Navigating the World of Influencer Platforms: A Comprehensive Guide

The influencer marketing market has been steadily growing in recent years, reaching $21 billion in 2023. Modern businesses are willing to invest and work with influencers to expand their audience reach and drive sales.

If your small business is looking to start an influencer marketing campaign, you must understand the world of influencer platforms. This short guide outlines the different platforms and marketing solutions to help you create influencer marketing campaigns.

Key Takeaways

• Influencer marketing is an advertising tactic that relies on endorsements and product mentions from popular content creators.
• Modern brands can partner with mega-, macro-, micro-, or nano-influencers, depending on their budget and audience size.
• Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube are some of the most popular social media channels for relevant influencers today.
• Marketers can use influencer marketing platforms like Archive and Upfluence to improve their advertising efforts.

Influencer Marketing: What Modern Marketers Need To Know

Influencer marketing is an advertising tactic that involves partnering with an online influencer or content creator to promote products or services. 

This strategy is becoming increasingly effective due to the growing number of social media users. According to consultancy firm Kepios, roughly 4.88 billion people use social media as of 2023.

Another crucial contributor to the strategy’s growing popularity is its similarity to celebrity endorsements. The only difference is that influencers, unlike traditional celebrities, can be anywhere and anyone. 

What makes these individuals influential is their large followings on different social media platforms. An influencer can be a popular gamer on Twitch, a fashion photographer on Instagram, or a cybersecurity blogger with a massive Twitter following.

Influencer marketing is a reminder that there are influential people within any industry. The challenge for modern brands is finding the most relevant ones. These people can have varying follower counts, but they all have a reputation for being trusted experts in their field. Their followers go to them when they have industry-relevant questions and are regular consumers of the content they create.

Influencers make engaging social media posts on topics unique to their field. They upload high-quality pictures, create exciting and entertaining videos, and start the most informative discussions online.

Different types of influencers

There are four types of influencers brands can work with today: mega-, macro-, micro-, and nano-influencers.

• Mega-influencers

Mega influencers are content creators with a vast number of followers on social media. Usually, they have over one million followers on at least one platform. Included in this category are celebrities who gained their fame offline, such as movie stars, musicians, athletes, and reality television stars. 

However, some mega-influencers have built their massive followings solely through their online activities. An excellent example is popular gamers on YouTube and Twitch.

Because of their popularity, mega-influencers work with major brands that can afford their rates. Their services can be pricey, and they can be selective about the brands they promote. Moreover, many will have agents to negotiate marketing deals on their behalf.

• Macro-influencers

These content creators have followers between 500,000 and 1 million on a social media platform. They are a step down from mega-influencers and are also more accessible for brands. 

This group comprises two types of people: less famous celebrities and online experts. The latter type is more beneficial for brands aiming to establish brand credibility.

Macro-influencers have a high profile and can be effective at raising awareness. Moreover, brands will have more options if they work with macro-influencers than mega-influencers.

• Micro-influencers

Micro-influencers are content creators famous for their knowledge in a specific niche. They have a sizable social media following amongst fans of their niche. 

Remember that the number of followers is not the only indicator of a content creator’s influence level. Another crucial factor is their relationship and interaction with their fans. Micro-influencers usually have engaged followers interested in what they have to say.

They have a follower range between 10,000 and 50,000 on a single social media platform. They result from the fragmentation of internet media into countless niche topics. Even if someone is into something relatively obscure, they can easily find an online community devoted to it. Micro-influencers flourish and establish themselves as influencers in these niche groups.

• Nano-influencers

These content creators have less than a thousand followers and tend to be experts in a highly specialized or obscure field. They may have a low follower count, but their fans are active and interested, eagerly engaging with them and valuing their opinions.

Working with nano-influencers can be an effective marketing strategy for firms that manufacture highly specialized and niche services and products. It’s an affordable way to introduce your brand to a select people. In most niches, marketing teams partner with several nano-influencers to boost brand awareness.

Why is influencer marketing important?

Brands are ready to spend a significant portion of their marketing budget to get influencers to promote their products and services. In 2022, the average minimum price per post of mega-influencers on Instagram was $1,200.

The main contributor to the growing popularity of influencer marketing is its undeniable benefits to modern brands. Read on to learn how this strategy can help your business meet its advertising goals.

• Increases brand awareness

Because of their massive reach, influencers can help boost brand exposure and awareness. When a content creator endorses your product and brand, their followers will notice.

Moreover, recommendations can look authentic if the promotion comes from a trusted influencer. Partnering with a content creator also helps cut through the noise and attract new followers to your brand. It boosts your brand's visibility and starts meaningful online conversations about your business.

• Supports precise targeting

Determining and targeting the right audience is crucial to every marketing strategy. However, this process requires a deep understanding of your prospects and can be time-consuming.

If you choose to work with influencers, you can bypass this step, as influencers have already completed the work for you. You only have to ensure the content creator aligns with your niche, values, and brand.

