“Hello, friends! Welcome to my Youtube channel ..oh no..no..no. I am now an Instagram influencer, or am I?”
The dilemma is real, but so is the urge to become famous on social media. And why wouldn’t it be? Brands chase you for promotion, the people love you, and any move you make gets a thumbs up. Those zestful pictures, tempting giveaways, “honest” reviews, luxury stays and rolls are enough to make you crave a gleaming lifestyle. But hold on! Becoming a paid influencer isn’t chicken soup.
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Well, success on Instagram in 2023 is honestly just a matter of carefully planned strategic moves, knowing what to post and when. Voila! Your organic followers surge, and you start making money through social media.
To help you capitalise on this opportunity, we unveil all those new, secret strategies Instagrammers use today.
1. It’s a Full-time Business
First things first- building an empire on social media is entrepreneurship in disguise. It demands your involvement, continuous interaction and resourcefulness. Being an Instagram influencer is nothing less than a full-time business. Hence the term “Instapreneur”.
Think of it freelancing full-time. You ought to:
- interact with people and build engagement
Social media marketer and online entrepreneur, Matt Thomas has a bulletproof way to authentically engage with the audience:
Engagement is more than just clicking the 'like' button.
— Matt Thomas (@insidersecrets) April 30, 2021
Reach out and make new connections.
- shore-up regular posting
- keep a tab on your followers
- do a competitor survey
- be in alignment with what’s trending (be it filters, fashion, niche-stricken discovery or audience preference)
- reach out to other influencers. Propose a collaboration, fix and quote your rates,
- promote yourself and others with dreamy pictures/videos/reels
- write catchy captions/copies with relevant hashtags
- perform a quality check
- find news ways to build engagement and be relevant
Here is what Social Media Marketing Strategist and Trainer, Janet Machuka has to say on cracking the "social":
Listen to your audience; don’t just speak. Engage in dialogues. This is what makes social media social.
— Janet Machuka (@janetmachuka_) August 3, 2021
Whew! That’s a whole lot of activities to build an influencer-like profile. Though it will take a lot of effort, it will all be worth it. Those offers will start reeling in once you reach even the smallest milestone. Because brands now use the power of micro-influencers too.
Get your markers out and create a vision board with these latest tips to gain over a million followers on Instagram.
2. Figure Out The Algorithm
Before you make the mistake of following and unfollowing random people (ugh, such a waste of time), sit and read. Try to figure out how Instagram works: acquaint yourself with its Algorithm.
If you are even remotely aware of recent IG trends, most influencers were concerned about their diminishing visibility, resulting in low likes and impressions. It is an example of social media platforms, their changing AI and evolving features.
But you have to be on top of your game to become a top Instagram influencer. Let algorithms change, but your performance won’t see a nosedive for sure. Understand that the recent Instagram algorithm is dependent upon a user’s interaction with the platform. But there are certainly ways to pop up on your followers’ feed.
Strategies to Stay Visible and Outsmart Instagram Algorithm
Visibility is the lifeline of every social media influencer. The right exposure brings genuine organic followers and expands your reach. For this, use these tactics to serve your content directly to users.
Raise the Bar with your Photos
Instagram is content hungry. And the only content that sells here is EYE-CATCHING GRAPHICS.
Therefore, it is crucial to produce alluring pictures. Care for some tips? Here is how you can refine your photography. For an extra dose of inspiration, have a look at these crazy yet simple ways to click professional-looking pictures for social media.
Do you see how an Instagram influencer has a well-polished profile with magnetic images? Yes. That’s what creates the magic.
To make your landscape look more picturesque and portraits more effortless, download these editors for your Instagram pictures.
Photo editors for Instagram
Use Stories all the way
Another useful tool to build engagement on Instagram is through those Stories. It is the quickest way to interact with your audience as an influencer. Moreover, it positively keeps you in the loop of the user's feed. But what makes Stories used by 500 million users every day? It is their high interactive quality and placement.
So instead of choosing between Instagram Stories and regular posts, go for both to see a surge in your followers.
Go Crazy with Videos
Videos are something better than videos. And both of them combined contribute to quality visual content. The popularity, demand and consumption of videos are unarguably better than any other type of content. Hence, the surge in video marketing.
Social apps like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram are blurring the lines between social media and entertainment, resulting in more competition for consumers’ time.
-App Annie
Depending on the user preference, Instagram rolled out IGTV Videos, regularly pushes Stories with Boomerang, time-lapse, Superzoom, and Layout. It recently released the new Reels feature used by influencers like crazy.
Ergo, employ Instagram videos to your advantage and make them aesthetic as per IG taste. If you are keen to produce high-quality videos for greater impact and engagement, know the basics of videography for beginners. All successful Instagram influencers upgrade, adapt and strategize to keep up with the latest developments.
