their audience, making them a powerful source of influence.

And because of this connection, micro influencers are more effective in driving consumer buying behavior than other types of influencers.

This is why you need to learn how to find micro influencers since these are the individuals who will connect you with your target market.

Examples of micro influencers include:

1. Geena

@pastelmints

Niche: Beauty

Image via Instagram

Geena is a beauty and makeup influencer who focuses on bright colors. She has 31.3K followers and talks about makeup tips for different seasons.

2. Lauren Carey

@girlgoneabroad

Niche: Travel

Image via Instagram

Lauren has 54.6K followers and considers herself a world traveler. She posts amazing photos of the places and destinations she travels to on her page and inspires people to explore the world.

3. Elizabeth Moye

@hellospoonfull

Niche: Food & Nutrition

Image via Instagram

Elizabeth is a food blogger who creates simple recipes for her audience. Her Instagram page is full of amazing photos of dishes, making her a great influencer for food brands.

Step-by-Step Guide on How to Find Micro Influencers

Now that you know what micro influencers look like, let’s learn how you can find the right ones for your marketing campaigns.

Step 1: Define Your Goals

The first thing you need to do when learning to find micro influencers is to define your goals.

What do you want to achieve from your engagement with potential micro influencers?

Do you want to make more people aware of your products or is your intention to increase sales?

Different micro influencers are effective at delivering various goals. A clear understanding of your goals can go a long way in helping you find the right micro influencers who can help you accomplish them.

Here’s how to use campaign objectives to pick an influencer.

Brand Awareness

If you want to raise brand awareness, then choosing an influencer with a large following is critical.

An influencer with a large audience will expose your brand to many people, thus increasing your brand awareness. Alternatively, you’ll have to work with several micro influencers with smaller following.

Brand Trust

To boost trust in your brand, the best influencers to partner with would be micro influencers who already have a solid authority in the niche. This is because their personal brand will get attached to yours and improve your brand trust.

Any promotion by such influencers will only enhance your authenticity, thus helping you earn the trust of your target users.

Sales Generation

If you want to drive more sales, consider picking an influencer who can create marketing content that inspires users to buy from you. Typically, these are micro influencers who have a solid connection with their audience and they must look up to them for shopping recommendations.

Step 2: Visualize the Ideal Influencer

Next on the steps to find micro influencers is to visualize the content creator you want to work with.

This is a crucial step since your brand will be associated with everything the influencer says and does.

As such, if you are not careful when recruiting influencers, you might end up with content creators who damage the great name you’ve already built for your brand.

The following are some of the things you need to consider as you work to find micro influencers for your next influencer campaign.

Personality

To succeed at influencer marketing, you want to work with an influencer with a great personality. They should give off an inviting vibe and engage their followers with respect and humility. Remember, they’re extensions of your brand, so you want them to hold up your brand image.

Niche

The influencer you work with should operate in a business niche that’s directly tied to yours. For instance, there’s no point in choosing a food influencer, no matter how good they are, to promote your tech products. Their audience won’t match yours as well, and you’d end up wasting your marketing budget.

Creativity

Creativity is another aspect you need to pay attention to as you learn to find micro influencers. The influencer should be creative enough to create high-quality content for your marketing campaigns.

But how can you determine the creativity of an influencer?

You can do so by checking their past campaigns and posts.

Do they create content that stands out from others in that niche? Were they able to generate high engagement rates and spur conversations with their audiences?

If the answer is no to any of these questions, then they don’t have what it takes to give you the desired results.

Step 3: Find Influencers for Your Campaign

With an idea of the kind of influencer you want to work with, you can now proceed to find them.

Consider the following strategies when you’re going about the process of finding micro influencers for your campaign.

Use Hashtags to Find Influencers Creating Content in Your Niche

Hashtags on social media exist to make content searchable and accessible. By using hashtags and keywords, you can spot relevant micro influencers on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms to work with in the future.

However, when choosing hashtags for your influencer search, ensure they’re specific enough to help you spot niche influencers.

For instance, as a plus-size clothing brand, the #plussizefashion hashtag will reveal more accurate results than the simple #fashion hashtag.

Image via Instagram

Use Influencer Marketing Platforms

Using influencer marketing platforms is perhaps the best way to find micro influencers for your campaigns.

And how is that?

These platforms have made it easy for brands to find influencers to work with as you just need to search for them and use filters. The platforms range from free to paid tools with expensive monthly subscriptions.

So, pick one influencer marketing tool that gives you access to suitable influencers in your specific niche. Using this tool, you can search for influencers and filter them out to narrow down your list.

Step 4: Qualify Prospective Influencers

We have talked about the need to define your goals as you look to find micro influencers.

Now, after identifying prospective content creators to work with, evaluate their ability to help you meet your goals.

Here’s how to do that:

• Review their content
• Review their audience
• Review their engagement rate

Step 5: Connect with the Influencer

Once you’ve analyzed the influencers well, you can narrow down your list to a few influencers. You can then reach out to these influencers for pitching your idea.

Now, there are two approaches for this. If you’ve used the more traditional methods like searching for the influencer or using hashtags, you’ll have to reach out to them on social media or email.

However, if you’ve used influencer marketing tools, you can easily connect with them through those tools and discuss your campaigns with them.

FAQs

Q1. Who is a micro influencer?

A. Micro influencers are social media users who have a following of between 10K and 100K. Their audience is usually very niche compared to macro influencers and they tend to have a strong connection with them. This also gives them a higher engagement rate.

Q2. What’s the difference between micro and macro influencers?

A. While micro influencers have an audience of between 10,000 and 100,000, the follower counts of macro influencers range from 100,000 to 1,000,000.

Q3. Explain how to find micro influencers?

A. Use the following steps to find suitable micro influencers for your brand:

• Set your goals
• Visualize the ideal micro influencer
• Use influencer marketing platforms and hashtag search to find relevant micro influencers
• Qualify potential influencers
• Connect with the influencers and start the collaboration

Q4. How can I find micro influencers for free?

A. Use hashtags and keywords to find micro influencers who operate within your niche.

Q5. What things should I consider when assessing influencers?

A. The key things you need to look at when assessing influencers are their personality, niche, engagement, and follower demographics.

Wrapping Up

Micro influencers can be great assets for brands that want to build an authentic connection with their target customers.

Due to their tight connection with followers, micro influencers will amplify your brand presence on social media and promote your products to the right users.

So, go ahead and start connecting with micro influencers to start your marketing campaign. And if you have any questions, ask them in the comments.