Are You Ready for the Nanoinfluencers?
Now get ready for the nanoinfluencers.
That is the term (“nanos” for short) used by companies to describe people who have as few as 1,000 followers and are willing to advertise products on social media.
Ms. Baker, a leasing manager in Alexandria, Va., said she had stumbled into the hobby-slash-gig after being scouted by Obviously, which describes itself as “a full-service influencer marketing agency.”
To Mae Karwowski, the chief executive of Obviously, nanoinfluencers are a largely untapped and inexpensive opportunity.
But as influencers — like the 20-year-old fashion model Luka Sabbat, with his 1.4 million Instagram followers — have grown in popularity, they have started charging more. And with their success and online fame, they may be losing the homespun quality that once distinguished them from the crowd of celebrity endorsers.
Prices have climbed even for the midlevel group known as microinfluencers. Taylor Camp, for example, who has almost 37,000 Instagram followers on an account called TheTieGuy, said in an interview that he had recently earned $500 for two Instagram posts for a men’s shaving company.
Kelsey Rosenberg, a 26-year-old in Columbus, Ohio, with 1,900 Instagram followers, saw an opportunity when influencer marketing took off. She contacted companies, including bars and restaurants in her area, and now regularly incorporates advertising into her Instagram feed.
“It’s like one of your friends telling you a new skin care product is amazing, but instead of me telling my friends at happy hour, it’s me telling them on Instagram,” she said.
There are strings attached, though.
“You have to keep it on your feed for a certain amount of weeks,” Ms. Rosenberg said, “and they want you to say certain keywords, like something is ‘cruelty free’ or something ‘smells good,’ or whatever their marketing says. They want you to mimic that.”
Ms. Gee admitted to having mixed feelings.
“I feel kind of like an infomercial, and I’m generally kind of uncomfortable pushing things on people,” she said. “But I’ve seen a return on that, albeit small.”