Is an influencer classification by follower size useful?

A still popular criterion for selecting influencers is to go by their reach, i.e. the number of followers or subscribers. Reach is defined as the absolute number of followers that could be reached by an influencer's post.
In plain language: this is a theoretical assumption that presupposes that the influencer has real influence in the concrete activation of their followers.

In reality, followers decide for themselves to what extent they take notice of an influencer post and may subsequently engage in a post-related interaction. This means that a post can have a smaller reach than the number of followers would indicate. Nevertheless, multiplication effects such as "word of mouth" to other people who are not actually followers of the influencer can also increase the reach and interaction to/with a post.

With this in mind, attempts are nevertheless made to cluster influencers based on their followers. Depending on the social media platform, a different classification into influencer groups and reach is used, although this classification is only a point of reference, as the boundaries are not yet clearly defined and the terms are also used differently.

In the following presentation, we have limited ourselves to the four dominant social media platforms in Germany and the common influencer categorization there, which has no scientific basis:

Clustering Platform	"NANO" (number of followers)	"MICRO" (number of followers)	"MACRO" (number of followers)	"MEGA" (number of followers)
Instagram	1.000 - 10.000	10.000 - 100.000	100.000 - 1.000.000	over 1,000,000
Facebook	1.000 - 10.000	10.000 - 100.000	100.000 - 1.000.000	over 1,000,000
YouTube	1.000 - 10.000	10.000 - 100.000	100.000 - 1.000.000	over 1,000,000
TikTok	1.000 - 10.000	10.000 - 100.000	100.000 - 1.000.000	over 1,000,000

(Other influencer platforms that are known and/or used in different regions are e.g: LinkedIn, Pinterest, Telegram, Twitch, Twitter, Weibo).

This clustering plays a subordinate role for our internal performance and services. The indication of a reach in our products only serves as a further indication to better assess the desired marketing effect. In order to provide our customers with better results, we focus and prioritize on much more specific selection criteria.

However, we have no influence on the fees of the influencers, who largely measure and demand their claims based on their classification or the size of their total following. The influencer classification is therefore already an initial indication of budget planning and budget distribution.