A micro-influencer is classified as having between 10,000-50,000 followers. However, a micro-influencer status reflects more than a 10,000+ following. Brands seek influencers with an authentic and credible follower base, who are actively engaged with your content. Positive follower growth, high engagement, and quality content are key to elevating your profile to micro status.
Awin manages influencer campaigns across all creator status, from nano to macro and celebrity, for global and local brands, including Etsy, B&Q, Samsung, Converse, boohoo, and M&S, to name a few. Awin’s technology enables influencers to create unique, trackable links that can be included within social content across all platforms, including Instagram, Twitch, TikTok. Influencers can directly gauge how they have influenced brand purchases and what their audiences have responded to.
The Awin platform facilitates long-term brand partnerships and helps creators to monetise their content, promote relevant campaigns, secure exclusive promotions and engage their audiences.
Establish your niche
Your niche is paramount as it conveys what your account stands for, reflects who you are, and should be made clear within your profile setup. Brands and audiences are looking to support authentic creators. In fact, micro-influencers are preferable for brand campaigns versus traditional celebrities, as they are more relatable, honest, and transparent to followers.
Audiences seek to invest time in (and follow) a creator who produces frequent, good quality, and well-executed content, that corresponds with their natural interests and principles. This is important, as ad hoc or one-off brand sponsorships are identifiable, less trusted, and can cause engagement and following to drop off.
Check to see if your target audience matches your existing following. Are you producing content that reflects your interests? Does your content engage your current followers? Are you attracting brand partnerships that suit your content?
Set yourself up well
It sounds basic, but setting up your social profile correctly is one of the most important steps.
Select a Business or Creator account to collate data insights for brands and to access additional contact buttons and toggles.
Choose a username that is simple and memorable, avoid special characters, emojis, and number sequences, and ensure it is consistent with your other social accounts (e.g. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube). Changes to your social handle or profile name can affect your reach, as users and brands might be aware of your pre-existing account and could be redirected to Error 404 pages.
Use your bio wisely, you have limited characters to provide details of your niche, your website link, contact details, and location. Followers and brands want to be able to find and contact you quickly and easily.
Utilise tools such as linktr.ee and linkin.bio to promote your other social channels, and include links to your blog, or personal causes. This is also one of the best places to include Awin affiliate links to your favourite brands. Followers are inspired by your content and are interested in your recommendations
Highlight saves encourage users to come back to your account, re-engage with your content and purchase through your Awin links.
Connect with brands
Another way to elevate your social media profile is to reach out to brands and to let them know you are interested in their products. You can connect with brands easily by signing up with an affiliate programme. On Awin, you can join brand programmes, keep up to date with new brand offers, access personalised codes, and generate affiliate links to input via your bio links or stickers.
Promoting brands organically is a great way to establish a natural brand affinity, and for brands to discover you for collaborations via Awin and/or social listening tools. Brands are always looking to partner with influencers that naturally align and tag their products. Keep an eye out for partnerships that support your content and audience interests, to maintain engagement and credibility.
Awin has connections to brands from all sectors, from fashion, health and beauty, house and garden to telecoms, electricals, and finance. The platform allows you to contact all brands, form partnerships, and support ongoing campaigns. By adding links to your bio or stickers, brands can identify you on the Awin platform and develop a partnership.
If reaching out to brands, it is important to be responsive and correspond in a timely manner. Brands can often be working with tight deadlines, or require content for approval, which means they need regular communication and transparency from creators. Ease of communication is key to successful brand partnerships and long-term collaborations.
Remember to disclose sponsored partnerships and follow ASA guidelines. Non-compliance will affect your brand relationships and overall reach and engagement. Awin’s exclusive disclosure solution, Awin AdMission allows influencers to customise disclosure text and it can be universally applied to all featured tracking domains.
Cultivate a community
Your followers are more than numbers, they are people. Engage with them and encourage conversations. Think about your captions and ask questions. Get to know your audience. Calls-to-action such as Q&As and polls are a fantastic way to start conversations and can produce great insights for brand partnerships.
Awin’s Link Builder enables you to convert any URL into an affiliate link, which means you can direct your followers to recommended products or competitions via your bio, stickers, or swipe-up links. When a follower clicks on your link to purchase an item, you will be accredited with influencing the sale and will earn a percentage of the revenue.
Video content is a great way to establish a follower affinity, particularly via live streaming. Instagram Stories and Facebook Lives are hugely popular among followers, as they can get a glimpse into your reality, and can relate and engage in a conversation with you.
In addition, your community extends beyond your follower base. Reach out and connect with like-minded influencers and creators, comment on their posts and reshare their content. It is important to support your community and appreciate those who are promoting you.
Diversify your content
With quality always front of mind, diversification is a great way to maintain audience engagement and to broaden your community.
Switching up your Instagram feed with Reels or Guides can make a great change from static feed posts and can provide you with data insights regarding what your audiences like to see and interact with. The exponential growth of TikTok is a strong indicator of how short-form video is vastly consumed by online users. Keep an eye on trending hashtags and see if you can produce topical and timely content.
Social media algorithms are always changing and can be hard to predict. When it comes to new features or social platform updates, e.g. Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts it is always worth embracing the change. Social media platforms want to promote content that utilises and showcases the new update, and this will affect your reach and engagement.
It is also important to produce a mix of sponsored and organic content. Audiences will tire from seeing a barrage of sponsored-only content and want to establish an affinity with you, not just a brand.
Optimising your social media account is all about consistency: nurture your audience, be true to yourself and keep communication lines open, Do not shy away from new formats, embrace all updates and connect with brands and your followers.
For more information on how to optimise your influencer profile with Awin and tips on getting the most out of brand partnerships, reach out to us, or come and visit our stand at the Influencer Marketing Show on Thursday, 21st October.
