Influencer marketing involves getting a person with a decent following online to sway their audiences to purchase your goods and services. Over the last few years, influencer marketing has grown rapidly, with many businesses relying more on influencers to increase their customer base.

Recently, I became more interested in influencer marketing and discovered that there are many types – you have celebrities, you have experts whose opinions command authority, and then you have regular people, micro-influencers, who are just trying to influence their peers. (There are many more sub-categories, but I think these three main ones cover most of them.)

Influencers might use one or a combination of different methods to promote a product. They might do product reviews and recommendations online, they might write sponsored content (e.g. blog posts), they might make sponsored YouTube or Instagram videos. The list is really endless, and it depends on the creativity of both the influencer and the brand.

And then of course, you have influencers working in different sectors – there are lifestyle influencers, writing influencers, health and beauty influencers, fashion influencers, fitness influencers, travel influencers, etc. (These sectors sometimes overlap as well!)

This just goes to show how broad influencer marketing is. And the good thing is that pretty much anyone can join. You don’t need to have tens of thousands of followers. As long as you have a decent following on your blog, Facebook/Twitter account, YouTube channel and the like, you can be an influencer.

In fact, micro-influencers have the potential to really drive impact. They might not have as many followers as celebrities, but they are sometimes more likely to influence their small audiences to make certain purchasing decisions. Think about it, who would you trust more to give an honest review of a product – a celebrity whom you barely know, or a regular person you follow on social media, whom you’ve probably have some personal experiences with? My guess will be the latter.

This is related to a point noted by Kayla Kibbe, which is that nowadays people prefer real and authentic content to highly stylised and glamorous content. This means that you are more likely to enjoy and be influenced by a regular person’s relatable content than a celebrity’s glamorous content.

So if you are a brand or small business looking for a influencer to promote your goods and services, connecting with a micro-influencer might be the most effective way to do this (and as a bonus, micro-influencers are also usually more cost-effective). In the same way, if you have a decent following online and you think you can influence your audiences to make certain purchasing decisions based on your recommendations, then you should definitely consider becoming an influencer by using a service like Intellifluence.

Have you ever had any experience with influencer marketing? Are you thinking about becoming an influencer? Let me know in the comment section!

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