How to Use Micro Influencers to Target Gen Z in 2023

Influencer marketing is on a lightning-fast rise, and while once it was about celebs moving the masses, now even micro-influencers are making an impact.

What is a Micro-Influencer?

Micro-influencers are social media personalities that are not celebrities but are also not your average social media user.

To give you an idea, anyone with a social media following of more than 1000 and less than 100,000 can be considered a micro-influencer.

In most cases, micro-influencers use their chosen niche to connect with people and promote relevant brands and products that fit within that niche.

The difference between an influencer and a micro-influencer is that with micro-influencers, the number of followers they have is real people that they interact with, or have interacted with at some point in the past; they have developed a rapport with their audience.

Whereas, influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers do not and cannot possibly connect with all their followers.

This gives micro-influencers a certain edge over influencers as people know and trust the human behind the screen, which makes them seem more trustworthy and reliable.

Why Micro-Influencer Marketing?

Once micro influencers became an established reality, there are two big reasons to utilize them in your brand marketing strategies.

First, they can interact with and bring in more people since their reviews are considered to be more reliable and authentic.

Second, your brand can achieve your marketing goals at a fraction of the cost you’d have to spend using a celebrity influencer.

Examples of this trend of micro-influencer marketing can be seen largely on TikTok.

TikTok is the platform that proved to market agencies that you don’t need to be a huge social media persona to reach people; you just need to be relatable.

The TikTok algorithm is designed to show users more of what they like and what they find relevant, rather than curating their For You Page based on the number of followers or engagement.

TikTok Niches & How Micro-Influencers Use Them

There are various niches and subcategories on TikTok, all used in different ways.

BookTok

BookTok is a rapidly growing niche on TikTok. As the name suggests, it contains book-related content, including book reviews, book suggestions, storylines, and more.

Micro-influencers promote books, book deals, sales, discounts, and even limited edition books and swag.

FoodTok

FoodTok is filled with delicious food videos, making it hard for people not to get addicted to watching. There’s nothing better than watching an ASMR of baking or cooking to help you relax.

Videos on FoodTok can be recipes, reviews, meal prep, etc. Micro-influencers can share their favorite cooking accessories and tools, review recipes or restaurants, and more.

FashionTok

Unsurprisingly, there’s a TikTok niche dedicated to fashion. Every day, hundreds of videos are uploaded on TikTok with this tag, featuring their fashion choices, recent fits, and more.

Micro-influencers on FashionTok can show their shopping hauls, review designs and products, and promote brands, among other things.

DanceTok

DanceTok is where it all started for this app. This niche is filled with people showing off their dance moves and putting their unique takes on famous choreographies and dance steps.

ArtTok / DIYTok

This is a fascinating TikTok niche, but again, no surprise that it’s popular. It gained popularity during lockdown when everyone was doing some kind of DIY project, and it’s still going strong.

ArtTok is filled with people showing off their art and crafts, be it painting, drawing, cooking, or something else.

FitnessTok

FitnessTok is filled with videos of people showcasing their fitness journey, sharing what keeps them motivated, and demoing their favorite types of workouts.

It’s also a great way for micro-influencers to share their own fitness journey to help people relate.

Where Does Your Brand Fit?

While these niche micro-influencers are most prevalent on TikTok right now, this strategy could easily be modified and adapted to be used on other social media platforms as well. Time to put that entrepreneurial creative brain to work!