How to Leverage your Instagram Influencer Profile and Monetize.
By Paul Harrison
Working relentlessly on gaining followers and keeping them engaged can actually pay off. Instagram is working constantly at making the user experience the best in the industry and also empowering Influencers who are driving Instagram into the E-commerce domain by influencing followers.
The year 2020 has seen rapid growth in the reach of E-commerce by many first-time consumers availing the service owing to the onset of the pandemic. 2021 seems to make E-commerce even more viable, it is obvious when Instagram owned by Facebook has many new features in the testing phase and about to roll out the updates very soon, almost all the updates seems to be in a way boosting up the Influencer marketing game played by the Influencers. Mostly, belonging to the Generation-Z demographic.
Monetizing through Instagram Influencer profile can be done by following several practises curated by Hobo.video. A platform exclusively for micro & nano influencer.
Monetizing through Instagram influencer profile takes more than a unique username and a quirky bio. Gaining enough followers to make money out of it can be a quite challenging and complicated task. But the bottom line of, the connection between an influencer and a follower is the age-old barter system between a content creator and the audience. A steady and rapid audience engagement is guaranteed as far as the content produced to cater to the audience is engaging.
Staying on top of the content being produced by them is the most important responsibility of an influencer. Since the content acts as the bridge between them and the followers.
As far as the quality and reception of the content are concerned, Instagram solely provides all features to make sure the influencers are able to efficiently create and put out content to the world. Refer another article on How to make the best of Instagram creator account by Hobo.Video to ensure the best outcome possible.
Gaining and engaging the audience has to be done by implementing some well-known techniques that have been proved to create a good first impression. If you are expecting monetary returns, there are certain prerequisites to have a profile that is worth the money you are expecting.
1. Influencer’s following
The most important aspect of why brands choose influencers to take their product forward to consumers. Brands have to be convinced and assured that; you are the right influencer for their brand.
In the business of Influencer marketing, an Instagram influencer’s IG profile becomes their CV. The number of followers they have garnered, frequency of posts, variations in the content and steps taken from influencers’ end to keep the audience engaged show your skills as an influencer.
Brands and business choose you to use you as a medium to get to the masses. Coming up with path-breaking strategies and concepts alone does not assure an engaged audience. Trying to take them into the equation while considering what kind of concept works for your niche, will do. Instagram offers tools to track and assess your posts’ performance and how they are being received after it surfaces on your followers’ feed. Instagram provides insights as to when is the right time to upload a picture or a video on Instagram for maximum viewing. Everything that takes to make the audience engage in your content is offered by Instagram all you have to concentrate is on your content.
It is imperative to stick to your niche from day 1. Your niche increases the chances of being identified by certain brands looking forward to collaborating with influencers. Brands do not wish to be promoted by an influencer who specializes in another niche different from theirs. Which makes posts about their products appear as the odd one out.
The reason behind sticking to a niche is making sure that your audience will be able to consume the products you promote through your Instagram profile. This certainty gives brands the assurance that you are the right person to get the job done.
2. Create compelling content for engaged followers
Having a large sum of followers pays off in terms of the reach of your posts among the masses, your part in making it reach to many people is relatively less when compared to creating engaging content. An engaged community is the best place to promote products and brands.
Numbers of followers does not contribute to an engaged community it is the content that garners the attention and love that is reciprocated. Always, going the extra mile to establish a personal connection with your followers helps to maintain an influencer-follower relationship. Just like a brand, you as an influencer become a symbol of trust too overtime. The only thing that guarantees the trust is through your content.
Working with the audience’s expectation in mind and giving content what works for them is the key to an engaged community
Having a following and creating engaging content is important for promoting products, to improve the reach and increase followers there are certain measures to be taken.
3. Instagram Bio
First impressions are made in one-tenth of a second. It is highly crucial you make a good impression the very first second a user visits your profile. This is the place where people decide whether to scroll further through your bio or not. Your bio can be used effectively to convey who you are and what people can expect from you.
An introduction to your niche attracts people with similar interest, it filters the visitors here. Those who share similar interest with you look into your profile as to check what you have to offer.
Hashtags can also be used in bio. It is a smart hack to be found when people search using hashtags.
4. Hashtags in your favour
Hashtags are the tool that is employed widely to be identified by many non-followers of your profile. It has become highly effective as Instagram has given the options of following hashtags too. Choice and usage of the right combination of hashtags for your post equal many shoutouts from your friends and fellow influencers.
Instagram has a limit of 30 hashtags per post. Even the right choice of 5–10 hashtags serves the purpose as using 30 hashtags. Finding the right hashtags are important, choose hashtags that are neither common nor rare. Take a look at Hobo.Video’s article on Tips for influencers to grow their Instagram presence.
By regularly using certain hashtags you become familiar with some of your non-followers who conduct searches through hashtags.
