By Angel Cicerone, Tenant Mentorship
www.tenantmentorship.com

You’ve heard of influencers before: people who have amassed huge followings in fashion and beauty, health and wellness, food, pets, crafting and more. These folks have found — whether through their celebrity, creativity or talent — a way to resonate with 1 million or more followers who look forward to their daily musings. Much like any other media, influencers will promote a product for a price, a high one. Kylie Jenner tops the list at $1.2 million per post, and it’s not unheard of for a popular influencer to get $100,000 a pop. Most probably are earning a very nice living selling posts in the $5,000 to $10,000 range.

While this is probably well beyond your budget, local business owner, you still can garner the benefits of this type of promotional opportunity by utilizing a segment of the market called nano-influencers. A nano-influencer has between 100 and 1,000 followers, primarily local and focused on a niche. These audiences are small but mighty and can have a big impact on your business. Under either a paid or unpaid partnership, the nano-influencer promotes your product or service.

How to Set Up Your Nano-Influencer Program

Step 1: Find and select your influencers

You goal is to find influencers who share a demographic similar to your ideal customer avatar. For example, if you own a boutique, you don’t necessarily need a fashion influencer but rather one who represents other aspects of your customers’ lives like health and wellness or home decor or even books and reading. If you own a gym with a membership of primarily Millennials, you might look for influencers on topics of veganism and social consciousness. Remember, customers are multidimensional, and you are looking to meet up with them in their other life interests. A nano-influencer could be a self- proclaimed foodie, a community activist, a mom who posts about raising happy kids, a DIYer or a local realtor, doctor, vet or photographer.

Start your search for influencers by looking within your own fan base. People who already follow you on social media or are good customers are fantastic prospects because they already know, like and trust you. Search pertinent hashtags, i.e., #pizza, #yourcity, do a Google search for local bloggers on specific topics and mine the followers of your competitors.

Step 2: Create the Partnership

There are many ways to strike a partnership with an influencer. You can offer to pay a fee for posts or use gift cards or trade as payment. For example, I worked with a quick-service restaurant that offered $15 gift cards one time per month so the influencer could eat and post about their meal. You can go a step further by offering an additional incentive like a gift card for the influencer to give away to any followers who comment and like your page. It increases engagement on all sides! Or the influencer can make the post shoppable with links to a landing page specific to them and pay a commission on any sales from that page.

General Benchmark for the Value of Posts Per 1,000 Followers

Facebook: $25

Instagram: $10

Twitter $2

YouTube $20

Key Tips

• Don’t judge the quality of a nano-influencer by the size of their audience but by their engagement. The higher the engagement, the greater likelihood your sponsored post will be seen.
• Allow the influencer to post in their authentic voice.
• Make sure the efforts are trackable, and evaluate results regularly.

Let me be clear. If you decide to adopt nano-influencers as part of your marketing strategy, you likely will be in previously unoccupied space and way ahead of your local competition.

This article originally appeared at www.angelcicerone.com.