What’s the best-size influencer to work with?

Like, should you work with small, “niche” influencers, or big (and probably expensive) superstars?

Wies, Bleier, & Edeling did a nice analysis of Instagram campaigns to try and figure it out. It was a meaty study:

🍊 802 campaigns across categories including beauty, fashion, & jewelry.

🍊 1,730 influencers, ranging from 3,400 followers to 6,450,000.

🍊 6,400 posts and 6,200 stories. 

🍊 775MM impressions, 49MM likes, and  1.4MM comments.

First, controlling for lots of other factors, engagement peaks around 1MM followers. It’s an “inverted U-shaped curve.”

Second, cost per like is lowest at 50K–750K followers. (1MM is still pretty low.) Is cost per like the best metric for cost? Plenty of debate, but it’s what they went with.

Caveats galore, of course :-).  Are these the best metrics? Doesn’t reach matter more than engagement? What about lasting brand impacts? What about sales lifts? All good questions. 

Nonetheless, what does this study suggest? 

1. If you want cost-effective engagement from your sponsored posts, influencers with ~1MM followers are a sweet spot to start from.

2. Analyzing ‘effectiveness’ of influencer-sponsored posts is harrrrd. 

Read the paper: it’s lovely: DOI: 10.1177/00222429221125131