Almost everyone on social media has heard about influencers. Still, some may ask themselves, ‘What is an influencer?’ especially with the rise of influencers across major social media platforms (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc.) in recent years.
If you like to know more about influencers or find out how to become one, we have your answer. In the following, we will show you different types of social media influencers and introduce you to an easy way to collaborate with them.
What Is An Influencer?
Let’s start with a simple question: what is an influencer? Social media influencers are people who have built reputations on major platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. They create content (posts, videos, stories) around their niche topic and regularly collaborate with brands.
Influencers are known by their followers, so they try to build a loyal following on their platform and increase it over time. This way, they have a higher chance to work with known brands and increase their income.
Types of Social Media Influencers
Now that you know what a social media influencer is, let’s take a look at the different types of influencers based on the number of audiences they have.
1. Mega-Influencers
The social media influencer definition has no fixed rules for categorizing influencers based on their followers. But in common, each creator with over 1 million followers on one social media platform is counted as a mega influencer.
Their fame is not something they have achieved in one night. Years of high-quality content creation, social activities, and consistency have helped them. Since they have a large audience and a better influence on them, the cost of collaborating with them is high.
For example, Addison Rae, one of the highest-paid Instagram influencers with 37M followers, gets over $150,000 for each sponsored post. So, if you are a small business, investing in other types of influencers is better.
2. Macro-Influencers
One step lower than mega influencers are Macro influencers, who range from 100,000 to 1 million. For example, Maureen Alexandra Naudts is a beauty blogger on Instagram, and with more than 500k followers, she is a perfect example of a successful macro influencer.
Even though they have a lower following than Mega influencers, they are the best option for influencer marketing since they have a high engagement rate. Besides, they are more likely to collaborate with brands and share sponsored content. T.
3. Micro-Influencers
It’s possible to find celebrities as mega or macro influencers, but micro-influencers are social media personalities who know a specific niche. A micro social media influencer definition stands for people whose audience ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 on at least one platform.
For example, Caroll Salazar is a lifestyle influencer with 47k followers on Instagram.
Even though they don’t have a large community, we can see that most of them have a friendly relationship with their followers. This helps them increase their engagement rate and be a perfect option for smaller brands to collaborate with micro-influencers.
4. Nano-Influencers
If you are wondering what is a social media influencer and how many followers it takes to be an influencer, your answer is in this section. Nano influencers have between 1,000 and 10,000 followers and are the first step to becoming an influencer.
Noelle Graham is a mom influencer who has 8k followers on Instagram. She shares her journey as a mom of four beautiful kids on her page.
How To Work With An Influencer?
In the previous parts, we’ve answered the question of ‘what is an influencer’ and where you can find them. If you are a brand or business owner, you have probably heard of influencer marketing and its impact on growing brand awareness. Social media influencers have an established audience and have built trust with them.
If you have enough budget, you can consider working with mega-influencers and celebrities. But for smaller brands, you can find hundreds of macro and micro-influencers in your niche. To contact and find these influencers, you try different methods, such as searching on Google or LinkedIn, doing hashtag research on social media platforms, or monitoring your competitors.
After finding an influencer in your niche, you need to check their resume, engagement rate, and growth rate and talk with them about the collaboration cost. These steps can take time and effort, especially for new brands. Instead, we want to introduce a better alternative, Ainfluencer.
Ainfluencer – The Best Platform To Work With Influencers
Ainfluencer is a free influencer marketing platform that connects brands and influencers across Instagram and TikTok. There are currently more than 500,000 influencers in different niches and industries. Ainfluencer uses an AI-powered search engine that allows you to target creators based on more than 20 criteria, such as age, gender, location, niche, follower count, budget, etc.
For example, suppose you are looking for micro-fashion influencers. In that case, you can set the followers to range from 10 to 100k, choose your niche as fashion, set your location, and look for opportunities. The platform’s scoring system suggests top creators based on your filters and sorts them by their scores. Influencers who have a higher engagement and growth rate and previous successful collaborations.
Then, you can check each influencer’s profile and collaboration fee. When you find your best match, use the in-app chat tool to talk with them and start your collaboration. So, if you are ready to find and work with social media influencers, sign up on Ainfluencer for free now.
Conclusion
Influencers have become an important part of social media marketing, and it is essential to understand their role in promoting brands. As a business owner or a marketer, knowing what an influencer is and the different types of influencers can help you find your way to growth.
In this article, we’ve told you everything you need to know about social media influencers. Also, we’ve introduced you to a safe platform where you can find thousands of active influencers to collaborate with. Ainfluencer is a free marketplace that helps you run effective collaborations in a couple of minutes.
FAQs
Some platforms, such as YouTube or TikTok, allow their influencers to monetize their accounts and earn money through the views of their posts. But most of their income comes from collaborating with brands and other influencers.
Social media influencers are content creators who have knowledge of a topic and have the ability to create high-quality posts about it.
Even though there aren’t any fixed rules on what constitutes an internet influencer or how many followers you need to become one, we can say content creators with at least 1k followers are nano-influencers.
But to collaborate with brands and earn money from your presence on social media, you need to increase your followers to 5k.
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