Today, most brands know they can’t reach all of their followers with a social media post. The percentages on Facebook are famously below 2%. Instagram and TikTok are a bit better, but the vast majority of followers won’t see a given post.

Now, imagine that your influencer posts are consistently reaching many times more people than the influencers have followers. 55 times the number of followers. 46 times. 63 times. 173 times. Over 4,000 times more reach than followers! That’s what’s happened to us well over a dozen times in the last few influencer programs.

How? By reaching the Explore (on Instagram) or FYP (on TikTok) these influencer posts traveled well beyond the influencer’s social audience, even before we amplified them with any paid syndication.

Let’s first share some examples:

Big Lots Furniture

This post by Ashley Imperfect reached over 4,000 times the number of followers that Ashley has on TikTok (a newer channel for her), helping her drive to this budget friendly retail client.

Crunchmaster Crackers

This post, by Life and Sprinkles, reached nearly 3x as many followers as she has, even though she has over 300,000 followers. Impressive. 

Big Lots Halloween

This post perfectly aligned with Nicole Wurstner’s Halloween themed account with nearly 10,000 followers, but it reached nearly 2.5x that amount organically. Why? Well timed content, high quality and on a highly relevant page. 

How Can Brands Get on the Explore or For You Page?

As we look at what the key methods for influencer content getting to be highlighted by the platforms themselves, the many posts we’ve seen do this do have some commonalities, specifically:

1. Quality Content: They are high-quality content, naturally. Posts that don’t receive good engagement at the start are unlikely to reach the Explore or For You Pages. These posts come across as genuine, they often use a voiceover and they make use of catchy music.
2. Themed Campaigns: Several of the Carusele posts that have reached these pages are around timely themes, such as Cinco de Mayo, Halloween or the Holidays. Of course, this timely content has a better chance of trending when people are in the mood (and in the market) for this content.
3. Well-Timed Posting: The successful posts were often posted during peak social media usage hours when people are most likely to engage in a timely fashion.
4. Engaged with Audience: The influencers who posted this trending content typically engaged with those who commented on the posts, thereby encouraging more comments.

Does #Ad Ruin Influencer Virality?

All of our influencer programs are fully compliant, so the couple dozen examples we’ve seen have all included a clear and conspicuous disclosure such as #ad. In our experience, disclosure doesn’t hurt the performance of quality content. It may tamp down the performance of bad content even further, but it doesn’t seem to hurt good content.

In fact, some research indicates that disclosures can increase influencer credibility and that increased credibility increased purchase intent. So don’t shy away from #ad.

If we can help with your influencer marketing programs, please don’t hesitate to reach out.