A new approach to influencer marketing
Influencers are the people who have influence on the mass, specifically on social media platforms. They’re the folks who have already nurtured large audiences and developed effective communication channels to reach them. They’re the ones in daily contact with the target audience you’re trying to reach. Connecting with those influencers is another way to build your audience, and it’s particularly effective for early stage startups that are creating content and trying to boost their engagement rates and build their own brand recognition.
People often don’t distinguish between influencers and content creators, and use the terms interchangeably, however, there’re some big differences between them. Content creators are the writers, photographers, graphic designers, or videographers who are involved in creating high-quality content. On the other hand, influencers are the ones characterized by their followers count and the degree of influence they have on them.
So a great content creator is not necessarily an influencer and vice versa.
The micro-influencer is king
To put it simply, a micro-influencer is someone who has roughly between 1,000 and 30,000 followers, and you can easily guess that the majority of influencers belong to this type.
In a recent article published in techjury.net, it was reported that “People are 10 times more likely to be influenced by a non-celebrity blogger than a celebrity.” This fact may seem a bit counter-intuitive but it becomes obvious when we notice the simple truth that our daily decisions are much more influenced by our close friends than by celebrities. This highlights the huge importance of micro-influencers and make them at the center of this rapidly growing industry.
It’s no wonder youtube’s micro-influencers have the power to form strong ties with fans and create a more engaged audience gaining 3 times as many views, twice as many actions and 12 times as many comments compared to videos from traditional celebrities.
The untapped market
After studying the current state of the influencer marketing we have noticed that a huge number of content creators are looking for ways to market their content and build audiences around it, and a good deal of that content is produced by startups that are ready to pay money to get their content discovered and visited by their potential customers.
So to put it simply, here is a list of the major observations we got:
- Millions of great startups are unnoticed.
- Startups need their content to be discovered and targeted to potential customers.
- Influencers need great and relevant content to engage their audience.
- Startups and influencers are complementary if they are well matched.
These four observations seemed to us like a big market potential that’s untapped yet. This idea was consolidated even more after we’ve noticed that most influencer marketing platforms -if not all- are only focusing on helping big brands marketing their commercial products through macro influencers, and little to no attention is given to new startups and micro-influencers despite the facts that they are the majority and they’re in real need of each other.
That’s why we think building a Peer-to-Peer content marketing platform to match startups with the perfect micro-influencers in their industries, help them reach more potential customers, and manage their marketing campaigns effectively.
Such a platform would be profitable for everyone: Startups can boost their content and build organic audiences, influencers can earn money easily by sharing content they like and generating quality leads, and internet users can access a huge directory of curated startups’ content freely.
The trends of the future
Content marketing is on its way to become the most dominant and attractive form of digital marketing. People are becoming less engaged with paid ads and random popups, and more engaged with well crafted content that carries a message, and that’s exactly what startups should focus on right now.
Producing high-quality content and looking for effective channels to make that content reach the maximum potential customers is the best marketing strategy that a startup can follow in order to increase their brand recognition and acquire users. In that context, numbers prove that micro-influencers are one of the most effective channels between a specific content and its audience.
We believe that startups and brands will no longer pay for a timed ad on TV or a sponsored post on Facebook or Instagram, they will rather select some micro-influencers having a daily influence on their potential customers and pay her/him according to some specific KPIs they choose.
