"How many influencers do you need to run an effective influencer campaign?"

 
It's a question that many marketers across the industry continue to ask us time and time again. The answer, however, is not that simple.

Unfortunately, it Depends.

It depends on a lot of different things. The success of your campaign depends on what your goals are, but more importantly, it depends on how you're planning to use the content.

Let's look at two examples to explain. In one situation you can get a bunch of influencers, 20, 30, 40, 50 influencers. You can give them the same image or asset from your company and then ask them to share it. That approach is going to have a lot of reach but almost no influence. Let's remember this is influencer marketing. You want to change minds, you want to influence behavior. I would much rather see a smaller number of influencers giving their unique takes on how to use a product, inspiring people on how to use the product and then take the top-performing content and surface it to even more people. In my opinion, if you're only thinking about how many influencers you can get, you're missing the boat.

The other question to consider is the size of those influencers you're working with and their following. You could get a big following with one celebrity influencer, but there's a lot of research showing that they actually don't influence people proportional to their reach. We've said it before, but at Carusele we think it's crucial to stay in the sweet spot of about 10,000 to two million follower counts. I think that's where you get the really good authentic content. And if you're worried about not having enough reach in there, there are other ways to do it, you just need to have your strategy set up for it from the start.

If you're curious to learn more about developing a successful influencer campaign, check out some of our other blog posts, or keep an eye out for a new episode of The Spin next week.