What are "Nano-Influencers" and why you should care

Nano-influencers — are Instagram users who have between 1,000 and 5,000 followers.

Their accounts are neither glamorous nor polished, photos are neither posed nor retouched with dozens of filters. They give the feeling of being a “guy next door.”

Leading brands have learned the value of this new trend and have already included nano-influencers into their marketing strategy. Among them are Remington, Always, and Gillette Venus.

1000 followers are the starting point for most brands to start a collaboration with an influencer. However, we’ve noticed that in small countries like Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia brands and agencies may start to collaborate with an influencer who has as few as 600 followers.

There are plenty of benefits that you can get from working with this group of creators. Let’s focus on the top six.

Nano-influencers have stronger connections with their audience. They have established a good dialogue with them and one-on-one communication, which is much more intimate and engaging.

Nano-influencers are more likely to answer almost every comment, moreover, they don’t just give a catchphrase but provide a quite meaningful answer or ask a question in return to understand their followers better. They really talk to their audience using comments on their posts, they know the most loyal followers and love to interact with them.

According to the recent State of Influencer Marketing 2019 by HypeAuditor, the engagement rate of nano-influencers is twice as high as that of other groups of influencers.

Engagement rate has a huge impact on reach, the higher the ER the more an influencer’s followers will see a sponsored post. That means that they have higher reachability, thus the cost per impression and engagement would be much lower.

A nano-influencer is almost considered a friend by most of their followers. A recent study revealed, that, if a decision requires a rather small investment of time, money, or effort (retail, restaurants, travel services, etc.), we tend to trust our friends more.

These creators are more careful about choosing a product or service for advertisement because they don’t want to disappoint and lose the audience’s trust. This gives a huge advantage — your product will get an endorsement from an audience because of an established trust towards the influencer with whom you have decided to collaborate.

Most nano-influencers tend to make their content more niche and category-specific. This is why the use of nano-influencers allows brands to reach different segments and better position their products.

You can make your advertisements more unique and relevant to each of these segments by targeting the right creators along with preparing original content.

Besides, it’s a good way to test your product or services in a new niche, as the audience reacts and nano-influencer can also predict potential feedback. Possibly there is a Blue Ocean out there where you can open up a new market space and create new demand.

Vivi is adept at zero waste living and in her blog, she shares insights on how to reduce the amount of waste in our lives. This topic is very niche and narrow, you probably don’t find a lot of influencers who work on this theme, especially big influencers, with hundreds of thousands of followers.

If you are an eco-friendly brand and your values are the same as Vivi’s, then she is a perfect match for you.

Brands tend to underestimate the power of an influencer with a small audience. For you, this strategy could be a real edge over your competition.

Nano-influencers occupy an uncontested space at the moment. In most cases, you won’t find any ads from your competition on a nano-influencer’s Instagram account. Probably, your sponsored post will be the first advertisement on their account.

Keep in mind, that these influencers need more control and help from your side, they are newbies in advertising, so they need your advice. Give them a detailed brief, but do not fetter them with strict requirements regarding their way of communicating with their audience. The followers will immediately notice that their posts are false and unnatural.

On the other hand, it’s a chance for you to grow a perfect army of ambassadors for your brand. Nano-influencers are growing faster than other groups of creators. In a few months, they can become your loyal micro-influencers, and some of them macro-influencers within a few years.

They don’t have many requests from brands and are happy to talk about you in exchange for your product or service. According to SocialPubli, only 44% of small influencers prefer monetary compensations.

This data is confirmed by our own quick research. Most of the #ad posts that we find on nano-influencer’s accounts were marked as gifted collaboration.

There is one more financial benefit, you can use content generated by nano-influencers on your own social media or website. Make sure to include this in the contract.

Nano-influencers are the best choice for startups and small businesses or for those who want to scale their presence on the market with a limited budget.