5. Consistency
Having a steadily increasing following can only by being regular with posting content. Instagram provides insights as to when your audience is online during which part of the day. This helps to make use of their presence in establishing your profile.
Studies have shown there is a positive correlation between the frequency of posting and engagement rates. The more the posts the more the footfalls.
Going the extra mile by responding to your followers’ comments on your post and regularly interacting through Q&A sessions and live streams show them how much you appreciate and care for them.
6. Producing quality content
Monetizing Instagram is the desire of every influencer in the business. Every influencer is vying with the same object in mind as the others. Standing out from others is absolutely necessary in order to not get lost in the crowd.
Quality content in terms of influencing is using high-resolution pictures with new concepts and one-time product pitches. Repeatedly pitching and promoting a product bores the audience. It helps to add a personal touch to every pitch promoting products which give the impression to the audience that you genuinely suggest the product after experiencing it yourself.
7. Collaborating with other Influencers
Influence marketing is never a lonely job. Establishing a rapport is a highly essential form of fellow influencers from your niche. Keeping a tab on each other’s influencing activities will help stay in touch with the current trend. It is a nice way of pushing each other to do well, try going a step ahead by giving others a shoutout and asking others for a shoutout when your followers do not seem to be increasing.
With the basic prerequisites checked to monetize your Instagram, it is time to move onto discussing, how to leverage the following you have garnered over time to yield money.
New Roll out features
With every update rolled out by Instagram is making influencer marketing easier and effective as Instagram as evolved as the platform that empowers Influencers and growing Influencers. Many features that are going to be discussed below are still in their testing phase conducted by Instagram or limitedly available to a certain region.
1. Affiliate marketing
Being an affiliate with a business, in this case, commodities selling platforms mostly, means, an affiliate working with them to promote and sell their products through Instagram.
Every product the influencer pitches can be accessed by the link provided by them on their Instagram. These links are exclusively allocated for a specific influencer and are traceable.
Purchase done through these links can be monitored by the brand or the company that has roped in the influencer to pitch their products and the influencer is paid a percentage of the product’s amount as commission. It is very crucial to stick to your niche to be identified by brands within your niche.
Instagram Checkout is another tool that can be used by affiliates to their favour. Released only to selective brands in the US, it is likely to be available globally very soon. It offers users to make purchases of things seen on Instagram without leaving the application.
2. Monetizing through sponsored posts
The most popular method of making money is through sponsored posts. Putting out sponsored posts needs a following that assures the brand you are viable as an influencer. The sum you will be paid in return will depend on your followers’ count and the scale of the brand you are associating with.
It can easily come across as a pure marketing stunt to your followers whenever you promote a product. It is highly important to be authentic when promoting a product for a certain business or a brand.
Collaborating with brands out of your niche just for the sake of the money they offer you ends up in audience detaching.
3. Selling your work
If you are a caricaturist, painter or a photographer, your Instagram profile can become your own virtual art gallery. The more sellers showing interest in buying your work depends on your quality of work. Showcasing your work and putting it out for sale through Instagram comes with business without boundaries. It can attract people from any part of the world.
As far as photos are concerned, it is very important to be authentic and not staged. Authenticity is the only way out to produce content that stands out of the crowd. While posting pictures of yours, make sure they are not in a square form and commit a picture with its both length and breadth in such a way that it fits in the Instagram post window. Seeing a full picture before making the purchase gives the buyer an idea about resale value.
4. Instagram shopping
Instagram shopping is a feature for users to promote products through their images. It has to be set up to be used. It is a feature just like tagging people in a picture. You can start adding Shopping Tags to the products you wish to promote.
When your followers tap on the shopping tag on your, they’ll be directed to a product description page where a price and description of the product is given along with its image and the website where it is available for sale.
5. Instagram shopping Stories
Shopping stories comes along after Instagram shopping has been setup. Products on your stories can be tagged using the shopping sticker.
Only one product can be tagged per story and different stickers to tag them can be chosen.
6. Instagram Shop
After the onset of the pandemic with traditional stores’ business affected. Facebook came up with the initiative of Instagram Shop. This will end up in a shop tab being added to the navigation bar of Instagram.
This will guarantee easy access to shop just like switching seamlessly from feed to Direct messaging tab. The Instagram Shop is said to be hosting all the features an E-commerce shopping application will host. In this case, everything will be clubbed in a single application.
Making Monetization easy
There is no other line of business making the most of Instagram as E-commerce and Influence marketing. With Instagram heavily investing effort and money to make sure access to E-commerce is getting easier and fast, it is likely to provide many more opportunities to Influencer to do what they do best and monetize it. At present some features are not available to many parts of the world as they are being tested with limited users to identify any difficulties and are expected to be available throughout the globe very soon.
