Are micro, nano or pico influencers the start of momentum, or “pitching your way to the bottom?”

10 Reasons You Should Pitch “Influencers” With Zero Followers

Recently someone on the team noticed a social mention, so they made a note of it like all the others. In looking at it closer I saw that this influencer had a new account with zero followers. While the definitions of pico, nano and micro influencers aren’t clearly defined, I think all agree that someone with zero followers isn’t of interest to any brand.

For the sake of discussion, pico, nano and micro influencers can be defined as under 1k subscribers, under 5k subscribers, and under 100k subscribers, respectively. Or we could just call them small, medium, and large since there’s a lot of variability from platform to platform.

In any case, I’ve always been of the mindset that pitching smaller content creators is still of value, even if the impact of their posts might not be as noticeable. The reasons for this could be entirely sentimental — I’m a former pico influencer having written about startups more than the average person. I have a fond affection for those stalwart influencer wannabees that make a steady stream of content that largely goes uncelebrated.

From this experience I know that my best posts gained more views than large publications’ every-day posts.

When you manage your own publication you tend to look at the analytics frequently. In fact, at the start it was more of a habitual thing where you refresh the page often to see if anything changed yet. Over time I noticed there was a large discrepancy between my top posts, and the majority of them. It roughly followed the 80–20 rule, (more like the 90–10 rule) where the top posts just kept accumulating views. Why that is, is a subject for another day. But I suspect many publications have a similar dynamic of a baseline number of views, and a handful of posts that become trending and gain traffic over time.

Representation of a pico influencer’s fanbase, including my former startup blog.

Recently I saw this dynamic play out in that we pitched a YouTube pico influencer with 500 hundred subscribers, and a YouTube micro influencer with 20k. The pico influencer’s post is approaching 1,000 views, and the more established micro influencer’s post hasn’t broken 200 yet. The likely reason for this is the pico influencer’s post gained traction on reddit.

The argument could have been made to not pitch the pico influencer in the first place, and we would have missed out.

So what’s a good policy for when to pitch smaller influencers, and when to pass on them. Here’s the approach I use.

Guideline 1: Start at the top, and work your way down until you get placements. Then work your way back up.
Guideline 2: Focus on the Quality of the post over the Quantity of their followers.

For another recent company I was having quite a bit of trouble getting any placements at all. The company was pre-traction, and while making gains at B2B, they hadn’t quite figured out their B2C market yet. My attempts to start at the top were met with crickets. My efforts to interest the middle and lower tiers were greeted with yawns.

In searching for periodicals that might get the company’s name in print, I reached for the founder bio angle. They had recently moved to a small mountain state town, the type with less than 10k residents and one main paper. Their previous startup went public and their million dollar stock transactions were easily discoverable online. So I pitched their city and county papers knowing they have more slow news days than larger publications. I also knew the first thing they’d do is google the founder and discover that a wealthy entrepreneur had moved to town (aka their tax jurisdiction). Both city and county ran the article, and the county put it on the front page of the business section with photos. A few days later the story bubbled up to the regional paper, and then their state’s NBC reporter called for TV interview. It ran as the top story that weekend. Ironically, they didn’t make much mention of the founder’s previous ventures and associated wealth. But anyone digging just beneath the surface quickly found out. The phones and emails were off the hook with inquiries and invitations of all types and flavors.

This is what I envision when pitching someone with a limited audience

Conclusion

There are actually many reasons to pitch publications with humble follower counts.

1. It’s great practice. Your CEO/Company needs to demonstrate they can offer a compelling interview and story. Larger publications don’t want to feature someone and have a gaffe or meltdown. Or worse, boring content. (In the aforementioned county interview, the CEO described their company as a “1.5 out of 10.” I’d much rather have that come out in a smaller paper, than a larger one. Then we can discuss how to speak around sensitive issues.)
2. Posts on channels with zero subscribers are still discoverable by search engines. People researching your brand will find them just the same.
3. Posts are shareable by you. I include previous placements in follow up pitches since it shows traction, and more details on the brand.
4. It’s better to be on the front page of a smaller publication, than the back page of a larger one. This one’s debatable, but I’ll take a full feature that’s well done in a small publication, over an unmemorable mention in a larger one. The full feature tells your whole story and shows that you’re important. A mention shows that you’re an afterthought.
5. Smaller publications may go the extra mile to promote it. The pico influencer who shared their post on reddit is a classic example.
6. Smaller brands can’t expect to be in top-tier news every day anyway. It’s important to have a steady stream of placements, and smaller publications let you do that.
7. Smaller publications can have more targeted audiences for your brand, such as industry specific journals.
8. Being featured in smaller publications may be a better strategic position for your brand. For the mountain-state client the founder was clearly wealthy and was at risk of being written off as a corporatey business person. Putting them in local news was a way to endear them to regular folks of normal financial means. For the same reason politicians include town hall meetings in their campaigns, along with the larger events.
9. Smaller publications have shorter editorial cycles. Large publications may take 6–12 months until your story goes live. Zero followers can mean same-day service!
10. Your brand is pre-traction. Larger publications need some assurance that your brand is going places. They may hold off until they see it. Sometimes, smaller publications are all you can get.

If you have to start with those with zero followers, then the zero follower influencers are where you start.

What are your approaches to pitching smaller influencers? Any success stories? Or horror stories where the client was upset?