For example, you are promoting a first-person shooter (FPS) mobile game. You can work with FPS gamers who can introduce their followers to the new product. If you sell chic apparel for millennials, you can partner with fashion bloggers and models. 

This strategy gives you access to the right audience likely to take an interest in what you are trying to sell.

• Boosts brand credibility and trust

The most significant power of popular online content creators lies in the trust they gain from their followers. The element of trust allows them to develop loyal fan communities and quickly spark interest in a specific product.

When an influencer talks about their honest feedback about your offerings, it resonates as a genuine testimonial. This advantage reinforces your credibility and strengthens your reputation.

This is why influencer advertising can be an effective tool to win the trust of your target audience. This tactic can be the first step in building an army of loyal advocates for your brand. It boosts brand awareness and ultimately drives sales.

• Enhances content marketing

Influencers thrive by creating engaging and exciting content for their followers. Working with them gives a new perspective on elevating your brand’s content strategy. It injects a breath of fresh air and a much-needed break from the self-promotional content your audience gets.

Moreover, promotional content from influencers has a good chance of striking the right chord with your target audience. This benefit means they will likely share the content with friends or family. 

This strategy increases the visibility of your content, boosts engagement rate, and introduces your brand to prospects that would have remained untapped.

Additionally, working with influencers gives your brand access to valuable user-generated content (UGC). You can curate and share the best UGC from this new audience to change how your followers see your social media profiles.

UGCs can also serve as testimonials from customers. They help win the trust of your audience and push them to try your products.

Examples of Influencer Platforms

Today, more consumers are making purchases through social commerce. This trend underscores why marketers must pay attention to the right marketing platform. 

It is also helpful to align social media advertising efforts with influencer marketing strategies. Marketers need to consider the right influencer platform to invest in and find the right partner who can give them the exposure they need. This section outlines the most popular influencer platforms brands must consider.

Instagram

Instagram, the image-sharing social media site, has become one of the most popular platforms for digital advertising in the last few years.

Today, almost everyone has an Instagram account. Entrepreneurs are also creating accounts for their businesses to boost their online presence. By creating IG profiles, these brands are not limited to local marketing. They can expand their reach to promote their products to consumers on the other side of the world.

Everyone and every business has a place on this platform, making it an effective marketing tool. It is also especially advantageous for small-scale companies as they can work with micro-influencers on the platform.

Instagram influencers and brands can use the platform to upload the following content:

• Instagram stories
• Instagram reels
• Instagram videos
• Instagram posts
• IGTV

TikTok

This video-sharing site is an excellent marketing channel for brands, especially through collaborations with TikTok influencers. The platform is so effective that travel agencies, fashion brands, and restaurants use it to find their target audience with the help of top influencers.

With roughly 755 million users in 2022, TikTok is now one of the most popular and relevant social media networks, making it an appealing platform for marketers. Advertisers work with content creators to make short-form videos that promote their brand. 

This strategy allows businesses to use the deep marketing power of brand trust and social proof to increase brand awareness. Entrepreneurs and influencers can upload the following content on the platform:

• In-feed TikTok ads
• Branded effects
• TikTok videos
• TopView ads
• Brand takeover ads

YouTube

Generating three billion searches per month, YouTube is now one of the biggest and most popular search engines in the world. The high search volume in this video-sharing platform makes it one of the best social media sites for influencer marketing campaigns.

Regardless of industry, YouTube can be the perfect source of prospects for brands. Some even consider the site the best platform for influencer advertising, and this view holds merit for several reasons.

YouTube allows users to upload and watch long-form videos, giving brands the time they need to showcase their products and functionalities. It also lets them provide more detailed information while encouraging high engagement through various metrics such as views, comments, likes, and shares.

YouTubers and brands can upload the following types of content on the website:

• YouTube videos
• YouTube lives
• Community posts
• YouTube shorts

Factors To Consider When Choosing an Influencer Platform for Your Brand

Some marketers may find it challenging to choose which influencer platform is best for their brand. This section will outline the crucial factors to consider when selecting an influencer platform.

Goals

Defining your unique advertising goals is the first step in finding the right influencer. Ask yourself what goals or objectives you want to meet for your influencer marketing strategy. 

Common goals include driving new traffic to your website, growing your social media following, or increasing brand awareness. You can also have more specific objectives, such as getting younger social media users to notice your brand.

Once you’ve identified your specific goals, you can focus on the channels that can help you achieve them.

For example, you want the attention of younger audience demographics for your clothing brand. You can spend time looking for influencers on TikTok because most users of the platform are between the ages of 18 and 24.

Platform features

After knowing your objectives, you will probably have two to three social media platforms in mind. If you still want to narrow down the list, you should look at each platform's features. Each site is different, so you must choose one with all the features you need.

For example, you want to use the images of a model wearing the clothes you sell. You can upload pictures on Instagram, where you can share a series of photos in a single post. If you have a video of the model, you can upload it on YouTube.

If you’re promoting a new video game, you can showcase a portion of the game through a live playthrough on YouTube or Twitch. Facebook also has a live feature, but the gaming community is more active on the former platforms.

