Instagram’s own Instagram account is always a reliable source of information on how to structure posts for their platform, how frequently to roll out new content and how to balance your content strategy (how much of it should be Instagram Stories over normal feed posts, how often to make carousel posts featuring multiple photos, and how to weigh up the benefits of making videos). The same applies to Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. They all roll out regular posts with useful instructions and advice.
Keep an eye on what your favourite social media platforms do on their own profiles. Useful features, important tools and best-practice advice gets updated regularly. Spend some time making the most of the resources that are freely available and also check back in for updates from time to time.
Pumpkins are a niche too
As you can see by our interest in the topic, influencer marketing only started coming into its own in 2016:
In the few short years since, a crucial shift has already taken place: industry experts are not only looking to partner with what we now call macro-influencers (people with a few hundred thousand followers or more). What we clearly saw in 2018 and 2019 was a push towards prioritising collaborations with micro-influencers (with roughly 10 000 to 100 000 followers) and even nano-influencers (with fewer than 10 000 followers).
You can always do your own search on how often things are searched for. Google Trends is a phenomenal way to gauge interest in any niche area or topic.
There is a bit of disagreement about whether the latter is relevant in the South African market, but I’d say that in the nano-influencer space, you would often be looking at barter exchanges, small cash deals (if any) and invites to events (not paid appearances). In other words, you would ideally want to approach this as a phase. It is important to build relationships in this phase and to really make the most of the experiences afforded to you when you’re in the nano-market, but if your aim is to generate revenue, then this is a phase you want to be able to scale out of – to grow through.
Micro-influencers offer an appealing opportunity to brands and if you fall into this category, it is important to be awake to the fact that the more niche your interest is, the greater the engagement rate tends to be. On what do I base this? The average Instagram follower of someone like the pumpkin-obsessed food influencer Maggie Michalczyk probably doesn’t have many people in their social circle (in real life) who are also obsessed with eating pumpkin.
So, Maggie’s followers find a sense of community with the other pumpkin lovers out there who are also commenting and interacting with this niche feed. This is why brands often opt to work with influencers on the scale of pumpkin-loving Maggie, even over a household name like Jamie Oliver with his 7.7 million followers. The Maggies of this world usually yield a low-cost-per-engagement rate, which is immensely attractive to some brands.
This is how you can calculate cost per engagement (CPE) quickly and simply:
Compare this to a hypothetical macro-influencer: let’s call them Person X. They boast 100 000 followers and this is why a deal could easily cost R15 000 per post (keep reading for more on how this fee is calculated).
Person X would then need to deliver 1 500 engagements to ensure the same CPE rate as someone with Maggie’s following and engagement.
For a brand manager, the option of spreading the same R15 000 budget between three micro-influencers (people like Maggie) and having them each create two or more posts could deliver more bang for the same bucks in CPE terms. If not more bang, at least they have lowered their risk by spreading their bets in the hopes that at least two out of the three influencers will deliver highly engaging content.
When you are trying to figure out exactly how best to position yourself, remember that bigger is not always better. Put yourself in the shoes of the marketer, solve their problem better and you are in business.
If you create content that your followers consistently find useful, interesting and entertaining, this will boost your chances of the algorithm rewarding your efforts by showing your content to more followers. Your engagement rate will increase and the value you create for eventual brand partners will start to look after itself.
Hi, my name is ...
In radio, it used to be the thing to have a very glamorous showbiz name. If your own was boring, you’d simply adapt or change it, or pick a new one.
I used to love listening to a radio DJ called Nicole Fox when I was in high school. She used to be on radio in the evenings while I was completing school projects or reading magazines, doodling in the margins of my schoolbooks or texting my boyfriend. She was so effortlessly cool that it actually intimidated the living daylights out of this aspiring radio presenter. I didn’t inherit a fun, catchy surname, so I worried about never quite fitting the radio DJ mould. Imagine my indignation when I later found out that her real surname was Raubenheimer! If even her name wasn’t real, I thought, what else about this person, whom I thought of as my ultimate study companion, was also contrived?
She wasn’t alone, of course. Elton John was born Reginald Dwight. Lady Gaga is an act Stefani Germanotta created. However, I think the idea that a name will make or break your career, before it has even started, is fading along with the hierarchy that used to decide who had earned the right to entertain, inform and inspire (and who had not).
A crucial shift has taken place in popular culture over the last decade or two and I think it has much to do with the fact that the studio, the record label, the publisher, the radio station and the TV network have seen their powers eroded. There used to be quite a bit of distance between the
