The influencer marketing industry reached $21.1 billion back in 2023 and brands are going to pay even bigger money in the next few years for good reason. Brands understand that 69% of consumers trust influencers and their recommendations.
Simply put, influencers are influencing the market more than actors, models, or rockstars and that’s where the future is heading.
As an influencer, you need to scale your social media accounts and treat them as a business if you want to stay relevant and partner up with brands you want. AI is the best way to scale your production quality without blowing the budget.
Here’s what we’re covering in the article:
- What is influencer marketing?
- Types of influencers?
- How AI is changing influencer marketing?
- 6 Best AI tools for influencers
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing is when an influencer collaborates with a brand to promote that brand’s services or products to the influencer’s audience.
The goal is to connect the brand with the influencer's wider audience and get more traffic, sales, or brand awareness. Because the audience trusts their influencers, they’re more likely to buy or engage with the influencer’s recommendations than if the brand were to market on its own.
As an influencer, it’s important to know that influencer marketing isn’t about getting the most sales from your audience. It’s about connecting your viewers with relevant, trustworthy brands and hooking them up with deals like discounts.
Happy customers, happy brand, happy influencer career.
Types of influencer
The easiest way to categorize influencers is by their reach. It’s straightforward and easy to understand.
Now I want to clarify that “reach” is different between niches. For example, a niche like “outdoor hammock camping” is more specific than “gaming.” Naturally, a hyper-specific niche like camping has a smaller audience. So, even if the top results for “outdoor hammock camping” only have 200,000 views, those top results still have the most reach within that niche.
This is an important lesson for aspiring influencers and marketers. You don't need millions of followers to be successful. Even 50,000 followers can make you a top influencer if those followers are hyper-relevant to brands seeking to partner with you.
Mega-Influencers
Mega-influencers are like the superstars of the internet. They're usually famous people like actors, athletes, or YouTubers with millions of followers. Think Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylie Jenner, or PewDiePie.
These influencers are involved in creative projects that are more than just “influencer things.” They make movies, play world-class sports, and are known for other things aside from being an influencer.
Macro-Influencers
Macro-influencers have established themselves as recognized voices within their niche. They might be successful bloggers, vloggers, or social media personalities with dedicated fan bases who eagerly consume their content. Think Huda Kattan in the beauty world, MKBHD for tech, or Chris Bumstead for bodybuilding.
These are the influencers with the most reach in a specific general industry, like tech, gaming, travel, outdoor, and so on.
Mid-Tier Influencers
The sweet spot between large-scale reach and authentic engagement, mid-tier influencers are rising stars in their niches. These influencers have a decent following and are generally appreciated because they’re more authentic to their audience than the macro-influencers who are often brand ambassadors.
Some examples are UrAvgConsumer and Bryan Johnson on YouTube. These YouTubers don’t have the biggest audience, but their views are consistent and the comments are usually wholesome and appreciative.
Mid-tier influencers are perfect for upcoming brands that are aiming to enter the industry. They’re cheaper to work with, have a decent following, and both parties have more to gain since mid-tier influencers are usually still in the process of working another job or looking for a way to monetize their influence.
Micro-Influencers
Micro-influencers are people who are probably making content more out of passion than as a career. These influencers are often experts within a very specific niche.
Think cooking influencers like Kenji Lopez who experiments with cooking myths, like when to salt an egg or how to cut an onion. Or, even something mundane like Vacuum Wars on YouTube, a channel dedicated to thoroughly comparing vacuums.
Micro-influencers offer brands highly engaged audiences, authentic content, and strong niche credibility.
Regardless of what type of influencer you are, there’s an AI tool in this article that will help you grow your social media.
How AI is changing influencer marketing?
AI has significantly changed the influencer marketing industry for both good and bad.
For brands, there are AI tools that help them find the right influencers to partner with and avoid fraudulent influencers. These influencers bought their followers, bought their engagement, and don’t have a legitimate audience for their content. Considering brands have to deal with 49% of ad rates being fraud on Instagram, an AI tool that finds legitimate influencers has never been more important.
But for authentic, real influencers, this is good news. That means brands are more likely to find your account if your followers and engagement are real.
There are also way more AI tools for influencers than there are for brands. Some AI tools help you understand how the internet feels about your brand, your niche, or certain keywords. Other AI tools will help you generate ideas, understand your audience, and even easily create high-quality videos from scratch.
6 Best AI tools for influencers
These AI tools are all about making your life as an influencer easier and more capable.
1. Invideo AI - Video Creation and Marketing
Video is the number one medium on the internet. In fact, 82.5% of all internet traffic as of 2023 is video. If you’re an influencer on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, using AI to scale your video production and produce videos faster is key to growing your socials. Faster video production lets you stay ahead of competitors in hot topics or in the latest trends, which last like a week on social media.
Invideo AI is a text-to-video generation platform. It uses AI to intelligently understand your text prompt and create a matching video from your instructions. The finished videos are perfect for social media. They have 50+ foreign language support, various male and female voiceovers, non-copyright background music, auto-generated subtitles, and HD stock footage. You can even record and clone your own voice with AI!
Here’s how you can do all of that:
Step 1: Create a free invideo AI account.
Log in using your email, Google email, or Apple ID.
Step 2: Select a workflow. These workflows are video formats that’s been optimized for its specific platform (Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc.), so the video dimensions and specs are ready for publishing.
