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Accomplish April 29, 2020
Less followers doesn't mean less beneficial.
If you’re newly pursuing Instagram as a career, you might have seen the term “micro influencers” floating around the Internet. Maybe you want to understand what this term means. Maybe you want to learn about a micro influencer’s salary. Or maybe you think you’re a micro influencer yourself, and you want to see the benefits and disadvantages of being in your position. Whatever the case, ENTITY can explain just about everything you need to know about micro influencers.
Throughout the past few years, different sources have debated what it means to be a micro influencer. While most agree that micro influencers have pretty small follower counts, they disagree on where exactly their follower counts lie.
In 2016, influencer marketing platform Mavrck defined micro influencers as “everyday consumers who have 500 – 5,000 highly engaged followers around relevant topics.” A white paper created by Influicity declared that they had between 1,000-10,000 followers. Influencer Marketing Hub set the numbers between 2000 and 100,000.
However, around 2017, the term “nano influencer” started appearing in the news. 2018 saw a steady increase in media covering this new, smaller tier of influencer, which the Guardian described as having between one and five thousand followers.
Recognizing the nano influencer existence means changing the follower count range for micro influencers. To account for the nano influencers with “as few as 1,000 followers,” the New York Times defined micro influencers as having a range “from the tens to low hundreds of thousands.”
To stay updated with current terminology, let’s recognize nano influencers as a separate tier from micro influencers. With this in mind, we can tentatively state that micro influencers have between 5,000 and 100,000 followers.
The term “micro influencer” seemed to first circulate online media in 2015, when Entrepreneur and a few other publications began reporting on smaller social media personalities. (Before then, it appears that publications used the word “microstar” or “microcelebrity.“)
However, these influencers really began to dominate news and media in 2016. The article that seemed to jumpstart this surge was from Digiday who were reporting on research released by Markerly, a marketing platform. This research found that engagement decreases as follower count increases.
This means that micro influencers have an advantage over celebrities like Harry Styles and Zendaya. While they couldn’t promise more reach, they could promise a higher engagement with their posts.
Besides higher engagement, micro influencers can offer other benefits.
Micro influencers are usually viewed as more authentic than popular celebrities, who often feel faraway and unavailable. Most consumers simply cannot relate to the Justin Biebers and Beyoncés of the world.
Micro influencers can feel a little closer to home. If they make a sponsored post, some followers might even root for them. They want to see their favorite up-and-coming influencer grow and succeed.
They’re also cheaper— and sometimes easier to work with. Instead of paying Kylie Jenner a million dollars, you could pay a few micro influencers about $750 each.
After releasing their 2016 research on micro influencer engagement, Markerly released another report in 2017. This report found that although smaller influencers have higher engagement upon posting, they also have a lower return on investment (ROI).
This means that over time, celebrities can offer higher engagement per dollar. So while micro influencers may be cheaper, using celebrities could create more long-lasting results.
Micro influencers’ authenticity also means they lose some exclusivity. While a consumer might go to them for honesty, they might go to celebrities for trends. If a brand wants to utilize the FOMO (fear of missing out) mentality, they might ask Demi Lovato to sponsor their product instead of the girl-next-door micro influencer.
So how much do micro influencers get paid? There are a couple different answers.
According to research from Influence in 2017, micro influencers with 10,000 to 99,000 followers receive an average of $240.20 per post. However, this is a fairly wide range of follower counts. People nearest to the 100,000 follower cutoff will likely make much more than this average. People nearer to the 10,000 follower cutoff will likely make less.
Also in 2017, Digiday released a statement from Chelsea Naftelberg, who at the time worked at the social media agency Attention. She stated that her team usually pays influencers $1000 for every 100,000 followers. They then adjust the price based on the influencer’s engagement rate and the client’s budget.
For influencers with less than 50,000 followers, Henry Langer from influencer marketing platform Hypr states that brands can pay $250 per post.
With new micro influencer networks, the introduction of nano influencers and the research released from Markerly, we’re not certain what the future holds for these smaller social media stars. There’s certainly no shortage of brands that want to utilize a micro influencer’s 5k-100k followers, but it’s uncertain if their future salary will be enough to sustain their influencer lifestyle.
Whatever the case, we can certainly thank these influencers for an interesting journey through social media culture. And if you’d like to engage with our own Instagram, check it out here!
