This article isn’t about AAri, the 18 year old Instagram fashion influencer who admitted last week that she failed to sell 36 t-shirts to her two million Instagram followers. This article is also not about the thousands of “macro-influencers” on Instagram who are reminiscent of celebrity endorsers of old, household names with tens of millions of followers and who garner the fascination of the public if not their trust.

This article is about micro-influencers, real people who have become trusted experts in their space because of their knowledge and passion in a certain vertical.  They have gained a “tribe”, a loyal social following of 10K-100K who respect the opinion and check in daily to hear what they have to say.

Micro  influencers are the antithesis of celebrity marketing.  They are authentic and relatable. They are about human marketing or H2H (human to human) as opposed to B2C or B2B.  They are also likely a response to all that is fake on the internet, as well as bots, algorithms and AI. Micro influencer marketing is engaging, shareable and memorable and brands know it. Brands also know, that to a tribe, the micro influencer is far more important than the brand.

Tribes are willing to follow micro influencer recommendations, with the same level of confidence as they would a trusted friend.  If a micro influencer is sharing the benefits of a product or service they are currently using, the tribe is ready to listen.

Why Brands Love Micro Influencers

Brands love micro influencers because of their ability to move consumers to buy,  but so do Google ads, so the product sale is just a part of the story. Brands also love micro influencer marketing because it’s affordable and campaign execution is relatively simple.  For example, a micro influencer might be tasked to create some short product review videos or take images with supportive marketing text. They willl be asked to include a link to a product landing page, along with relevant hashtags. The entire cost of the campaign is negotiable and all the brand had to do was ship some product to the influencer.

Brands also love the engagement.  According to Viral Nation micro influencers also have higher engagement than their macro counterparts.

“What separates a good post from a great post is the rate of which your followers like, comment, or share it. And being that they have fewer followers, micro-influencers often are able to maintain very active relationships with their followers by replying to most of the comments or questions on their posts. Most times pretty quickly at that. Maintaining this constant connection can make followers feel like they actually have a genuine relationship with the influencer, and in turn, often make a habit of engaging with more of those users’ posts in the future and beyond.” Furthermore, according to ShaneBaker A study by SocialPubli showed that “micro-influencers generate 7x more engagement than the average generated by macro-influencers”. They are not just the fastest-growing but also the most engaging category of influencers in the industry.