In marketing, the questions of “Why you? Why now?” are first lines of inquiry for any prospective buyer, and questions that must be compellingly answered by the advertiser in order to make a sale. The most powerful and targeted answers to these questions are the “wheat separated from the chaff,” crucial in dictating the ultimate purchasing choices of the would-be buyer and the success of any sales campaign, whether this sifting by the consumer is conscious or unconscious.

Where will consumers spend their money?

Without question, a compelling story is a powerful selling point in a successful sales campaign. A good story is the force that attracts the prospective purchaser to the seller by most effectively answering the questions “Why you? Why now?”

For social influencers and their followers, those questions have been answered through daily exposure on social media over a period of months or years. Followers watch the stories of their favorite influencers unfold regularly; they see them cook, shop, relate day-to-day relationship struggles and spend time with their families. In this way influencers have built an audience through sharing their stories with their followers, and these stories establish a foundation of trust. Combining this earned trust with thoughtful product placement can equate to sales gold.

This assertion is backed up by research from Omnicom Media Group: 49% of social media users rely on influencers on Twitter to make a purchase compared with 56%, who rely on friends, making influencers almost as powerful in guiding purchasing decisions as actual friends and acquaintances.

Mega-Influencers VS Micro-Influencers: Why Micro-Influencers May Be the Better Choice for Brands

At first it might appear that a big-name influencer like Kylie Jenner would be the best choice for brands to approach for product promotion; more followers means more exposure for their product. Surprisingly, micro- influencers, those with followers in the tens or hundreds of thousands rather than in the millions, may be the more advantageous choice.

When it comes to social media influence, engagement, or the number of comments and likes garnered by each post, is key to closing the deal. Micro-influencers often enjoy better engagement with their fans than mega stars like insert Kardashian here. Fewer followers make stronger connections more feasible because influencers then have more bandwidth to respond to comments from fans. These followers grow to regard the influencer almost like a real flesh-and-blood friend, and therefore have more of a tendency to engage with that influencer’s posts. This greater engagement makes fans more likely to take advice from favorite influencers when it comes to making purchasing decisions.

Also beneficial for advertisers is the fact that fewer followers and greater engagement means lower costs when choosing that influencer to promote their brands, since the more followers a social media star has, the greater the cost to advertisers. Our earlier example, Kylie Jenner, who now has almost 116 million followers on Instagram receives approximately $1,000,000 to promote a product.

Meanwhile an influencer with a smaller more dedicated following commands a much lower price — more likely in the tens of thousands — for product placement but could end up garnering a larger percentage of sales from within their base. To get the best ROI working with micro-influencers, advertisers can hire multiple micro-influencers to promote their product so that they can benefit from the reach of a mega-influencer while enjoying the engagement rates of micro-influencers.

How Can Micro-Influencers Compete with Kardashians? dApps and Blockchain Technology Can Help

Blockchain technology is opening up the playing field to give more of an advantage to micro-influencers who may not have the resources of a social media mega star available to promote their online presences. DApps (decentralized applications) running on a blockchain-based social media platform could potentially give influencers access to tools that give them more control over their online lives and empower them to monetize their talents.

DApps are open-sourced applications that run on decentralized networks instead of on central databases like conventional apps. This type of system makes applications more secure and far less susceptible to fraud than traditional applications that run on centralized databases. Also of real benefit to social media creators — particularly micro-influencers with smaller budgets — is the fact that blockchain platforms eliminate the need for third parties like selling platforms which eat into the profits of the influencer.

The greater transparency of blockchain-based social media platforms is a boon for advertisers too. Brands can feel more confident about the influencers they partner with since they can easily verify influencer statistics, and purchase tokens to look up audience data about any influencer on the platform. This is a huge advantage: According to recent report by Digiday, “A single day’s worth of posts tagged #sponsored or #ad on Instagram contained more than 50 percent fake engagement.”

Advertisers can also look up demographics and influencer metrics, thoroughly researching each one before choosing which have followers that are within their brand’s target audience, and are therefore the best fit to represent them.

BOOSTO, a decentralized app marketplace, offers appealing options for content creators and brands alike. On the BOOSTO platform, influencers can create “personal stores” and choose dApps from the BOOSTO marketplace that suit their specific needs. With a dApp marketplace at their disposal, it becomes possible to access functions that would require the use of several different applications and platforms in a traditional social media environment.

The BOOSTO protocol provides all of the vetting functions that make choosing the perfect influencer to represent their brand available to advertisers in one platform. For influencers, it is no longer necessary to go to one place to monitor performance, another to schedule posts, and yet another to create videos or graphics. Every tool the influencer needs is accessible and available to him in his personalized BOOSTO dApp “store.”

BOOSTO dApp Store

The BOOSTO platform is great for micro-influencers on a budget since there is no need to raise funds to pay a developer up front to develop dedicated dApps. Developers on the platform are paid for each transaction on the dApp for as long as it runs. No huge fees to middlemen or developers makes the blockchain environment, and a dApp marketplace like BOOSTO in particular, a wonderful option for content creators, while the transparency of the BOOSTO ecosystem makes it a win for brands seeking just the right micro-influencers to represent their product.