It’s one thing to call yourself an Instagram Influencer. But it’s another thing altogether to become an impressive Instagram influencer. That is, one whose Instagram audience trusts your brand and product reviews, but also one who is trusted by the brands themselves. While size matters, being impressive isn’t all about amassing tens of thousands of Instagram followers. A follower who regularly ignores your posts is not really a follower at all, but instead, a waste of digital pixels.
According to popular travel influencer, Christina Galbato, while growing your online Instagram presence can seem like an uphill battle in the 2020s, becoming an effective brand influencer is entirely possible with focus and commitment. What’s even more promising, she says, is that one need not possess hundreds of thousands of followers in order to go from average Instagram Influencer to impressive, simply because big brands are becoming more accustomed to working with micro-influencers.
That said, let’s take a look at 5 ways you can go from average to impressive Instagram influencer.
- Identify Your Instagram Niche
When you scroll the Instagram Explore page and come upon profile that interests you, such as Off-Road 4X4s, chances are you will click on the profile. Naturally you are expecting a page filled with dozens or even hundreds of photos and video shots of 4X4s, 4X4 components, and other 4X4 brands, products, and ideas. But if instead, you’re bombarded by pictures of the family vacation, the cuddly dog, a ton of selfies perhaps mixed in with a random photo and/or 4X4 affiliate product link, chances are you will quickly turn to another profile.
Think of niching down, this way: when customers visit the pasta aisle in the supermarket, they don’t want to find tins of ground coffee and jugs of spring water mixed in with the occasional box of linguini. They want to see a large variety of pasta brands and choices neatly, conveniently displayed. It’s the same for an impressive Instagram influencer. When people visit your profile, they find comfort in knowing what they can expect from your page precisely because it is focused on your niche. By niching down as precisely as possible, your audience will grow far more rapidly in both quantity and quality.
- It’s Not the Instagram Audience Size that Matters, but How You Use It
Impressive Instagram Influencer and blogger, Zulie Rane, attests that five thousand Instagram followers, while seemingly impressive on the surface, is not really all that impressive. It is however, a first milestone to even more impressive milestones, like ten, or twenty thousand followers. The point of being an influencer is to get people to click on your links to purchase goods and services that you back with your pictures and words. But reality tells us that only a small percentage of your audience is actually going to click on a photo, video, or Buy icon. An even smaller percentage of those will actually make the commitment to buy something. Therefore, your job as an impressive Instagram Influencer is to commit to making your profile the best it can be by providing new content on a regular basis and making certain that content is what followers have come to expect.
- Be a Proactive Instagram Influencer
Says Rane, in an idea world, she would have thousands of brands contacting her to collaborate. But that’s not the reality of being an Instagram Influencer. But she doesn’t wait around for them to contact her. In order to up her game and become an Impressive Instagram Influencer, she spends much of her time contacting them. What are the essential points of her messages to brand representatives?
–The reason she and their products are an excellent fit for her profile.
–The post she plans on creating for them.
–A little demographic information which the brand might find enticing.
Almost always, someone from the brand will respond. Note: this kind of contact works especially well if a holiday sale is coming up for the Christmas season, for instance.
- Be a Consistent Instagram Poster
Impressive Instagram Influencer, Christina Galbato, points out that just a few years ago, one could be more sporadic with new posts featuring new products. But in 2020 and beyond, things are different. If an influencer wishes to grow an engaging audience that is going to purchase products, she needs to be consistently posting brand new and interesting, if not attractive content. This can be everyday or it can be several days per week. The point is to set a schedule your followers can rely on, and stick to it.
- Impressive Instagram Influencers are Impressive Posters
What this means, of course, is that you are creating well written, informative, fun posts and captions. Think along the terms of microblogging whereby you’re offering value to your audience in the form of a list. For instance, if you’re running the previously mentioned 4X4 Off-Roading Instagram profile, you might want to provide a mini blog post that covers the five most popular Jeep models over the past five decades. This kind of post is not only brief, but it packs a punch and can inspire an audience to not only engage with the influencer, but inevitably to purchase a sponsored product.
Conclusion
If you want to go from being one of millions of average Instagram Influencers to the proud few Impressive Instagram Influencers who potentially make tens of thousands of dollars per month, you need not concentrate on the size of your audience so much as the quality. Quality equals engagement between the influencer and potential buyer. But in order to do this, you need to be niche focused, able to openly engage with your followers, proactive in reaching out to brand representatives (especially during holiday brand promo seasons), consistent with fresh posts, and lastly, but not least, an interesting and informative microblogger.
