Are social media influencers right for your digital media campaign?

In 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products developed a guide for public health programs that want to launch influencer programs on social media. This post highlights content from the guide by introducing influencer programs, setting goals, and considering different budgets.
Check out the full guide, Influencers 101: Best Practices for Public Health Campaigns.
Introducing social media influencer programs
An influencer is someone with a following beyond their personal friends and family who can impact others’ decisions. Social media influencers typically have:
- Reach (notable social media following)
- Impact (ability to impact the decision-making of others)
- Bonds (relationship with their followers) [1]
An influencer is not the same thing as a spokesperson. Rather, influencer programs are optional media tactics within a communication plan. While influencers exist across media channels, this blog focuses on social media influencers and how collaborations can vary based on your goals and budget.
Are social media influencers right for your organization?
Before working with an influencer, clearly define your audience and what it is you want them to do.
Influencers might be right for your organization if:
- There is a specific message to promote or action to demonstrate, and
- That message can be authentically amplified through someone else’s voice.
Working with influencers might not be right for an organization if:
- The intended audience is not on social media.
- If little is known about the audience.
- If the target audience is not defined (in other words, we only have a vague idea of who we’d like to reach or their interests are unknown).
Who should we work with?
Once you decide to work with influencers, the next step is to clarify your goals and budget.
What are your goals for working with influencers?
Some public health organizations decide to work with influencers because they can connect with audiences who may otherwise be hard to reach. Influencers connect with their audiences over shared passions or characteristics.
Other times, organizations may work with influencers because they want to reach large numbers of people and raise awareness about a program or message and influencers with large numbers of followers help them spread the word.
Lastly, organizations may work with influencers to build trust around a subject that is hard to communicate or to connect with a skeptical audience who distrusts mainstream sources of information. Other examples of common goals include:
- Increasing program, brand, or campaign awareness
- Promoting new resources (for example, e-cigarette cessation resource or website)
- Increasing social media engagement
- Growing your organization or brand’s number of followers
- Boosting credibility or trust in an organization, brand, campaign, or message
- Improving attention to campaign message(s)
- Influencing opinions on a topic
How can influencers help you reach your goals?
This table describes five categories of influencers, based on their follower count, along with specific benefits of working with influencers in each group.
Categories of influencers based on their number of followers | Benefits of working with each influencer type |
---|---|
Nano (1 thousand - 10 thousand followers) | Knows followers personally and has authentic relationships with them. |
Micro (10 thousand - 50 thousand followers) | Ability to reach specialized communities around specific interests. |
Mid (50 thousand - 500 thousand followers) | Balance between specialized communities and reaching a larger audience. |
Macro (500 thousand - 1 million followers) | Balance between cost and reaching a larger audience. |
Mega (over 1 million followers) | Offers the largest and broadest reach. |
No influencer category is more important or beneficial than another. Each category is useful for different reasons, and should be selected based on a goal. If the goal is to reach niche audiences through people who likely have more personal connections with their followers, it can be better to work with nano or micro influencers.
If the goal is to reach a larger audience with a modest budget, working with mid-sized influencers might be the best option.
With a higher budget, and a goal to reach as many people as possible, a campaign could work with macro or mega influencers to disseminate a message.
References
View the fact sheet on the categories of influencers mentioned above:
Although there is no set pricing for working with influencers, generally an influencer’s following dictates the cost of their services. Pricing also depends on what they are asked to do and on which platform. Keep in mind that influencers may have a larger presence on certain platforms and thus may be more influential on one platform compared to another. Some platforms also tend to generate higher costs. For example, the same influencer may cost more to work on one platform compared to another.
Case study
When to work with nano influencers vs. mega influencers
Fresh Empire was the first federal public education campaign designed to prevent and reduce tobacco use among 12- to 17-year-old African American, Hispanic, and Asian American and Pacific Islander youths who identify with hip-hop culture and are at an elevated risk for exposure to pro-tobacco influences. The Fresh Empire campaign collaborated with both nano and mega influencers for different purposes.
Fresh Empire partnered with nano influencers (1,000 –10,000 followers) in key city hubs to increase campaign credibility and authenticity. The goal for this campaign was to increase engagement with the campaign’s intended audience on social media and at live events. The campaign team selected influencers with a large number of local followers where the campaign was implemented. Influencers supported other media tactics by sharing branded content and posts with their immediate groups of friends and followers. Content included conversation starters to promote engagement (for example, comments and shares) with a tobacco-free message, and advertising for local events that the campaign was hosting in their area. The nano influencers would often attend the events and had personal relationships and connections with their followers, so they could authentically talk about living tobacco-free.

Example of Fresh Empire social media content
These nano influencers allowed the campaign to demonstrate that it is possible to be a part of the hip-hop community without using cigarettes. Throughout the life cycle of the brand, nano influencers encouraged teens to have conversations about living tobacco-free and attend tobacco prevention campaign events.
Fresh Empire also worked with a smaller number of mega influencers (over a million followers) to increase overall reach of the campaign. These influencers were carefully selected to ensure their followers were within the intended audience. Mega influencers generated hundreds of millions of impressions on content they created and posted, which increased the visibility of Fresh Empire and the tobacco prevention message. One influencer Fresh Empire worked with was Vince Staples, a popular rapper and singer. A 15-second video featuring Staples generated almost 10 million impressions and almost 2 million video views.
For more information on collaborating with influencers, including additional case studies from FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products and details on implementation and measurement, please reference Influencer 101: Best Practices for Public Health Campaigns (PDF, 1.7 MB, 33 Page, 2023).
Footnotes
- Hudders L, De Jans S, De Veirman M. The commercialization of social media stars: a literature review and conceptual framework on the strategic use of social media influencers. Social Media Influencers in Strategic Communication, 2021; 24-67. ↩