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How many social influencers with 10K - 100K followers are there in the world? and in the US?
Hello! Thanks for your request for the number of social influencers with 10,000-100,000 followers in the world. The short version is that after searching extensively through articles, social media analytics sources, social media sites, and industry reports, I’ve determined that the information you requested is not publicly available because data analytics websites charge fees for such data and free reports do not break down data to that level. However, I was able to gather useful information about Twitter influencers and a list of useful influencer marketing tools. Below you will find a deep dive of my methodology, helpful findings, and suggestions for possible continued research.
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METHODOLOGY
EXCLUSIONS
I see that you have asked a few questions regarding this topic, so I first reviewed other responses by Wonder researchers to confirm I was not duplicating information. For this reason, I specifically focus on statistics and quotes related to the number of influencers with 10,000-100,000 followers, rather than revenue figures provided in other responses. Please see this response that values the influencer marketing market at $10-$15 billion per Maximize Social Business.
The majority of articles and data on this topic are overall statistics on total users and lists of top accounts with the most followers. Per your request, I also excluded that information from my response.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
Next, I reviewed articles, social media analytics sites, social media sites, and industry reports to determine total number of social media influencers with 10,000-100,000 followers first at a global level, then for the U.S, and also specific to fashion and apparel. After finding that this data is not publicly accessible at the general level of social media influencers, I attempted to estimate it for major social media sites Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube. There was extremely limited information regarding influencers and the number of accounts/channels by followers for all of these except Twitter. I was able to pull some useful, general information for Twitter which is included below.
After an exhaustive search, I determined that the data you require certainly exists, but is provided for a fee by data analytics sites. Those sites do provide some free information such as total figures and lists of top 100-1,000 social media accounts. However, they hold on to the overall datasets to be able to charge clients for access. I include a list of such resources below, as many of them offer relatively affordable options.
I ended by identifying influencer marketing tools and include a list of some resources below.
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HELPFUL FINDINGS
TWITTER
As Twitter is ranked 3rd out of the top social media sites, it is a reasonable reference for social media influencers as a whole. Interestingly, if Twitter were a country it would have the 12th largest population in the world. For this reason, it is likely that many social media influencers are active on Twitter as well as other social media sites.
There are 1.3 billion total accounts on Twitter, but 313 million are active users and as many as 20 million are fake accounts. As such, there are around 293 million active and legitimate users on Twitter. According to Quartz Media, people with over 10,000 followers are in the 99.9th percentile of all users or .1%, meaning around 293k users have over 10,000 followers on Twitter (.001 * 293 million).
Having determined the number of accounts with more than 10,000 followers, I attempted to determine how many have more than 100k followers to estimate the 10,000-100,000 range. Unfortunately, no information was publicly-available to further narrow down that value.
However, I did determine that 65% U.S. brands have at least one Twitter account and 86% of U.S. nonprofits and charities do. Meanwhile, Twitter users with over 1 million followers tend to be brands or celebrities and many places (such as tourist attractions) also have Twitter accounts with large numbers of followers. As such it is likely that a majority of users in the 10,000-100,000 range are brands, nonprofits, celebrities, or places. If we conservatively estimate that 60% (over half) of that group are brands, celebrities, non-profits, or places, then around 117,000 of users with over 10,000 followers are individuals and fall into the influencer category. Some of that number fall above 100,000 followers, but estimating any further would simply be a rough guess. My best estimate is that globally at or under 100,000 people are influencers with 10,000-100,000 followers
Social Bakers provides lists of top 1,000 Twitter profiles by category (celebrities, brands, places, sports teams), which helped me to make the above estimates.
Social Bakers also indicates that there are 67 million Twitter users in the U.S. Assuming .1% of those users also have over 10,000 followers, we can estimate that 67,000 American Twitter users have over 10,000 followers. That number is likely understated, though, as a majority of brands and celebrities on Twitter appear to be American.
Applying similar logic from above, if at least 60% of American Twitter users with over 10,000 followers are brands, celebrities, non-profits, or places, I conservatively estimate that around 26,800 are individual influencers with over 10,000 followers. Again, some may have more than 100,000 followers, so my best and highly conservative estimate is that 20,000 people are U.S. social influencers on Twitter with 10,000-100,000 followers.
