How to find and collaborate with nano influencers?

Small but powerful, nano influencers are very appreciated by brands nowadays. They are, above everything else, authentic consumers, and the central pilar of any customer centric strategy.  Discover how to collaborate with these niche agents and how to exploit their full potential. 

What’s a nano influencer?

A nano influencer is an individual with an audience of less than 5 000 followers on social media. They’re consumers that interact with a very close community. A nano influencer’s community is often made up of people he knows personally and with whom he shares common interests (beauty, fashion, food, gaming, sports, etc)

Nano influencers aren’t marketing professionals. They’re recurrent social media users, and particularly active ones. Nano influencers often shares instances of their lives, their consumer experiences, their recommendations, and they interact daily with their followers. They’re authentic speakers, and appreciated as such by their audience. 

Nano influencers, powerful brand ambassadors

Nano influencers are the ideal ambassadors for the brands that want to address their target audience in a personalised way. Supporting your influencer marketing strategy with several of these niche actors, you’ll be able to segment your campaigns in a very precise manner, and receive opinions straight from your ideal prospects. 

Nano influencers have a very close relationship with their followers, which means their engagement rate is much higher than that of content creators with millions of followers. On Instagram, a nano influencers engagement rate can reach up to 8%. Meanwhile, macro influencer’s engagement rate is at its highest at 2%. (Source: Influencer Marketing Hub)

Followers completely trust nano influencers’ opinions, as they’re not marketing professionals. Their publications are more similar to a customer review or UGC (User Generated Content) than to a collaboration post. They inspire consumer’s trust and play a decisive role in their shopping decisions. 

Finding the ideal nano influencers for your brand

The first step towards finding your niche influencers is having a clear picture of your ideal client. Then, you can search social media to find the individuals that better represent this picture. To aid yourself in your research, take a look at your followers’ accounts. You’ll probably find several influential users that share your brand values. 

To speed up the process, you can collaborate with a micro influencer platform such as Hivency. These kind of platform will allow you to identify the right profiles in less time, while reducing the error margin. 

Once you have your potential ambassadors in mind, familiarise yourself with them and their profiles and then contact them one by one. Nano influencers are (for now) much less demanded than bigger content creators. It should be easier to establish a good relationship with them. However, never underestimate the human aspect of the relationship (the base of influencer marketing). That’s why you should approach each nano influencer individually. 

Finding the right counterpart

Nano influencers aren’t professional content creators, which is why most of them don’t aspire to be remunerated for collaborating with brands. However, it’s convenient to guarantee an appropriate reward, to establish a relationship that benefits both parts and thus gain your nano influencer’s loyalty. 

A beautifully presented product, accompanied by small personalised details, is one of the best options. Another alternative (among many) is to invite your nano influencers to exclusive events (workshops, meet ups, visits, conferences, etc) always taking charge of their eventual travel expenses. 

Offer a rich experience

To implicate your nano influencers in your campaigns, it’s essential to make them live an interesting experience. Consider them as premium clients. Propose personalised products for them, so they can try out your products in the best way possible. 

Also, communicate an attractive brief, that will awaken their creativity. Propose, for example, that they do a recipe or a look for a specific event, that they dare try out an extremely complicated dance routine, or that they participate in an amusing challenge. 

Once again, it’s important to remember that nano influencers aren’t content creators. That’s why it’s so important to provide them with clear indications that aren’t too complex or restrictive, so they can conserve the spontaneity and authenticity that characterises them.

Dare to co create

For 2021, enterprises that aim for customer-centric model will be customer’s favorites. Consumers willingly address brands that care about personalising their offer and their communication. 

Nano influencers will be loyal friends for the brands that take this path, as they’re the representation of their ideal clients. Do you wish to place your client at the living heart of your strategy? Invite a nano influencer to participate in the product conception, packaging design or communication campaigns. 

Here lies the key to get closer to your customers: invite nano influencers to your brainstorming sessions, make them spokespeople of your brand or propose them to carry out surveys in their community so as to choose the best characteristics for your product. 

Make nano influencers your best ambassadors

Profit as much as you can from your collaborations with nano influencers, converting some of them into your brand ambassadors. By doing so they’ll speak about your brand willingly and much more often.

To transform your favorite influencers in true brand ambassadors: collaborate with them several times during the year, thank them for their support each time and have small gestures with them.

Think about sending them products, personalised messages, event invites, letting them test out new products before anybody else… Don’t forget to like and comment their posts!

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Nano influencers are soon to become an indispensable tool for influencer marketing in 2021. They’re relatively affordable allies and particularly accessible, and the enterprises that succeed at identifying them and building a relationship with them will take the lead. Eager to try?

Sources: E-book Hivency – The Future of Influencer Marketing ;  New York Times ; Forbes ; Neil Patel ; Modern Marketer Magazine ; Shane Barker ; Emarketing