What is an Instagram Influencer?

An Instagram influencer is someone who has a large following and can persuade that following to take action. It doesn’t have to be half a million or a million. As long as that person can positively influence its following and it’s following takes action right away or after some calculated decision making, they are considered an influencer already. These people are often gifted with the power of extreme persuasion that people take action to do some things after they say it. They are like the masters of their own lives.

How to be an Instagram Influencer

Reality is, being an established Instagram influencer is something that’s hard to achieve. Especially if you’re not a people’s person and your natural persuasion skill and charm aren’t that great. But with authenticity, you can build credibility and trustworthiness towards people. Which might turn into a solid following. Also, there are proven strategies that marketing agencies have formulated to push and hone a simple people person in becoming an established Instagram Influencer.

How to Take Advantage of the High Instagram Influence Rating

It’s the dream of every business to tap the high Instagram influence rating. But doing so is faced with so many challenges because Instagram followers aren’t easy to attract. They are only attracted to following someone who shares interest and belief with them – they also follow celebrities that they love because they’re curious if how their daily lives roll. 

Given this, it means that Instagram is being divided into sections, cults, fans, and a combination of a solid and soft following. But, regardless of whatever that kind of following is being called, they are being led by one person only – the Instagram influencer. Let’s look at it this way, the Instagram influencer is the shepherd and the following is herd. Though unlike the herd that it does everything the shepherd says, though not all – Instagram followers are more likely to respond positively to their shepherd.

Therefore, influencing the influencer is your goal to tap the high Instagram influence rating. 

How to Influence the Instagram Influencer

Influencing the influencer is a sweet word to say but takes a lot of hard work. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to accomplish. And most of the time, it depends on your outreach skills.

Now here are the top 5 must-try strategies if how can your brand influence the Instagram influencer itself. 

1 – Send Free Products for Review: Sending free products to an influencer is one of the top ways to influence them with your brand. This is a great and working strategy with a very small failure rate because almost all non-celebrity Instagram Influencers love to receive free products to review. If you’re a small to medium business, save your sanity by only reaching out to non-celebrity Instagram Influencers because celebrity Instagrammers have managers who look out for businesses that reach out to them and may control the celeb’s decision, which is almost impossible to bypass.

TIP! This strategy is a make or break for your business or product. Since there is no monetary involvement and no contracts either, the influencer can be rude, say bad things and ruin your brand like a bomb. Therefore, if you want to resort to this kind of strategy, give it your best shot. Send your best product! Don’t send the product that you’re not confident about the quality. Or to be on the safer side of things, send your most reviewed product. In addition, check and double-check if everything is working as intended.

DON’T! For this strategy, DON’T send your normal unchecked product. You don’t want to send something with broken corners, scratches and simply a malfunctioning product. You don’t want to piss the influencer who might bury your brand’s reputation six feet underground instantly. Checking and repackaging everything nicely will save your reputation and sanity. 

2 – Mutual Beneficiary Contest: This strategy is an upgrade of the “Send a Free Product for Review.” The mutual beneficiary contest strategy is perfect for brand awareness or product launching campaigns. This is applicable for every type of influencer as long as they see your brand or product to resonate with what they are doing and what their followers can relate to. 

The perfect type of Instagram influencers for this type of Instagram marketing are those who are currently enjoying the momentum or reaching their few hundred thousand or million followers. You can reach out to them and offer a couple of your best products or your newest model for giveaway purposes only and not for review or any commentary by the influencer. Make sure to cap out a budget first as this may get overwhelming along the way and you as the brand might end up spending more than what you have to. 

It’s not hard to find an Instagram Influencer that’ll say yes to this offer as long as your offer is generous. Because contests can also benefit them in growing their followers. This strategy is like striking the iron while it’s hot since the celebrating feeling of the Influencer is still there.  

TIP! Do your research and gather your prospect influencers. Stay close to them as they are about to hit a new milestone like hitting the 100k followers, the 500k or their first million followers. Connect with them BEFORE the milestone is reached and tell them your plans of giving away your products as a celebration. This is very important as you might not get noticed if you connect with them AFTER they reach their milestone. Because big brands are going to talk to them after they reach a certain milestone. At least if they’ve given you their word first hand, there is a big chance that you’ll be the brand who will celebrate with them for that specific milestone. 

Since this tactic is celebrating with the influencer, this leads to the third Instagram Marketing Tactic. 

3 – Collaborative Branded Work: Of all Instagram Marketing Tactics, this is the one that will give your brand the most straightforward effect as your brand is going to create and post the content just with the involvement of the influencer. 

This strategy of tapping an influencer’s influence is most effective if it comes next after the Mutual Beneficiary Contest. You can stage an after-party for the Influencer’s epic Instagram milestone achievement. This way, their followers are going to consider your brand the next time they make a decision to purchase because you now have something mutual – the love and support for their influencer that they look up to. 

TIP! Don’t be too pushy of your brand during the collaborative branded event, video, etc. Just let things happen naturally. It’s okay not to be very pushy of your brand in this branded content because you have the spotlight right now, it’s only you, the influencer and the followers. You don’t want to repel people by making then feel that you’re just using the influencer that they look up. You don’t want to portray a message that you’re only after the business and the branding. You should also take care of the Influencer’s feelings and whereabouts because you still want to be with them on their upcoming milestone achievements.

4 – Rewarded Brand Representation: Now that you’re connected with the influencer and their influence, it’s time to make some really good money. Rewarded brand representation is effective if it comes next after the “Send a Free Product for Review” and “Collaborative Branded Work.” This tactic is simply affiliate marketing but a very focused one, and with proper representation. 

Provide a special product link (possibly with the influencer’s name) or a discount code (with the influencer’s name again), and give discounts under that link. Then reward your influencer with a generous commission for every sale made via their link or code. 

TIP! Create some personal measurable revenue milestones and surprise your influencer once every milestone is achieved. These surprises will maintain the warm relationship between you as the brand and the influencers who represent your brand. This will also remind the influencer that they need to push and expose your brand more if they want more surprises from you other than the monetary commission per sale.

5 – Sponsored Posting: If you don’t have time and you don’t want to build relationships, this is the best option for you. Among all Instagram Marketing Tactics, this is the most straightforward. It walks the talk. This is also the most flexible, extremely fulfilling and the most goal-oriented. Because you’re paying the influencer, you can pretty much demand almost anything that you want them to do in the sponsored post, as long as it’s decent and doesn’t violate their rights. 

TIP! Since you’re paying the influencer directly, there’s a chance that your brand might demand more from the influencer like going the extra mile to satisfy your goal. Don’t do it and be considerate because if the sponsored posting of the said influencer works, you want them to still say YES to you the next time you approach them for more sponsored posts. 

DON’T: Don’t be too brandy with the sponsored post, display your branding in an elegant and subtle way so it connects better with the followers and blends well with the rest of the posts the influencer does. Making it stand out so much will make it look like an advertisement that people easily deflect to. 

Think of Conversions

Before you start any of the top 5 Instagram Marketing Tactic it’s very important to think of future conversions and how can you measure it. Always be transparent with the influencer of your goals why you’re working with them so they can help you set up measurable conversion touch points. A personal discount link and code per influencer is a good example of segregating the conversion made by the influencer and your brand’s organic marketing efforts. Transparency works like magic.