Here's the Thing About Working with Male Influencers...

Okay, we’ll just say it - partnering with male influencers has its challenges. There are more men than women on Instagram who fall into the influencer sweet spot of being 18 to 34 years old. And men are more likely to engage with influencers online than women. 

BUT …

They are waaaaay less likely to become influencers themselves. And that can make partnering with the right male influencers for your campaign a TOTAL pain.

Brace yourself:  Male influencers account for just 16% of all influencers, according to Statista¸.  They create about 1 in 7 sponsored posts you find on Instagram. 

Negative Neil says, “But that’s just Instagram, right? There are plenty of other platforms that are used for influencer marketing.”

True, Neil. In fact, we suspect the percentage of sponsored posts published by male creators may be a bit higher on YouTube. BUT…

We don’t have access to that data yet. What we do know is that last year, YouTube began polling creators asking them to voluntarily provide their personal information.  Whether or not YouTube will release that information to the general public remains to be seen. 

Still, it’s worth noting that many of the most popular channels on YouTube feature male creators.  Somehow, that doesn’t make recruiting male influencers to your cause any easier. 

So, this week, we have 3 key insights you’re gonna want to know if you’re peppering a campaign with men.

#1 Men Hashtag Differently (if they use them at all)

What’s with men and hashtagging stuff? 🙄

One of the big challenges with finding male influencers to fit specific campaigns is that men are less likely to punctuate their posts with hashtags (Gen X and Boomer men are NOTORIOUSLY bad at getting found on IG). 

The likelihood of finding male creators shifts depending on their lifestyles. For instance, your local plumbing professional probably isn’t using a bunch of hashtags unless he’s marketing his services). All this means that men who could be or would be influencers are virtually unfindable beyond their sphere of friends. 

And yeah, it’s true that men and women use hashtagging differently. If and when men use hashtags (and they’re not committed to hashtags like women are), they typically hashtag to connect their captions to other ongoing conversations (like #socialmedia  #LALakers  #entrepreneurship). 

Women, on the other hand, are more likely to use hashtags as an extension of the sentiments expressed in their posts (like #byefelicia #karen #whydidntIthinkofthat). 

Here’s an idea for a quick workaround: Look for married influencers whose loving husbands can be persuaded to do an Instagram takeover of their partner’s feed. 

#2 Men communicate differently on social media 

Keep that in mind as you craft your messaging and map out those campaigns. 

They hashtag differently, they communicate differently, they post different types of images (more often body shots with their friends, or pics of them outdoors),  and they use social media for different purposes. 

70% of men use social media. 45% of millennial fathers use search to get answers to their questions. And dads dedicate more than a quarter of their time online to dad-focused content. Where do they find this dad-focused content? YouTube and social.

Here are a few more differences between men and women:

• While women tend to use social media to socialize privately and communicate professionally, men use social media as a resource for finding and sharing insights. 
• Men are visual creatures, but when it comes to social media, women rely more heavily on visual content to communicate while men lean more toward textual content (think Pinterest vs Reddit).
• Women are more likely to use emoticons to contextualize text. Men are more likely to rely strictly on textual communication.
• Women are more likely to use social media to create communities for sharing their feelings and experiences. Men tend to use social media to weigh in on topics like politics, values, the government, and sports. 

All of these little nuances are important for the visuals your campaign produces, the audience you’ll reach, and the type of content your campaign will create to reuse across your various branded channels. It’s really pretty fascinating stuff.

#3 You May Pay More Since Scarcity Drives Up The Price

We’re in that place, people. The place where we admit that men make more money per post than women for sponsored content. But it’s not just a pay gap situation.

Huh?

Yah. Check it: the percentage of content creators who are men vs those who are women is about equivalent. BUT there’s a difference between a content creator and an influencer. Influencing must be intentional in order for your campaign to work. 

That’s where the numbers get weird. Because while there are as many male content creators as female, not as many men are intentional about (or interested in) being influencers. That said…

Money becomes a pretty important carrot for recruiting men to your campaign. You need to find male influencers whose audiences overlap your target audience.

And there are only so many of those. Then… 

IF YOU MANAGE to carve out the time to find the right male influencers for your campaign, they have to be willing and available to participate in your campaign. 

IF THEY ARE, there’s a good chance they’ll be charging more than a female influencer would for the same campaign. 

There’s a stat floating around that says the average male influencer charges $108 more per sponsored image post than female influencers. 

But a HyperAuditor survey found that men can get, on average 49% more per post than female influencers.

Truth is, even after that finding them and matching them and paying them more, you’re still gonna have to put together a dazzling pitch to woo male influencers. 

Are you exhausted yet? 

Wrapping Up the Male Influencer Conversation

For many brands, incorporating male influencers as part of your influencer marketing strategy is a way to add a level of depth and diversity you just don’t get when your entire influencer pool looks exactly the same. But in verticals like hunting, outdoors, construction, agriculture, and outerwear, and sports apparel you NEED  male influencers. You miss a significant portion of your target audience without them. 

We’ve incorporated men, couples, and dads into campaigns from all walks of life - from blue-collar heroes to male models to the cool and aloof. And it’s a JOB. But it’s not impossible.  Just trust - you have your work cut out for you.