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Everyone wants to be an influencer; we all follow influential figures on social media, including artists, industry, and political leaders. We cherish the attention and admiration they get. One post from a public figure gets tons of engagement, shares, likes and comments.

Influencers seem to have the world at their feet, brands queue to sign them up, and everything is a match made in heaven. You can keep wishing to be like them, but you do not enjoy the same loyalty with your followers or anywhere close to their number of followers.

It is much easier to be a big fish in a small river than to be a big fish in the sea. You may not have the popularity that mega and macro Influencers enjoy, but as a micro-influencer, you are recognised by a specific audience in a particular niche.

let’s start by describing an Influencer

Who is an influencer ?
An Influencer is described by Influencer Marketing Hub as someone who by virtue of his knowledge, position, authority or relationship with his audience can affect the decisions of others.

Influencer marketing involves recommendations and endorsements from Influencers to influence a purchase decision. Influencer marketing had a market size of $13.8 billion in 2021 and is projected to grow to approximately $15 billion in 2022.
Types of influencers

In terms of numbers, there are 4 types of Influencers;

Mega Influencers
These are mostly celebrities or political figures with about a million or more followers. The likes of Messi and the Kardashians fit under this category.

Macro Influencers
Macro Influencers typically have followers in the region of 100,000 to 1 million persons. Russel Brunson and Neil Patel fits under this category

Micro Influencers
Micro Influencers typically have between 5,000 to 100,000 number of followers. These Influencer usually focus on a particular niche and content.

Nano Influencers
Nano Influencers have about 1000 to 5000 followers.

Micro Influencers are known for having a really engaged audience in a particular niche and that’s one of the reasons why brands would prefer to sign a micro influencer over a popular artists or celebrity like Rihanna and Ronaldo, who can boast of millions of followers around the world.

Benefits of Micro Influencers for brands

1. Affordability
Micro Influencers are generally less expensive to hire when compared to a mega or a micro influencer.

2. Higher engagement
Micro Influencers enjoy a higher a engagement rate when compared to mega or macro influencers. Influencer marketing hub reports that micro influencers gets an average engagement rate of 3.86% on Instagram while the average engagement for mega Influencers is just 1.21%.

3. Trust
Generally micro influencers focus on a particular niche and are highly regarded in an industry. Their opinion matter to their audience as they are more detailed and most likely have a better knowledge of whatever they are promoting, unlike mega or macro influencers who can recommend lots of different products.

Steps to become a Micro Influencer from scratch
You will need to grow your followers to become a micro influencer, the steps involved in becoming a micro influencer is similar to that required to grow your followers, although, they are not exactly the same thing.

As a micro influencer you are looking for specific followers who are interested in a particular topic and will engage with your posts.

You are not necessarily looking for the crowd. Its more about quality over quantity. You can become a micro influencer in almost any niche with the following steps.

1. Choose your niche
This is the single and most important part of becoming a micro influencer, your niche is everything you are about. Usually experience, industry, interest and your network can be a major factor in choosing a particular niche.

You may start out as an expert in your local community, social groups, amongst your friends and colleagues. You can help to solve a unique problem, volunteer or even offer your services for free to build trust and gain referrals or social proof.

It has to be a topic that you are quite knowledgeable about because people will follow you for a reason. You have to proof that you know a lot about what you are talking about to build trust and loyalty.

Of course, knowledge can be built over time but experience within a particular industry clearly makes you stand out and you become a reference point for your followers. Also, it has to be a topic that you are interested in; as that passion translates into contact effort to stay up to date with trends and development within your industry.

Networks can be crucial especially within a specific industry to get access to resources and information from which you will create awesome content. Choosing a niche involves looking inwards to ascertain what you are about, what you are known for, what value you can bring to your friends, colleagues and then your social media followers.

2. Choose a channel
Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tiktok, Twitter and linkedin are some of the most popular social media channels to reach your audience. You may need to consider the type of audience you want to build and where they most likely hang out.

Instagram appeal is mostly about its high quality graphic content usually more suited for celebrities, artists, fashionistas and ecommerce. Youtube is popular for how-to videos, learning and entertainment videos. Tiktok is mostly for suited for entertainment and quite popular with young people.

Twitter is more suited for news, information, thoughts, opinions and conversations with other influencers and thought leaders. Linkedin is mostly a community for professionals used to build large connections across several industries and countries.

Every social media channel has its own peculiarities which you have to keep in mind when choosing the right social channel to build your audience and become a micro influencer.

Owning a website or a blog helps to establish your authority with your followers. Your website or blog will provide access to information, tools and resources to help your followers.

3. Outline your strategy, goals and values
Right from the start you need to be strategic about what you want to achieve as a micro influencer. You need to clear about your values and brand tone which you will use to communicate with your audience, from your choice of words to your brand’s personality.

A content strategy involves the overall plan of using content to achieve your business objective. You may want to have a content plan keeping in mind your audience and some clear goals which you intend to achieve with a particular content.

These goal can include brand awareness, search engines optimization, conversions, lead generation or something else. Your goals, strategy and values can help you remain consistent and build more followers.

4. Create awesome content
In a nutshell, content is the reason why people follow you and you cannot afford to fall below expectation. Retaining followers is as hard as attracting one, and great content helps you to achieve both objectives. You have to make considerable effort to serve your audience the best content.

Your content should solve problems, helping your followers with tips, tricks and generally add a lot of value to them. Creating great content may require resources like time, money, effort to come up with something your audience will appreciate.

Your content strategy should be rich enough to cover key topics in your industry and keep your followers engaged and informed without necessarily having to look for similar content elsewhere. Some tools like Buzzsumo and Ubersuggests can help you to discover top performing posts in selected social media channels and also top performing blog posts from your competitors to help you generate content ideas.

With the aid of a great content, you can build real connection with your audience by telling your story and sharing unique experiences which your audience can relate with.

You need to demonstrate authority with your posts, showing some level of detail, insights and expertise to convince your audience you are one of the best in your niche. In the long run, this will translate to trust and loyalty from your followers. https://jaasol.com/how-to-become-a-micro-influencer-from-scratch