Active influencers

Now that you have chosen the platform with the features you need, you can start evaluating the active influencers on the site.

For example, to boost brand awareness and site traffic, you can work with someone with the most significant followers on the platform you like.

Meanwhile, if you want to increase sales, work with influencers with high engagement levels. Tap a content creator who can share coupon codes and discounts to encourage more people to buy. 

Budget

Influencer marketing can be pricey, so smaller brands work with smaller content creators with more affordable sponsorship fees. However, if done correctly, this strategy can be less expensive than traditional marketing methods. If you have the budget, try working with an influencer who can promote your product.

Once you have a list of potential influencers to work with, you should compare their rates and go with the one that can give you the most value for your money.

Best Influencer Marketing Platforms for Modern Brands

Influencer marketing can be challenging if you are not sure where to start. You must manage countless influencer content, handle contracts, and seamlessly communicate with your partners. 

Fortunately, there are several influencer marketing solutions you can use to make influencer outreach less complicated. Read on and discover influencer management tools you can incorporate into your influencer advertising campaigns.

Archive

Archive is an influencer marketing platform designed to help brands save time by curating UGCs from Instagram and TikTok. This solution aims to help brands improve their social media campaigns and increase sales.

This product’s automatic curation, organized storage, and valuable analytics help manage content efficiently. It gives brands an edge because it helps them save hours working and finding UGC for advertisements.

• Pricing information:

• Free version
• Starter: $99 per month
• Pro: $299 per month
• Advanced: $599 per month

Upfluence

Upfluence helps brands create valuable partnerships through affiliate marketing programs and creator management. This solution enhances creator communications through artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools, including auto-generated emails. These features are designed to provide a seamless and efficient content creation experience.

The influencer marketplace is tailored for direct-to-consumer (D2C) and e-commerce brands and has powerful integrations with WooCommerce, Shopify, Klaviyo, and Zapier. These integrations help brands find influencers within their network of subscribers, customers, and followers. 

• Pricing information:

• Prices for Growth, Scale, and Enterprise versions are available upon request

Klear

Klear is an influencer marketing tool that connects brands to influencers with the appropriate audience. This platform gives brands access to more than 30 million influencers worldwide.

The influencer database empowers users to confidently make more informed, data-driven decisions about their influencer advertising strategy. It provides clients with rich influencer profiles, insights, and data that support all stages of the influencer campaign.

• Pricing information:

• Prices for Professional, eCommerce, and Enterprise versions are available upon request

Traackr

Traackr offers a global influencer dataset and expert advice to help brands make more informed marketing decisions. This solution aims to help companies build awareness and drive sales.

The influencer marketing software serves as a system of record for data-driven influencer advertising, offering clients the tools and data they need for successful influencer marketing campaigns. The solution enables advertisers to streamline campaigns and invest time and effort in the right strategies.

• Pricing information:

• Prices are available upon request

NeoReach

NeoReach manages the entire negotiating and contracting process for brands and influencers. The influencer network handles pricing strategy, compliance, legal contracts, and everything in between.

The influencer marketing agency provides real-time enterprise-grade analytics, making it easy for users to create influencer relationships and develop effective campaigns. The end-to-end influencer marketing platform supports creator discovery, campaign management, creator transactions, analytics and reporting, and payments. 

The solution’s application programming interface (API) has innovative features, including sponsorship pricing data, monitoring fast-growing influencers, competitor spend analysis, audience matching, influencer relationship management, and fraud detection.

• Pricing information:

• Prices are available upon request

Pro-Tip: Influencer marketing can bring unparalleled value to your brand. However, marketers must first conduct a thorough search to find the right influencer. An influencer must spread the word about a brand in a way that aligns with the company’s values and goals.

Level Up Your Social Media Ad Campaigns With Archive

Influencer marketing is a crucial element of social media advertising that can give unparalleled value to modern brands. If you find the right influencer, they can help improve brand awareness, trust, and credibility.

You can also try an influencer marketing platform to streamline influencer discovery and manage content, maximizing the impact of your campaigns. These solutions can automate workflows and provide valuable insights so you can easily track the performance of your influencer marketing efforts.

If you want to level up your social media marketing strategy, check out Archive today. We can curate all relevant UGC on Instagram and TikTok, so your marketing team can focus on other aspects of your advertising campaigns.

Knowing which influencer platforms to focus on can help marketers save time and money. Check out Archive and see how our solution can elevate your social media campaigns.

FAQs on Influencer Platforms

What platforms do most influencers use?

Today, most influencers use Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. Some also use Twitter and LinkedIn for increased exposure and engagement.

How do influencers improve brand awareness?

Influencers help brands by introducing new audiences and helping establish trust and credibility. They also help boost social media following, which is crucial for building brand awareness.

How do influencers get popular?

Influencers regularly update their followers about specific topics on their preferred social media sites. Their commitment generates large followings of engaged people who pay attention to their takes and views. 

Brands work with social media influencers because they can spark trends and encourage followers to try services and buy products.

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