The word is still largely restricted to America, but it is now creeping into British business awareness too: the microinfluencer. And for some it is becoming a major aid to selling.
We have become used to celebrities who have mega followings on blogs and Facebook. People whose word can cause brands to collapse overnight and crazes to rise up and become commonplace within days.
Microinfluencers however work on a much smaller, but nonetheless effective, scale. Although their followers are smaller in number, those who do follow them, do so not because of their celebrity status, but because they are generally interested in what is written.
To be clear, although these people don’t write overt adverts, the emails and blogs they write are still very effective commercial avenues.
What the microblogger offers is tips, advice and insights which lead to sales. To achieve this they write about issues that spread out from their prime area of interest, and they write in an engaging way.
In fact one might actually say that microinfluencers have to write in an engaging, non-sales orientated way, because they have no fame to fall back on. Their readership is only there because of what they write.
But of course they do it, as ever, in order to sell things. And they achieve this by coming over in their writings as interesting, reasonable people with good ideas.
One might think at this point of the shop salesperson in a small store, or perhaps the bar-staff in a pub. Such people have an overt task – to make a sale. They can do that by being efficient, and they can do it by having a positive and interesting approach to selling that makes it seem that they are genuinely trying to be helpful and friendly.
The microinfluencer is in short the online equivalent of the helpful assistant in a shop, working on the basis that the more personal and friendly the selling appears, the more sales one gets.
The fact is that most websites are like shops with the goods on display and the person behind the till taking the money but without any helpful friendly shop assistant who can guide, advise and assure you that this product you are pondering is exactly what you need.
To take an example of how this works, imagine that you sell maths books to teachers. And now imagine you also write a weekly online column that goes out as an email or appears on your website, which offers thoughts and insights into teaching specific maths topics to students of different abilities.
Then the chances are that if a teacher who reads your weekly column is looking for a way to teach a specific topic, or perhaps looking for a new set of books that reflects the new curriculum, she or he will remember your column and through that remember the book you are promoting.
What’s more, you can put your regular commentaries on-line so that others who are searching might find what you have written when doing a specific search.
By now you may be asking, why don’t more people do it?
In fact, many people are doing it with their own regular news style emails to potential customers – which you may well never see. But it can still seem a daunting task to get going, and to keep going.
It is to help overcome this that we offer a service to some of our customers in which we help them get going with such a weekly newsletter or blog, then continue by offering ideas for topics, while helping the company by writing the occasional piece.
If you would like to see a Microinfluencer piece, well, I’d say you’ve just read one. If you would like help in setting such a regular piece up either as a blog or as an email you send out to past, present and potential customers, do get in touch, and we’ll make a few suggestions and explore ideas with you, all without charge.
And if you would like to see a blog in action try here. Or, as one final option, if you would like to see a blog with a huge readership, and which has nothing to do with selling to schools – just to see the possibilities, here’s one.
Please do call 01604 880 927, or email Stephen@schools.co.uk
