Did you dive into the Instagram world with dreams of becoming a Social Media Influencer with millions of followers and loads of sponsorship deals? Have you been severely disappointed by your lack of success and engagement? There may be some things you need to change to see the tide roll to your favor.
The realm of influencer marketing is so much more than just sharing good content and promoting products. These posts need to be laser-focused with a clear goal in mind. They need to be unique and have more than just a pretty picture.
If you are serious about becoming a trustworthy Social Media influencer, then take a look at these 15 strategic techniques to ensure ultimate influencer success on Instagram.
1. Get Out of the Digital World on Occasion
Not everything you do as a social media influencer has to be online. Find local events you can attend to meet your followers face to face and show them you’re a real person. These can provide great networking opportunities, which will open many future doors.
Search through apps like DoStuff and Eventbrite to find local events within your interests. These can be great resources to plan ahead and snag a ticket before they’re all gone.
Carry business cards, stickers, or other promotional items with your username or hashtag to be handed out to build awareness of you and your brand. Be sure to still share pictures or videos of you attending, so those who aren’t at the event see you taking part.
2. Collaborate with Other Influencers & Brands
Collaboration is one of the quickest ways to boost your following and establish yourself in the social world. This doesn’t mean you should simply send out blasts of Direct Messages and work with the first person who replies. No matter how big or small your following is, you need to be selective with the brands and individuals you work with.
Influencer marketing companies like Social Bond, MAVRCK, Upfluence, Julius, and others can connect you with both brands and popular influencers in your industry.
Do research on other brands and influencers to determine your similar interests and passions. Use that information to write meaningful pitches to those you want to collaborate with and tell them what you can do for them.
3. Engage with Your Following
Even more important than people engaging with your content, is for you to comment back. As often as you can, you should be having conversations with your followers to get feedback on your profile. This needs to be more than a single emoji or one-word comment.
Take some time every day to chat with the people on your page to learn from them, ask questions about their thoughts on your content, and how you can approve. People love to be heard and feel like their opinions matter. Heed their advice and make the changes you feel will be most beneficial.
4. Post on Holidays
In the corporate world, we instantly think of holidays as a day off. This mindset is far from accurate when it comes to being a social media influencer. As we discussed before, you should be posting every single day to ensure consistent engagement and avoid falling off the map.
Holidays and special events can be great times to share themed content, which can greatly increase your niche following. Once people see that you are human and can relate to their traditions, they will be even more likely to follow you and engage on your posts.
5. Switch to a Business Instagram Account
There are multiple benefits to switching from a personal account to a business profile. One of the best perks is the analytics information that come with it. While the “Insights” section doesn’t go into great detail, it still allows you to view engagement on specific posts, see the growth of your following, and how many page views you’ve had in a certain period of time.
Like a Facebook page, an Instagram business profile also allows you to promote your posts with ads. This is an easy-to-use process which lets you share a post with a simple call-to-action.
6. Focus on Organic Growth
Growth can often be gradual and even slow at times when building your Instagram following. The temptation will likely come up more than once to purchase followers in an attempt to boost your numbers and look more influential. PLEASE DON’T DO THIS!
Companies or apps that offer this service are often scams with fake followers. Although it may boost the number of your following, real people will often be able to tell the difference simply by looking at your posts.
These fake followers won’t be able to like or comment on your pictures. This makes your profile appear lopsided and makes you out to be a wannabe social influencer. Focus on sharing informative, engaging content and real followers will come.
7. Stay Consistent
Maintaining an updated Instagram feed at all times is vital to social media influencer success. Posting just once or twice a week is not enough. You need to stay dedicated if you want to keep your page relevant in the social world.
Millions of photos and videos are being shared every day on Instagram. If you miss too many days in a row, your profile could easily be buried under the content of countless profiles within your niche. Be consistent with your posts and make sure you are sharing engaging content often.
Using social media management tools from companies like Social Bond, Hootsuite, and Sprout Social can be a great help in keeping yourself relevant on Instagram. These sites offer applications to help you schedule your content ahead of time, making it easy to set up all of your posts for the week in just a few hours.
8. Use Productivity Apps to Stay on Track
Now you may be thinking that productivity apps are just for business owners and busy moms. Well, in reality, you are a business owner. Being a social media influencer is an entrepreneurial venture that you will need to fully dedicate yourself to be successful.
Utilizing software like Evernote and the Hemingway App can pay major dividends in improving your social media productivity. Evernote is a note-taking tool that helps you create simple to-do lists and sets reminders for yourself. It is a great place to brainstorm and organize potential post ideas.
