There is no doubt about it, Instagram is rapidly becoming the primary choice for online entrepreneurs. Neil Patel,
a New York Times best selling author, a top influencer on the web, and one of the top 10 marketers in Internet Marketing, states that Instagram is a force of nature. What was merely a photo-sharing app initially, has become one of the top social media platforms on the Planet, in less than seven years. It has quickly doubled its active user base in the last two years to 700 million users and its growth has exploded since it launched Instagram Stories in August 2016.
It just goes to show how well people respond to simple, visual-driven content.The interest in Instagram has grown tremendously over the past six years and we highly doubt that it will begin slowing down anytime soon. No matter how you slice it, people love Instagram. It’s one of the most popular ways to share photos and by default sell products and services.
On the left I have added a couple of visuals that clearly show how unbelievably simple it is.
1. Create your Instagram presence.
2. Create Your Data Landing Page.
3. Capture The Data.
4. Deliver Your Product or Service Visually.
The opportunity for making money on Instagram has been growing by the day with new opportunities being born almost every day. Currently there are more than 100 ways to make money utilizing Instagram as the platform to get in front of your audience. Want to know something that I absolutely love about marketers?
They are committed to serving their audience. And when you’re creating a great experience for your prospects, then money is just a byproduct of your success!
If you understand that building a following and then running ads to sell your product is a great way to generate income, it’s the most obvious strategy to make money online. So let’s get into the thick of things and see how to actually make $200, $500, $1,00, $5,000 or even $10,000 per month from the visual social platform. There are even some people (who I will introduce you to by email) that are making upward of $500,000 a year.
Sara Tasker, a 32-year-old woman from the UK; worked as a speech therapist. Four years ago, while on a four-month maternity leave, she created her first Instagram account. Her motivation for signing up on Instagram was the free products and money that brands were offering to Instagram users. And now, she has honed her way to becoming what’s called as a micro-influencer with 170k followers.
Her account is filled with beautiful lifestyle pictures from her life. And she made approximately £120,000 last year. Besides getting paid by brands for posting, she’s also making money from coaching people about creativity and Instagram marketing.
So, making money on Instagram seems to have no boundaries, you just need a great idea and a whole lot of passion!
But what if you only have a few hundred Instagram followers to begin with? If your potential audience size is low your content won’t get seen by a lot of people, let alone drive sales for your or a brand’s products. That’s why you definitely need a few thousand followers to make any money from the platform.
However, you can’t just create a catchy Instagram handle, write a cute description, and start posting pictures without a goal. That might work well to impress your friends, but if you’re looking to make money, here are a couple of prerequisites.
Reach and Influence, why do businesses pay money to an Instagram authority/influencer? They get exposure to their audience, and they hope to make money in the process by having their followers buy or recommend your products or services. If they post at the right time and use hashtags (we’ll discuss these tactics later), then your organic reach will be higher compared to other social media platforms.
Introducing Influencer marketing and why you need them.
Every high value brand knows the concept of influencer marketing and want to jump on the bandwagon, but many don't know why it's so important. Here's the skinny!
If you are new to IG, you probably don't have a large audience, that should not be detrimental to your success and the main reason why you should work with influencers. Whether it’s because they understand the concept, see the power of influencer marketing or simply because ‘everyone else is doing it,’ they know it's a happening thing but when faced with the big question of why. On a comfort level, there are literally thousands of people making money on IG without even having products and services of their own.
Here (in no particular order) are 20 reasons why you should work with influencers.
They Generate Sales.
It’s a no-brainer that influencers generate sales, and that’s why so many brands are jumping on the influencer marketing bandwagon.
From the minute an influencer starts posting about your product or service, sales generation starts.
Depending on the influencer’s channel and the length of the campaign, sales will be generated immediately, in bursts or over a number of weeks depending on your deal with the Influencer.
Influencers Create Content.
Influencers are the experts of content creation, creating high-quality and engaging content that their following can relate to. An important note; you don't own the content when you work with an influencer and cannot use, share, edit or publish without their permission and approval.
They Build Brand Awareness.
Influencers are the link between a brand and its market, it’s that simple! While influencers do generate leads and sales as well, the brand awareness they build is unequal to traditional PR strategies in cost and visibility.
Exposure and brand awareness is so important in today’s saturated retail and eCommerce space, so the more brand awareness you can achieve, the better.
They Are A Trusted Source.
Consumers are more likely to trust the opinion of their peers than the brand itself, so partnering with an influencer to communicate your brand message can achieve success in less time.
They Have Authority and Influence.
Recent reports suggest that 90% of consumers make a purchase after reading about a product or service on a blog or review site.
Influencers are called influencers for a reason.
They Build Relationships.
Influencers build relationships between their followers and your product or service. Without that connection, it's almost impossible to start building relationships from scratch.
They’re Expert Communicators.
Influencers live and breath their genre, they’ve built their following as genre experts, they’ve excellent at communicating a brand's vision and message in a way that their followers will engage with and connect with.
They Are Engaged.
Their success relies on how engaged their followers are and how much reach they can generate with each post. The number of engaged followers is much more important then the total number of followers because it shows how many people are actually interacting with the influencer. when they talk about the brand and it is a better indicator of reach.
They Are Creative.
There are millions of influencers across Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest and blogs, so in order to stand out from the crowd influencers need to be creative in all stages of content development in order to produce large volumes of unique content.
They Know Their Audience.
When you work with an influencer, you can understand who your collaboration will reach. Whether it is stay at home Moms, business people, sports fanatics, hobbyists or children looking for gift ideas, the influencer will have a great insight into their followers and how to best engage with them.
They’re Excellent Value For Money.
When compared to traditional advertising and PR activity, collaborating with influencers generates excellent value for money when your aim is to connect with a large target audience. In most cases, influencer collaborations generate a return on your original investment (especially when working with micro-influencers)and making a profit on the campaign quickly.
Influencers Start The Conversation
Before an influencer can build a relationship between your brand and their followers, they must first start the conversation only if they truly believe in your brand.
Influencers Drive Traffic.
Traffic to your website, online store and social media channels is paramount to your success because it demonstrates that customers/clients are moving through the sales funnel and engaging with the brand. