HOW INFLUENCERS EARN ON INSTAGRAM

By Anushreya Kondapi

Gone are the days when companies spent huge amounts on billboard advertisements. In this day and age of social media marketing, Instagram has taken over the advertisement business.

You already know, Instagram influencers are paid to promote products. This helps corporations easily reach out to the vast audience base that influencers have accumulated, with just a few posts from them. As a matter of fact, Instagram has one of the most active and young user base among all social media platforms with 300 million daily active users that are mostly millennials. That is why the global major brands often dedicate 72% of their marketing budget to influencers.

This trend has made having a notable social media presence a lucrative way for people to earn money.

Instagram influencers can charge anywhere between $75 and $3,000 per post. Even if you are at the lower end of the spectrum, it is still a lot of money for just an Instagram post!

Let’s get real though – it isn’t easy to become an Instagram influencer with a substantial follower base. It requires a lot of time and effort to reach a stage where you can actually influence your audience to follow along on your “suggestions”.

Let’s get to work now 👩‍🎤

The first step in making money out of Instagram posts is to create a business account. The benefit is that with a business account, you get access to Instagram Analytics. You will be able to see your follower demographics and also which posts and at what time and day are getting better engagement. This will allow you to understand your audience better, learn what content works best for them and at what hour of the day you will get maximum likes and views.

With almost a third of all Instagram Stories made by businesses and brands they are the rage right now as users become more eager to share their feed using stories rather than posts and are generally more memorable. It is a perfect way to gain visibility and grow your following. Even people who aren’t your followers can discover you from your Instagram Stories. You can tag others on your Stories and give a shout out to other accounts.

This is a great way of building relationships and growing your following because those accounts are likely to return the favor too – and that means more visibility for your online presence.

Once you are all set with your audience reach, it is important to contact brands and support their product. You can do this by tagging them in your posts or by directly messaging them.

Many brands just can’t compete with the reach of an influencer and so they partner with the influencers who become ambassadors of the brand and ultimately sharesponsored posts or stories to help get the word around about their products. This way they can easily take advantage of your audience’s trust and engagement with your content. You also get referral codes from the brands you are endorsing, which you can share with your followers. This is another way in which companies can increase their product reach and you gain more loyal followers.

Companies hire brand ambassadors for long-term relationships and pay them regularly. It is the job of an influencer to become the expert on the social media marketing of the said product here.

Once you’ve found some brands to partner with, it’s important to be as transparent with your followers as possible. Transparency in both, whether you are sharing a product or, whether you received the product for free or are partnering with a brand. This will build more trust between you and your followers and also help you grow a loyal following.

One great influencer example you might have across is Salama Mohammed’s, an Emirati Instagram Celebrity/ Influencer’s paid partnership posts for Le Petit Marseillais, Samsung, Clinique, and more.

(Image source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B8v9xP6hLQb/?igshid=wkqja8vhaw4p )

Another way to make money is through advertisement. Instagram now allows you to make a branded content post by using it’s ‘paid partnership tool’. This will let brands to appear in feeds and stories of a social media star even if they don’t follow them. There will be a full transparency between the brand and the content creator.

A new way of creating revenue in collaboration with a brand is to co-create a product or collection (like Lilly Singh’s lipstick line ‘Bawse’ with SmashBox). Influencers make money by co-creating and receive a commission on all sales. It is basically like investing in a company.

This is the era of influencers. Brands know very well that influencers can make and break them. We know it is not as easy it sounds. You cannot become an Instagram influencer and start making money from the platform overnight. You will need to create a unique, valuable, and attractive product, come up with a good strategy to present it out there, and be patient and consistent. Furthermore having an engaging base is crucial as a constant influx of traffic can increase eyes onto your account which could lead to more affiliated marketing deals and more money. All the hard work will be worth it when the big bucks start pouring in and of course, the ‘verified blue tick’.

To wrap up, you cannot become an Instagram influencer and start making money from the platform overnight. You will need to create a unique, valuable, and attractive product, come up with a good strategy to present it out there, and be patient and consistent. Furthermore having an engaging base is crucial as a constant influx of traffic can increase eyes onto your account which could lead to more affiliated marketing deals and more money.