An influencers follower count can be a hot topic for authors, publishers and digital marketers. In this article, we’ll shed some light on follower counts and debunk the myth that small accounts aren’t worth the investment.

The bigger the better?

As an author or publisher, it’s understandable that you want as many people as possible to see your book. This might lead you to think that big name influencers or content creators with a strong social presence are the answer. Whilst it’s great if you can secure collaborations with major influencers for your title, you could be missing out on greater wins if you put all of your budget behind this one marketing strategy.

At Bookinfluencers.com, we celebrate all bookish content creators – big and small. When booking in a campaign, you can specify your desired follower count (nano, micro, midi and macro). 

Follower counts explained

• Nano (<1k)
• Micro (1k-5k)
• Midi (5k-50k)
• Macro (50k-100k)
• Mega (100k >)

It’s important for us to offer our clients this flexibility, however, we want to challenge the assumption that it doesn’t pay off to work with smaller accounts on bookish promotions.

For example, what if we were to tell you that smaller influencers often produce much more engaging content?

What does the data tell us?

Our sister agency, Tandem Collective, focuses on collective follower count because their data has repeatedly demonstrated that the higher the individual follower count, the lower the engagement rate on a campaign. They have collated data over the past four years that demonstrates the power of peer-to-peer marketing versus macro-influencer marketing.

Tandem consciously chooses to champion these small heroes, as their highest performing creators tend to be those who have a lower follower count. The reason for this is that a lot of creators with slightly smaller accounts prioritise organic growth over racking up a higher follower count, which means that their followers truly engage with the content, commenting and liking much more often, and are more likely to trust the reviews, Stories, and other content posted. 

So what’s better? Spending all of your budget on one mega influencer, or engaging 20-50 content creators with different follower counts, who will produce more content, with a higher engagement?

TikTok Spark Ads

Sometimes, we just want our book to be seen by as many people as possible. With TikTok’s Spark Ads feature, this doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. With permission from the creator, TikTok Ads enable us to put media budget behind any piece of content, in order to generate views, engagements or click-throughs to other websites, such as book retailers. A media-budget of £100 can achieve thousands of views, for example. We can target a certain audience by location, age-group, interest and behaviour, to make sure the content is reaching the relevant people. The advantage of this method is that creator size no longer matters, as any video can be boosted in order to achieve the desired number of views and engagements. If you’re interested in learning more about this feature, get in touch, or you can find an overview of our SparkAds campaign bolt-ons here.

ChallyPop – Quality over Quantity

Another emerging platform is ChallyPop – a competition platform where everyone has the potential to be a paid Instagram, TikTok or YouTube creator, regardless of follower count. ChallyPop prioritises quality and creativity of content over quantity of followers, offering a range of packages for author and publishing clients. Creators enter competitions by uploading content in response to a given challenge. A panel of judges then votes on the top 10-20 pieces of content, with each winner receiving a cash prize.

You’ll find the following statement on their website: “Working with macro-creators has become unrealistic for many marketers. ChallyPop is our answer to creator fatigue, consumer cynicism, shrinking budgets and lower return-on-investment.” 

So what’s the verdict?

The good news is that there are now a range of tools and platforms to meet a variety of needs and budgets. Whilst we firmly believe that macro-creators have their place in the marketing industry, we recommend a multi-faceted approach that incorporates both peer-to-peer activity and macro-influencers is the way to go!

In short, give small bookish creators a chance, as they could help you to achieve a bigger impact than you expected!