These as the workflows relevant for influencers:
- YouTube Shorts
- YouTube Explainer
- TikTok Video
- Instagram Reel
Invideo AI can also create:
- Script to Video
- News Video
Step 3: Provide or write a text prompt for your video.
For the best results, make sure to include instructions for each of these categories:
- Where to Share: Platform (e.g., YouTube, Instagram)
- Video Topic: Briefly describe the subject
- Video Length: Specify the desired duration
- Target Audience: Who your audience is or how they feel about the topic
- What It Sounds Like: Tone and style (professional, casual, funny)
- Voiceover: Voice style, language (or clone your voice with AI)
- Extra Information (Optional): Links to websites or articles for inspiration
Depending on your workflow, you’ll already have the option to select the voiceover or other details of your video from a dropdown menu. In those cases, you don’t have to include those details in your text prompt.
Step 4: Click "Generate a video.” Once you’re happy with the settings and your prompt, it’s time to generate the video and wait for several minutes.
A short prompt about your video preferences should pop up. Choose accordingly and click “Continue” when you’re done.
Step 5: Your video is done!
If you want to edit parts of your video, you can use the "magic box" for quick changes by typing out instructions for the AI to edit. Otherwise, you can also click “edit” and modify the script, music, or stock footage files. You can even upload your own video clips if needed.
Want to take this a step further? Check out our complete guide on making AI videos or watch tutorials on our YouTube channel.
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Try now2. Gemini - AI Assistant
ChatGPT is already a household name with how popular it’s become, but you might not be familiar with Gemini which is made by Google. Gemini is a better AI assistant for influencers because it can search the internet for timely information unlike ChatGPT. This means easily getting summaries of recent events, like breaking news, product launches, brand events, and more.
The Gemini premium version also works across other Google platforms like Sheets, Docs, and Gmail. You can make formal emails easier with Gemini, and with the latest update, it can even read and help you find emails from your inbox.
All in all, Gemini is like having an assistant that’s ready to help 24/7. It can be an editor for your scripts or a coach that will help you analyze your current content calendar. AI tools like Gemini help with idea generation, creative writing for captions, and just being a bouncing board for ideas.
3. Brand24 - Sentiment Analysis
Just because influencers are part of the algorithm doesn’t mean they’re immune to it. Relying on your own account to do audience research and social listening is like doing a survey for just a small part of the population. To effectively know how the internet feels about you, your brand, your partnering brands, and other keywords you need a sentiment analysis tool.
Brand24 is a platform that actively searches the internet for any mentions of a specific keyword, like your name or brand, across the entire internet. Think forums, public groups, social media comments, facebook posts, and more. Then, Brand24 uses AI to intelligently curate all these mentions and only keep note of relevant ones. From there, the AI analyzes each mention and tells you what the internet thinks about it.
Brand management and public persona is crucial for influencers like yourselves. You need to know what people think about you, what they think about your niche, and even what they think about brands you’re partnering with so you don’t ruin your own account. If you do this right, Brand24 will make you grow and help you strategically position yourself in your niche.
4. Sparktoro - Audience Research
What’s next after what your audience thinks about you? Learning more about your audience.
SparktToro is a tool that’s full of customer data. It works by typing what keyword you want to search for and SparkToro sends you a full report about the audience that’s searching that keyword. This report is incredibly in depth, showing you who the audience listens to for this keyword, what websites they visit, what podcasts they listen to, the hashtags that capture their attention, and more. It’s a thorough report and you can get 5 free reports every month on a free account.
Information like this is vital for influencers whose job is to stand in front of your audience and get their attention. Knowing where your audience goes, what they like doing, and who they watch will make you a better strategist for your own content and increase your views.
5. Notion AI - Workspace and Productivity Tool
One of the biggest hurdles for influencers is creating a workspace where they can plan, strategize, and track videos and video ideals. While Notion is a great workspace for doing all of this and acting like a second brain, the Notion AI is all about productivity.
Notion AI is a built-in model inside Notion that actively knows everything going on in your workspace. So you can ask it questions like finding information on your workspace and summarizing it. It’s a full on AI assistant that always knows the context of your needs.
Tracking everything you do is arguably the most crucial aspect of a successful business like being an influencer. Information like this helps you improve and become better over time and Notion AI supercharges that.
6. Chatfuel - Chatbot and Chat Automation
When you start applying these AI tools to your processes and get more views, it’ll only be a matter of time before you’re bombarded with engagement. Your DMs are going to be full and you’ll have more comments than ever.
Chatfuel is a chatbot and chat automation tool and it’s your best friend for when your engagement gets out of hand. You can use Chatfuel to reply to comments, send DMs if a user comments a keyword, and reply to frequently asked questions on your videos automatically.
As a tip, you should use a conversational and writing style that mimics your authentic writing. You can add several variations to your automated replies, so your responses don’t look robotic.
Conclusion
The greatest challenge for influencers has always been connecting with brands and scaling production. With AI, brands find influencers like you easier than ever by filtering out all the fraudulent influencers who have fake views, comments, and followers.
And, with the use of AI tools, influencers can scale their business and video content easier than ever. With invideo AI, influencers use text-to-video generation to create publish-ready videos with voiceovers, HD stock footage, and background music. And, using AI tools like SparkToro and Brand24, influencers know more about their audience and how they feel about specific keywords.
AI makes the life of legitimate influencers easier, whether it’s scaling their business or connecting with brands for partnerships.
Learn more about marketing and AI by reading our other articles!
