Social Media Marketing: Finding Influencers to Partner With

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Social Media Marketing: Introduction

Influencers. Social media. Those two phrases weren’t even concepts the way they are today even just twenty years ago. Imagining how far we’ve technologically advanced in just two decades really is quite stunning once you think about it. As a causal history nerd, I find the amount of technological progress from 1900 to 2000, just one century, to be staggering. But we’re still living in a rapidly advancing media world, and influencers and social media have only grown in prevalence since the 2010s. And with their increase in popularity new ways have come to reach potential customers and clients, because marketing slows down for no one. Familiarity with social media is a must for any new professional entering the marketing field, and reaching out to and partnering with influencers is a coveted goal by many marketing professionals. My capstone in my PR degree was just that, helping our client cultivate a list of potential influencers they could reach out to, seeking a potential partnership.

But there’s so many influencers out there with so many different levels of popularity and followings, and partnering with influencers for social media marketing is not a “one size fits all” scenario. With so many potential influencers to reach out to, it can be overwhelming or confusing to know who’s the best fit for your brand; who can best attract customers and clients. Fear not! This guide will help you understand both the different types of social media influencers based on the size of their following, the advantages and disadvantages of different-sized influencers, as well how to know which type of influencers are best for your brand and business.

Nano to Mega: Different Sizes, Different Influencers

There are five different tiers of influencers, depending on how many followers the influencer has. This little infographic tier list I made shows the rankings between influencers based on their followers:

Each influencer type has its own advantages and disadvantages. It may be tempting to want to immediately try to partner with influencers with a higher following rate, because higher following means a higher likelihood of more customers and clients, right? Well…not exactly. It depends. There’s a lot of advantages that smaller influencers have that their larger counterparts do not have, and it’s important to not just write off nano, micro, or mid-tier influencers just because their follower count is smaller!

Advantages and Disadvantages of Each Influencer Type

Your instinct might be to glaze over nano influencers. They have small follower counts, after all, right? Well, yes, it’s true that a disadvantage of nano influencers is indeed their smaller audience reach, as well as nano influencers being less experienced in working with marketers. The results from partnering with them may also be slow. However, some key advantages that nano influencers have are that not only are they cheaper to work with, but also, they have a much higher engagement rate with their audience than mega influencers. Their audience likes and trusts them, and interacts with them much more than higher-tier influencers do. Additionally, although nano influencers often have less experience working with brands, they are often thrilled for the opportunity to work with brands (Angus 2025). The client that I worked with for my PR capstone was looking for especially personable influencers, and most of the influencers my team and I found were nano to micro influencers. Sure, they didn't have hundreds of thousands of followers, but the followers they did have loved them.

The trends associated with nano influencers are similar to trends associated with working with micro influencers, with an included benefit of having more authority, influence, reach than nano influencers, increasing the likelihood of quicker sales results and being more professional/experienced with working with marketing brands. However, reach is still limited, and these influencers are more expensive to work with (Angus 2025).

Mid-tier and macro influencers are similar to each other, and come with similar challenges and benefits: reach is expanded, engagement drops, and price increases. By the mega influencer stage, you have reached quite expensive influencers to work with who also have low engagement with their audience due to the sheer volume of said audience, but mega influencers are also crucial to building trends, often have experience/training working with businesses/brands. Of course, despite those lucrative benefits, mega influencers are often very difficult to get in contact with/reach out to, given they are famous and in high demand from other influencers, but, of course, if you do have the budget to work with them and are able to get in contact with them, their large reach can be a huge boost to your company, business, and brand. However, influencers in this category are more “broad” in the sense that they likely do not have experience/a connection with your product and service, while influencers with less followers you may want to reach out to can potentially be involved with niche market or service that you provide, meaning influencers with fewer followers may be more familiar with your field of business (Angus 2025).

What Type of Influencer Should You Work With?

