When most people think about influencers, they think of macro influencers, the people with millions of social media followers. These are the people who charge premiums just to send out a tweet.
Interacting with these types of influencers is no easy task as many gatekeepers expand the gap between your message and the influencer’s ear.
Enter micro influencers who have smaller but very targeted and loyal audiences. These are the influencers you need to find to take your business to the next level.
They have no gatekeepers and appreciate every share they get. While macro influencers also appreciate when people share their content, it’s harder for macro influencers to interact on an individual level with the people in their audience.
Where Can We Find Micro Influencers?
Micro influencers aren’t as pronounced as macro influencers. They tend to cluster around the macro influencers and macro influential brands. You can find them in the comments on other people’s blogs, but there’s a better way to find them.
Micro influencers usually make guest appearances on macro influencer shows and podcasts. If I want to find micro influencers, I look no further than influential podcasts and guest blogs. I go on the EOFire Podcast to see who John Lee Dumas recently interviewed.
The majority of his guests are micro influencers. They have large, loyal, and targeted audiences, but they don’t have millions of followers. If you email them, you have a much higher chance of getting a response and building a relationship.
After looking at the latest EOFire episodes, I’ll head over to Jeff Bullas’ Blog. Jeff is rapidly approaching 1 million followers across all of his social networks, and his blog gets 400,000 monthly views. Many of the blog posts on his site are from contributors. Virtually all of these contributors are micro influencers.
The podcasts and blogs will be different for each niche, but when you find active podcasts and guest blogs, you’ll find many of the micro influencers in your niche.
How Can We Build The Relationship?
Micro influencers don’t get as much attention macro influencers. That is to your advantage. Any email you send to a micro influencer is much more likely to get a response than emails you send to macro influencers.
But how do we build the relationship? What do we say in the email?
While there are many reasons to send an email to a micro influencer, the best emails boil down to one of two ingredients:
1. Praise — When doing research for my blog posts, I prefer to mention micro influencers over macro influencers. Micro influencers are much more likely to see that you mentioned them, and some will even share your content. If I choose to mention a micro influencer’s article, I tell them how much their article impacted me. I prefer to request an optional share over being pushy.
2. Opportunity — Micro influencers want to grow their audiences and gain more visibility. Most micro influencers will be more than ready to jump on an opportunity to do so. My favorite way to build relationships with people is to invite them to become guests on the Breakthrough Success Podcast. Most of the people I ask end up becoming guests on the show. What follows is a 30-45 minute conversation, and if you spend that much time talking to someone, you’ll probably have a healthy relationship at the end of that conversation.
How Can We Preserve These Relationships?
Micro influencers will take more time to respond to their audience than macro influencers, but micro influencers also have a lot on their respective plates. Micro influencers usually wear many hats and don’t have a team to delegate tasks to. Many of them work alone.
That means you need to make every effort to strengthen the relationships you have with these influencers. Don’t just email them when you need help.
Be willing to give. Share their content on social media and tag/mention them so they get notified about your post. If you find an article that you know would benefit one micro influencer, send that article over to the micro influencer. Comment on their content.
Read More: Get 6 Incredible Ideas For Micro-Influencers To Reap Your Business
Micro influencers will respond to those types of interactions. Some of them will follow suite. They’ll share your latest blog post without you reminding them, leave a comment, and tell people about you.
Your ability to preserve these relationships is dependent on your willingness to follow-up with your existing relationships. Don’t bother building new relationships if you can’t leverage and build upon the relationships you’ve already built.
What are your thoughts on building relationships with micro influencers? Where do you go to find micro influencers? Do you have a question? Sound off in the comments section below.
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In Post Image Credit: Shutterstock.com & rebeccacoleman.ca
