'Micro-influencers' opening doors to local advertising on social media

Since the advent of social media, major brands and advertisers have sought out 'celebrity' influencers as a marketing channel for their products and services. Now, micro influencers are gaining the attention of local businesses seeking to connect with their customers in a similar fashion.

Micro influencers with local engagement

The term 'micro influencer' generally refers to an individual that has a relatively small audience but one that is highly engaged on social media and whose sphere of influence centers on a particular market niche or within a specific demographic. These could be individuals who are active in their communities, schools, churches, civic groups, etc., and virtually every small-business owner is now taking notice of them for their marketing value.

One of the benefits of marketing with micro-influencers is that - without the added cost of agencies and middlemen, their CPM rates will be much lower, and reaching audiences of greater size is simply a matter of aggregating micro influencers together into groups. The bottom line for businesses making the effort is a greater ROI when using micro influencers for social media campaigns.

But the question of finding and connecting with individual micro influencers still remains. The industry is very young and there are few protocols in place to expedite the process. Although there are plenty of social-influencer platforms on the market, most of them simply provide influencer statistics and an email address that often fails to generate a timely response to a marketer's inquiry. And all the benefits provided by third-party agencies only add back the costs that are saved by direct contact and simple contract negotiations.

Now, there are new platforms moving into this space that address these shortcomings and streamline the onboarding process. One such platform is MashDrop.com, a new influencer-advertising application that connects micro influencers to digital marketers with virtually instant posting. MashDrop offers businesses large and small a full suite of campaign-creation tools, pricing options, and engagement analytics to make it a one-stop shop for finding and hiring micro influencers that are just right for their market.