We often associate the term digital influencer with celebrities and people with millions of followers. But, have you ever heard of nano-influencers?

As the number of content creators grows, nano-influencers have become increasingly important for digital marketing strategies, especially for the local promotion of a particular business or product.

Keep reading to learn more about nano-influencers and how they can help increase the reach of your campaigns.

What is a nano-influencer?

Nano-influencers are content creators on social media, especially Instagram, who have between 1,000 and 10,000 followers. They are usually focused on a specific audience and a well-segmented topic.

To better understand the different categories of influencers, take a look at the 5 categories into which they are divided based on number of followers:

• Mega-influencer: over 1 million followers
• Macro-influencer: between 500k and 1 million followers
• Intermediate Influencer: 100k to 500k followers
• Micro-influencer: between 10k and 100k followers
• Nano-influencer: between 1k and 10k followers

Nano-influencers might occupy the bottom category, but they are a strong marketing trend and have been the preferred option for many brands and companies that wish to reach more people and ensure audience engagement.

Why are nano-influencers important for marketing?

Influencers with a very high number of followers might be very attractive, after all, who wouldn’t like to advertise their brand to millions of people?

However, they’re usually less accessible and charge more. In addition, it’s common for them to be involved in several advertising campaigns with different companies.

Due to their very high reach, they’re usually not as close to the brands and campaigns they promote on social media. They also cannot keep close contact with their followers.

This can be a negative point for users, who often doubt the veracity of recommendations and prefer to look for something closer and realer to make sure that the product and/or service is truly worthwhile.

In addition, macro-influencers usually have a lifestyle that doesn’t resemble that of most of their followers. 

People might enjoy the posts and think everything they post is amazing, but do they really see themselves as consumers of what these macro-influencers promote?

What are the advantages of nano-influencers?

Working with nano-influencers as part of a digital marketing strategy can be quite advantageous for creating brand awareness.

Despite having a smaller audience, they usually have a lot of engagement, since their followers usually strongly identify with their content.

Since they’re also not as sought after for advertising campaigns, their followers trust that their work is more authentic, spontaneous, and humanized. 

This doesn’t mean that they reject their recommendations, but rather that they know that they won’t be bombarded by #hashtags all the time and that whenever a recommendation is made, it will be something that the digital influencer really likes.

Another advantage is response time. Influencers with millions of followers don’t have time to respond to every message and comment. 

Nano-influencers, on the other hand, usually create closer relationships with their followers, replying faster and in a more personalized manner.

Besides greater engagement and interactivity, working with nano-influencers also has the following benefits:

• Cheaper investment: nano-influencers usually sign partnerships for lower amounts, since they have a smaller audience and often don’t depend exclusively on this kind of partnership for their livelihood;
• Higher ROI: by offering services at more affordable prices, nano-influencers provide a higher ROI for companies;
• Less complexity in defining the strategy: negotiating with digital influencers who have millions of followers can be complicated, but with nano-influencers, negotiation is usually done directly with the influencer and can be developed in a more flexible manner without a lot of bureaucracy;
• High potential for local strategies: if you need to create a regional strategy, nano-influencers from the city and/or region can become excellent partners to advertise your business to an audience with a high potential for interest and engagement in the campaign.

Working with nano-influencers

When it comes to choosing and hiring nano-influencers, it’s important that you pay attention to a few points in order to find the right people to promote content related to your brand.

Despite being a more flexible partnership, there are still certain steps that cannot be skipped. 

You need to send a very comprehensive briefing to nano-influencers so that they understand the goals of the campaign and your brand. 

In addition, all the details of the contract need to be well explained before starting the partnership, so that both sides know exactly what their rights and duties are.

Considerations when hiring a nano-influencer

The first thing you should look at are the demographics of the nano-influencer’s followers. It’s essential that they are the target audience you intend to reach.

You also need to analyze the influencer’s behavior and posts. Is what that person posts in line with your brand’s values?

Every detail matters when it comes to choosing your partnerships! The language style the nano-influencer uses on social media, the type of content they post, the way followers engage with the profile, etc.

Remember that by hiring influencers to promote your brand, their image will be associated with your product and/or service. 

If you sell organic cosmetics, for example, you’ll have much better results if you choose nano-influencers who address the importance of natural and sustainable beauty. 

You can also think of different formats to take advantage of the partnership besides social media posts, such as participation in events, offline campaigns, and collabs.

Finding a nano-influencer

Nano-influencers are everywhere, and you probably already follow some.

Search the most famous hashtags in your segment to find suitable people for your strategy! 

Then, check if their profiles are really what you’re looking for. Analyze their posts, the look and feel of their profile, and their engagement with their followers.

To learn more about the people behind those profiles, check the information in their bio, where, in addition to this info, you can find links to the nano-influencer’s other work or communication channels.

Nano-influencers often add their contact information in their profile to attract brands and show that they are available for partnerships. 

If not, you can contact them by DMing them to ask for further information and to show interest.

Invest in influencer marketing!

If you always thought that partnerships with digital influencers were only for very famous brands, which are extremely influential in the market, and have a lot of money to invest, this post showed you that isn’t really true!

Nano-influencers have a lot of potential to influence their followers because of their humanized posts and their more realistic exposure on social media.

The strategy of investing in influencers is a great way of reaching more people! After all, who doesn’t like to hear opinions from reliable people about a product/service before making a purchase?

To learn more about the importance of investing in this strategy, read our post on influencer marketing and learn how to apply it!