The Hemingway App is useful software for those who may not consider themselves the best writer. If you copy and paste your content into the app, it will highlight any grammatical errors, or the use of passive voice in your writing. It can also catch sentences that are too long or unclear.
9. Start Using Instagram Stories
Instagram is constantly being updated to keep up with and even surpass the competition. Not long ago they decided to add Instagram Stories to the mix to include features similar to Snapchat. In April 2018, Instagram beat out Snapchat’s usage by more than 40 million users.
Instagram Stories offer a great option to share content with a clear goal. You can post an image or brief video that will be easily accessible above your other Instagram posts. When a page has a story to view, a colorful ring will appear around their profile picture.
Share your stories with attached hashtags, polls, and stickers to create engaging content and learn more about your following.
10. Grab Attention with a Unique Feed
Finding a specific look for your posts is a major part of the branding process. If you look at any of the top Instagram influencer accounts, you will likely see many of their posts have a similar appearance although their content is always different. This can include using a specific filter, adding your logo, or some other way of making your posts recognizable.
If you use a filter, it is a good idea to use one other than those available on Instagram. These are too commonly used due to how simple it is to add one during the posting process. Instead, use another app like Snapseed or Adobe Lightroom CC to edit and enhance your photos before sharing them.
11. Choose Engaging Hashtags
Without the use of hashtags, it can be tremendously difficult to grow your social following. Hashtags make your content more discoverable to those looking for posts related to your niche. For this reason, it’s important to make sure you are only using tags that are relevant to the photo you are sharing.
Avoid typing in thirty hashtags with every post. Instead, use a few trending hashtags that tie back to your profile and what you represent. Use a site like All Hashtag to find popular tags within your niche to make your life easier.
After you have shared numerous posts, do some research on which hashtags got you the most engagement and focus on utilizing those more often.
12. Stay Up-to-date with Trends and Technology
Once you have zeroed down your niche, you need to do everything in your power to stay on top of the trends it covers. Following other influencers and subscribing to popular blogs are great ways to stay in the know and be aware of what’s trending.
Another way to stay ahead of the competition is by constantly researching new technology and apps you can use as an influencer. Set up hashtags to follow on Twitter to stay updated on trending posts and set up Google Alerts to monitor new web content within your niche. Thousands of apps are added to the App Store every day, so it’s impossible to know it all, but you should still monitor what is popular at least weekly.
13. Be Yourself
While you can pull inspiration from other Instagram accounts, you should never copy what has already been done. No one wants to see the same thing over and over when swiping through their feed.
Instead of copying your competition, take what they are doing and make it your own. If you see a post someone shared that had a lot of engagement, rebrand the idea with your own personality and improve upon it. Being yourself is the greatest way to be unique because there is no one else in the world exactly like you.
14. Add a Quality Bio to Your Profile
Your bio will be one of the first things potential new followers will see when they visit your social profile. It will need to grab their attention and pique their interest to get them to hit that “follow” button.
A clear and concise bio can have many different looks and strategies including bullet points, quotes, and other details. Now that Instagram links hashtags in the bio section, it is also a good idea to include one or two of your main hashtags. This helps define your niche for those visiting your page and lets them know what they can expect from you in the future.
15. Pick a Niche
One of the first key steps to becoming a legitimate social media influencer is to narrow down a niche for yourself. It will be important that your followers recognize you as a specialist in your industry. You should decide what you want to focus on and constantly be researching and building your knowledge on any new products or services within that world.
The more you know about your niche, the more your readers will recognize you as a future reference for this topic. This will lead them to refer friends and family to your page who are interested in the same things.
Learn More Techniques for Social Media Influencer Success
This list is stacked with great resources and tools to help you find success as an influencer, but it is only the first few steps to improving your efforts. There are so many ways to advance your social media influencer marketing tactics. As you select a niche, improve your Instagram feed, and collaborate with others, you will see your following grow rapidly.
Don’t allow yourself to get stuck in a rut of posting day after day without putting in the extra time and energy to use these tools and see the results you deserve.
After you use a few of these strategic techniques, leave us a comment below to let us know how it worked for you. We would love to hear your success stories. Then be sure to check out our blog for more ways you can better your influencer marketing lifestyle.
By Logan Derrick
The post 15 Strategic Techniques to Ensure Ultimate Influencer Success #Instagram appeared first on SOCIAL BOND BLOG.