As alluded to earlier, that is the ultimate question—and not one with a “one size fits all” answer. It largely depends on your goals, budget, and size, which are, of course, things unique to each brand. (The client my team and I had was very wealthy, but your budget isn't the only thing to take into consideration when thinking of influencers to partner with.) Another very important thing to remember is the three main stages of the marketing “funnel": the awareness phase, which is about, well, as the name implies, making potential future customers aware of your existence, as well as the products and services you offer. Following that is the consideration phase, where you have customers’ attention, and now are trying to encourage them to purchase your products/services. Finally, you have the conversion phase, where you are attempting to convert considerers into purchasers (Kolsquare 2023). The influencers you are looking for also depends on where you are in the marketing funnel. Are you trying to get impressions? High reach? Engagement? Clicks? Awareness? Only you know (Kolsquare 2023). Our client wasn't a traditional business, but they were in the consideration phase--they are very well known, you would likely know who they are, but they wanted to cultivate a list of influencers to use for a new service launch.

“Mega and macro [influencers] work best for awareness, while micro and nano [influencers] excel at driving consideration and conversions” (Gima 2025). When you are looking for awareness—top of funnel—the bigger the influencer, the better, given the reach they have, which is useful for generating awareness. While the bigger the influencer the better when you’re in the top of the funnel, don’t despair if you can’t afford the hefty price associated with mega influencers. Macro or even mid-tier influencers are still useful in this category. Nano and micro influencers should be avoided when you’re at the top of the funnel, given despite their authenticity with their audience, they won’t be very good at generating very much awareness (Yee 2025).

Once you’ve grabbed the attention of potential customers and are in the middle of the funnel, then you can start to move past mega and macro influencers. Since people know you exist, you’ve got to keep up the motivation and drive as you encourage customers to purchase from you. Here’s where building trust is crucial, and where micro and nano influencers are very useful. Since micro and nano influencers have a higher connection and authenticity with their audiences, they’ll trust said influencers, and their opinions will come off of less as an interesting but shallow celebrity endorsement, and more like someone genuinely liking and enjoying a product or service. Nano influencers especially are very effective at low points in the funnels when attempting to get customers to make the final push to buy from you, through testimonials, promoting sells, demos, etc. Nano influencers’ audiences like them. They’re going to like and be interested in what their influencer is talking about (Yee 2025). Because my capstone client was looking for conversions, and wasn't concerned with awareness, my team and I were comfortable with seeking out smaller influencers our client could partner with, as awareness was not our priority.

But regardless of what type of influencer you want to partner with, research beforehand is crucial. Look at how influencers acted and handled in past partnerships, if such data is available. Understand what your target audience wants—for example, if you are an interior design business, your audience probably will be neither impressed nor interested in young Gen Z influencers on TikTok. Target influencers in the demographic or on the radar of your audience. Know that a lot of followers doesn’t mean high engagement; there are tools that can help you analyze engagement on social media from influencers. (The last thing you want to do is waste money partnering with an influencer with low engagement, or, even worse, bought or bot followers.) Communication is also key when working with influencers: set expectations, timelines, and prices on the table to avoid any miscommunication (Yee 2025).

Conclusion

Partnering with social media influencers is a crucial part of modern-day online marketing. Where you are in the marketing funnel will affect which influencers you should partner with, but each type of influencer can bring you great success, as long as you are aware of each type of influencer’s advantages, disadvantages, and strengths, depending on how many followers they have and where you are in the marketing funnel. But with planning and careful selection, you can forge excellent partnerships that will boost your brand.

Good luck!

References

Angus, Annie. “Micro, Macro, Nano, Mega Influencers: Which Will Help You Grow?” WebsiteBuilderExpert, 18 Feb. 2025, www.websitebuilderexpert.com/social-media/micro-macro-nano-mega-influencers/.

“Nano vs Micro vs Mid vs Macro vs Mega Influencers: What Marketers Need to Know.” BENlabs, 13 Apr. 2023, www.benlabs.com/resources/types-of-influencers/.

Perplexity AI. (2025). Perplexity AI [Large language model]. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-are-the-advantages-and-di-Bu0diMqaQdyvXgcIj3aEQA

“Types of Influencers: Which One Is the Right Fit for Your next Influencer Campaign?” Gima, GIMA, 3 Oct. 2025, www.gima.ae/blog/types-of-influencers.html.

“Understanding the The Influencer Marketing Funnel Explainedmarketing Funnel.” Kolsquare, www.kolsquare.com/en/blog/the-influencer-marketing-funnel-explained. Accessed 1 Dec. 2025.

Yee, Huey. “Types of Social Media Influencers: From Nano to Mega and How to Work With Them.” MarketersMEDIA Newswire, 29 Oct. 2025, marketersmedia.com/blog/types-of-influencers.