An Instagram Influencer is somebody who has more influence than the average user, and brands pay them to promote their products. Does this actually work? Yup. It’s actually one of the top 10 ways to boost sales of your products. As an Influencer, you can have a lot of fun and earn even more money. Becoming an influencer requires hard work, but it’s doable if you’re committed. Here we explore the ways to launch your Influencer career. Say goodbye to your day job!
Pick a theme
What are you passionate about? You have to establish yourself within a given field or niche, and it may as well be one you are passionate about. You will be more likely to succeed in a field you feel positive and knowledgeable about. Your Instagram posts and hashtags should reflect this theme consistently, it should definitely not be a collection of random posts. It’s possible to choose a few things if they link together well, for example, food, travel and lifestyle or art, crafts and crocheting.
Create or switch to a business account
There are so many benefits to having a business account. This will allow you to schedule your posts in advance, and also give you access to Insights. This gives you valuable information to boost your number of followers, such as the best days and times to post your pictures; and which posts get the most engagement. The demographic information is useful when you start pitching to brands about collaborating.
Write an enticing bio
This will be the first thing followers or a potential brand look at when trying to figure out who you are, so make sure it reflects this. It should be intriguing, engaging and fun. Think of a couple of interesting tidbits about yourself and incorporate these into your bio, but leave enough mystery so that people will follow you to learn more.
Piece your feed together
Use your posts like a jigsaw, to fit together into one beautiful mosaic. Your photos should look good together, they should all be eye-catching and beautiful but the colours and images should also work well together for when people view your feed as a whole. Use the same type of filters, lighting and editing tools so that they don’t contrast when put next to each other. Visual appeal is an important factor when becoming an Influencer.
Use captions effectively
Your Instagram feed should tell a story, and you should be using captions as a way of narrating your life to complement the photos. If you post without a caption, people often won’t know how they are supposed to feel about the photos. They are left unsure, and won’t know how to respond. They won’t like the feeling. If you write a witty, interesting or charming caption, it directs their response and they will feel more positive and interested.
Utilize Stories
Instagram Stories are being used by over 200 million people now, marking it the latest craze in social media. When you create a Story you can tag others, give shout-outs and add links. This is a great way of building relationships, and if they return the favour, it’ll boost your visibility. You can even tag brands here in the hopes they will start to take notice.
Hashtag awareness
We all know that hashtags make your posts more visible, and more visibility means more followers and more likes. However, there are some considerations when using hashtags. Popular hashtags aren’t always the best ones because your post is likely to get lost within seconds, therefore will actually decrease visibility because you’ve wasted one of your 30 potential hashtags. You should be picking hashtags that accurately describe your photo because people who find your post will have been looking for that type of photo and are more likely to engage. The optimum visibility is between 10,000 and one million. Don’t pick one that yields over a million posts, it’ll get lost in the competition. Under 10,000 and not many people will be searching for that hashtag.
Use at least 11 hashtags in each post to get maximum engagement. Posts with 11 or more hashtags get 79.5% interaction per 1k followers – 442% more engagement than using none. If you want to avoid your caption looking too spammy, try adding hashtags in a comment.
Engage with people
Don’t forget the ‘social’ in social media. People love to interact and engage with other users. Boosting engagement can be achieved by hosting giveaways, creating polls in Stories and following and engaging with similar users to yourself. Instagram is an online community, and people like to be treated as though they are part of that community. They want to feel included.
Consistency is key
Posting more often to Instagram will undoubtedly boost your number of followers, it’s just the way Instagram works. However, consistency of posting is more important. If you can’t commit to posting three times a day consistently, then don’t start doing it. Decide how often you are going to post, once a day or three times a week, and then stick to it. There are also platforms out there for creating scheduled photos posts if you are able to create your posts in advance.
Approach brands
After you’ve built up your profile, decided upon your theme and gained a huge following of at least 1,000, it’s time to start interacting with brands. At first, you can just start tagging brands or mentioning them in relevant posts, in order to put yourself on their radar. Once you are ready, if you find a brand that is particularly relevant to what you stand for, you could send them a direct message with a pitch for a collaboration.
In summary, in order to become a successful Influencer, you’ll have to be patient while you build up a feed of high-quality posts relevant to your chosen passion. If you constantly engage
Max started The Responsive Agency in 2014 to help business owners to navigate the fast-paced world of digital marketing. With a focus on solutions that offer high-performance growth, clients have seen dramatic increases in turnover and profit.