You don’t have to take our word for it, run a quick Google search and swim in the facts: Posts by influencers with less than one thousand followers have a better average like rate than posts by those with more. Not just that, but the more followers you get, the lower your rate decreases. Bigger is not necessarily better! Maybe that’s why Instagram reordered users’ timeline from chronological to propping out photos by users with which you’ve consistently engaged.

Yes, the argument against micro influencers then becomes less about engagement and more about the potential views (i.e. an influencer with 1 million followers will yield at least one million eyes on the post) … but that means diddly squat when you’re a marketer or an advertising executive and your job is to help spread the gospel of a certain product. Meaning: 1 million views does not translate to 1 million individual sales.

In the old days, brands and advertisers would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars—millions even, for billboards and magazine spreads without exactly being able to quantify their return on investment. The thought was, well—We’ll just put up that billboard on Sunset Boulevard and hope people will pay attention as they drive by …surely it’ll resonate with some people. Guess what? Occasionally it would, but how could anybody be held accountable if it didn’t? The advent of technology and huge surge of social media influencing (to be more specific) has allowed for more targeted approaches and activations. Marketers now know exactly which post yielded the best results. As the facts continue to come in, one thing has become certain. Less is, weirdly, more.

But should that come as such a surprise?

The premise behind these facts is actually logical. It is essentially what is widely known as grassroots marketing, at its core. In case you live under a rock and have never heard that term before, it’s basically when a campaign starts, like grass, from the ground up, little by little—and spreads.

So—you, social media enthusiast of meager (less than 1k) following, have the benefit of resonating more with your friends. You are trusted. You have a voice that is heard! If you say, Hey that new romcom was actually really good; or, I just had the best meal at this quaint restaurant—your followers a.k.a. friends will be more likely to take your recommendation. All of this is powerful, especially to a marketer or advertising agency looking to make waves with their latest activation.

This is why we at REP not only opened our doors, but opened them to anyone. We’re about equal opportunity here. We believe everyone using social media has value. Each individual has their own interest and profession with their own set of followers, all of whom have considerable appreciation for the content they post.

When you sign up at REP, you will choose how you identify yourself. You will assign categories to yourself, which anyone, marketers and advertising agencies (or even other influencers) will comb through to find the person who they feel is most appropriate to promote their product. Through our intuitive, free market, you’ll be able to negotiate for yourself and accept the rate you think you deserve. Don’t think you’re worth it? Think again. 100 influencers with 1K followers bear more influence to the public than 1 influencer with 100k followers.