Use Instagram Live to Boost Interaction
Going Live was a feature first rolled out by Facebook in 2015. Social media platforms like Youtube and Instagram all use it with their own modifications. Instagram gives you these really cool features and a Live chat feature to hit up interaction and include more than 2 people at a time.
To become an influencer and boost your audience, use the Instagram Live feature judiciously. This feature is helpful for raw, uncut video making.
Captions to Seal the Deal
The Instagram audience is more about the graphics, but they sure love a dose of captions that make them think or bring a smile to their faces. Alongside beautiful pictures, seal the deal with crafty and compelling captions. Tag brands, products, friends, and keep it light to induce a conversation in the comments. This is possible when you wisely place a CTA in all your captions.
Moreover, use the most appropriate hashtags. Hashtags like #OOTD, #TBT (Throwback Thursday), #Instagood, #FBF (Flashback Friday), #IGers are in vogue and aptly describe a mood or a feel. Employ the services of free/paid hashtag generators.
Hashtag generators tools for Instagram
Note: Instagram has a shadowban (hide) policy where it will ban you for all hashtag visibility in the hashtag feed if/when you use irrelevant hashtags.
Thankfully, there are a bunch of handy Instagram tools to make your social media strategies more efficient. They are all the rage among influencers and are used judiciously too.
Know the Best Time to Post on Instagram
Has it ever happened where you posted a picture and desperately waited for likes and comments but didn’t get any? That’s probably because you posted something during slow hours. The solution is to know the peak hours of posting. This trick stands true for all social media handles and is tried and tested for Instagram, especially. There is a time to post a certain kind of content on each platform. Knowing the best time to post on Instagram is extremely important to winning at becoming an Instagram influencer.
3. Get That Blue Tick
The true mark of an Instagram influencer is a verified account. Users are inclined to trust information coming from an account with that blue tick. All you have to do is fill a form, send a verification request and wait for your turn.
While there are no shortcuts to it, use these tips to get verified on Instagram:
- Keep your account public
- Increase your count of organic followers
- Don’t fall trap to buy a verification badge
- Try to increase your organic search
- Do regular posting, complete your profile and optimize your bio
- Stick to Instagram Community Guidelines and Terms of Use
4. A Tad Bit of Maths
As much as it is about good content, Instagram is also a play of numbers, i.e. followers. Your followers determine your popularity. A high follower count is a comment of your content quality, likeability and influential power. Hence, brands only consider collaborating with you if you have tasteful content and fulfil the criteria to become an Instagram influencer.
How many followers do you need on Instagram to be an influencer?
There are broadly four broad categories of influencers depending on your follower count:
- Nano influencer
- Micro influencer
- Macro influencer
- Mega influencer
Nano influencer
A nano influencer is someone with 1000 followers. These people are likely to charge somewhere between $10-$100 per post for paid promotion on Instagram.
Micro influencer
An Instagram micro-influencer has around 100,000 followers. With that massive following, they charge $100–$500 per post promotion.
Macro influencer
Consider them as celebrities or stars of the Internet with a fan base. Macro influencers on Instagram have more than 100,000 followers and demand $5,000–$10,000 per post as commission.
Mega influencer
Mega influencers comprise all global celebrities and people of importance. They have a mammoth audience and commonly demand a hefty price of $1M or more per post.
Based on that breakdown, it is clear as day that the more the number of followers, the higher your social media value. Consequently, increased visibility on social media is possible with the right kind of profile.
5. Build The Right Kind of Profile
People will follow you, and your audience will be able to interact with you better only when you have an inviting profile. For this, influencers make use of a business profile. Those with a business profile get access to Instagram Analytics. These stats will give you a better breakdown of your audience and the performance of each post. Based on these stats, you can easily trace which post is doing best and why. You can create similar content this way. In fact, brands prefer to partner with a business account more.
Apart from this, be sure to diversify your reach and redirect people to your personal websites like WordPress blog, a YouTube account or another third party platform.
6. Network Like Your Life Depends on it
Your success as an Instagram influencer in 2023 is pivoted by the number of brand collaborations you score. Hence, network with those in your niche and then some more. For this, use influencer marketing platforms to the best of your ability. The idea is to spread the word of your presence, be visible and seem like the best fit for brands to collaborate and run campaigns.
A good idea is to put your email in the Instagram bio.
Instagram has evolved from being just a photo-sharing app to becoming one of the toughest marketing platforms to crack. It is a platform for the elite, perhaps the only one that allows genuine creators to succeed. Fewer redirects, easy interface and continuous engagement are what separate it from the other platforms. Thus, Instagram influencing is perhaps one of the best marketing avenues. So, becoming an influencer on Instagram in 2023 is perhaps a more meticulous endeavour than is commonly perceived. How do you like these suggestions?
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