All of the above are rough guesstimates based on available data. I include these calculations here to give you a sense of likely numbers as well as how limited publicly-available data is on this topic.
MICRO-INFLUENCERS
In my search, I learned that micro-influencers (compared with influencers) are typically defined as those with up to 10,000 followers. On Twitter, accounts with around 1,000 followers were estimated in 2013 as being at the 97th percentile of all Twitter users. Assuming this data is still relevant in 2017, Twitter users with 1,000-10,000 followers comprise 2% (97-99 percentiles) of total users on Twitter or 6.4 million users. However, again a percentage of that number are likely to be brands, celebrities, non-profits, or places.
PAYWALLED DATA SOURCES
Many times during my research I thought I had finally found a data source that would allow me to calculate the values you require. The data you need certainly exists; however, social media analytics sites guard it closely and offer it for a fee. Here are a few options you may find useful:
SOCIAL BLADE
For a fee, Social Blade allows registered members to query its large database. For example, a query report of 500 users with 10,000-100,000 followers costs $25 at $.05 a user. It appears that you can increase the dataset to more users and also work with Social Blade directly to generate the reports you need.
EXPANDED RAMBLINGS
Expanded Ramblings has affordable reports with a variety of social media states that are regularly updated. It costs $2.99 per report.
Sprout Social offers a range of social media analytics that allow users to analyze Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
This site publicly lists the top 1,000 accounts by followers across various categories, but also have paid options for companies looking to analyze social media data at deeper levels.
IDENTIFYING SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCERS
According to Business 2 Community, "84% of marketing professionals" target influencers and 59% plan to increase their influencer marketing budgets. Moreover, 35% of young women cite social media as having a major influence on their purchasing decisions. Given the importance of engaging influencers, here are some useful tools for identifying social media influencers in the fashion and apparel industry.
Buzz Sumo offers a search feature to find key influencers by topic or competitors. Companies using Buzz Sumo include Buzz Feed, Expedia, National Geographic, CapitalOne, Yahoo, and Symantec.
Followerwonk is a free tool to search for influencers on Twitter by locations and topic.
Trendspottr allows users to identify trending hashtags, topics, and influencers on Instagram.
Users can find Twitter and Instagram influencers by location including a feature to follow specific regions or places.
This company offers a free tool to determine if an influencer's main audience is a good fit for a specific brand. It includes demographic data along with location and follower professions.
Hootsuite offers a tool to "manage all your social media marketing one place" with the option to sort influencers into lists.
Another site that allows users to filter influencers by topic. It may also have the data you require on number of influencers by follower amount.
For additional useful tools, I recommend browsing this list compiled by Business 2 Community. It lists resources and pricing.
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POSSIBLE CONTINUED RESEARCH
In understanding what types of information are and are not publicly available on this topic, I’ve suggested a few other routes you may be interested in researching:
1) Given that it is increasingly important for brands to incorporate influencer marketing into their marketing strategies, you may be interested in pulling case studies of companies in your field that have successfully undertaken influencer marketing. For example, Forever21 has been particularly successful using social media marketing.
2) You may be interested in researching and ranking other useful influencer marketing tools to add to the list I provided above.
3) Not all social media is created equal in terms of user engagement. You may be interested in researching what are the best social media sites for engaging users in the fashion and apparel industry. For example, in general Instagram tends to better engage users than Facebook or Twitter, though all see engagement levels fall as number of followers increases.
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CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, this response explicitly avoids duplicating information in the other Wonder requests you submitted on this topic. After searching extensively through articles, social media analytics sources, social media sites, and industry reports, I’ve determined that the information you requested regarding the number of influencers with 10,000-100,000 followers is not publicly available. This is largely because data analytics websites charge fees for such data and free reports do not break down data to that level. However, I was able to gather useful information about Twitter influencers and a list of useful tools for influencer marketing that may be of use to you. If you’d like to continue research on any of the other topics I’ve outlined above, just let us know!
Thanks for using Wonder!