More and more people are looking for jobs that don’t bind them to a desk or force them to work at a fixed time. A profession that provides people with the luxury of ‘doing what you love’ is that of an Instagram Influencer. Becoming an influencer provides people with the flexibility to work at your choice of time! Along with that, influencers also get to:
- Connect with like-minded people and build a community by sharing posts on ‘the gram’ and engaging in the comments section.
- You can be your authentic self by creating content around a genre of choice and sharing opinions with the audience!
- FREE PRODUCTS! Yes, influencers get a load of free products from brands needing to create a buzz about their newest launches.
Strategies to become an Instagram influencer.
If you have made up your mind and wish to become an Instagram influencer, make these tips a part of your strategy to jump the ranks and gain success!
1. Pick a niche you are passionate about.
Seeing your peers succeed in their niche could influence you into creating and uploading content around the same. However, if you do not possess expertise around the same niche, it could be problematic for you because your content would be very similar to theirs! Your audience does not want to see this, and they follow you to see something new!
Focus on finding out your area of expertise or what you love and would want to explore before starting the content creation process. To help you narrow down your search, here are some of the most popular and in-demand genres on Instagram.
- Entertainment (like Comedy shorts, gossip around celebs or other influencers).
- Sports, coaching or personal development: For example you could create content on topics like exercises to lose weight or latest updates on cricket between India and England.
- Technology: Create content about new tech releases, mobile phone reviews, new updates on windows laptops being ideal, etc.
- Health and wellness: Content could be about healthy food and how to reduce stress for better body functioning.
- Travel and lifestyle: Content could be about budget places to travel to, beautiful destinations to visit once in your life, etc.
- Food and cooking: You could talk about new eateries in your city or quick bites to make when you feel lazy.
- Fashion and clothing: Offer viewers information about how to pair outfits from the already existing wardrobe, fabrics you should invest in and budget steal.
- Beauty: Talk about 5 game-changing products to give glowing skin or makeup products people should stop using.
- The environment: You could offer people ways to reduce their carbon footprint and maybe their daily activities that are harmful to the environment and should be avoided.
Feel free to mix 2 or more genres for producing content for Instagram.
2. Write relevant captions.
To be impactful on Instagram, you are required to make every post visually appealing and have your captions tell a clear story. Captions are an essential part of the post because they complete it by providing context! For example, check out this post on the page by the name Vintage Daily.
Its caption paints a clear picture in a short and crisp format! You will see the famous Hollywood siren Marilyn Monore in the image, and the caption explains that. It also tells you when it was clicked by whom (her friend Frieda Hull).
Your overall voice on the page should be genuine, and the information you provide to be fact-checked! This strategy allows trust-building with the audience and also grabs their attention.
3. Upload reels and short videos.
Short videos and reels have grown wildly popular on Instagram in the past years. Instagram has been investing big bucks on their latest feature, REELS! As per a report, the head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, had gone on record to say that Videos will be a big part of Instagram to compete with Tik Tok. They are not an untapped territory, but they provide the massive potential for Instagram followers to grow!
Keep these tips in mind when creating video content.
- RESEARCH: on what your competitors are making and trending and get inspiration for your content.
- SERVE A PURPOSE: the videos should motivate your audience or educate them regarding a new topic.
- START VIDEO WITH A HOOK: like ‘stop scrolling’ or ‘knock knock’ to make your viewers stop and watch your video.
This reel by The Pasta Queen is the perfect example to help you understand the mad popularity of Reels and educational content! The reel has 1.3 million views and gives the simplest explanation for creating a delicious spaghetti soup.
4. Be consistent and maintain regular presence.
It is important to stay on your follower’s feed to grow consistently on Instagram. If you don’t possess full-fledged content to create a good post, maintain a presence through stories. Instagram stories were designed to be short, fun, and memorable, so you must use them. People can respond to your stories and a conversation with the followers can be initiated!
Tip: Mention the locations of your stories whenever possible to have them reach people who don’t follow you as of yet.
5. Write a better bio.
People and brands first see your bio even before seeing your content to gather a sense of what your Instagram handle is about. So, it would be best if you made it appealing. Unfortunately, writing a bio can be difficult because there are only 150 characters provided to write it! So, take inspiration from these catchy bios displayed below.
6. Quality trumps quantity.
The quality of your images and videos must be top-notch! Your followers do not want to be looking at grainy, blurry, low-resolution posts that make no sense even if the content is good. So be sure to use a mobile phone with a high camera quality to avoid that. Your content will go unnoticed if you don’t emphasize its quality.
There are various sizes for videos supported by Instagram, but the resolution should be 1080 x 608 pixels to 1080 x 1350 pixels in the landscape. The image size is expected to fall under the ratio 1.91:1 or 4:5 with a width of 1080 pixels. If you find it difficult to fit your videos or image posts to the right size then use apps like Instasize to instantly adjust them with white padding and make your job easier.
7. Collaborate with influencers.
Collaborate or partner with other influencers or experts in your field for creating content. Such a strategy allows both parties to benefit! If you are a comedy video creator, then a comedy sketch collaboration can be worked on as Anwar Jibawi does with much smaller Instagram influencers like Amanda McCants. Check out this hilarious collaboration by them- https://www.instagram.com/p/CM2uOV2j3ZV/.
Conclusion.
These are the best strategies to follow when starting out as an Instagram Influencer! Now, you must keep in mind that you should keep interacting with your audience in the comments section and the DM’s. Also, when you have gained a substantial following, you can ask the audience what they want to see and ease your content ideation process!
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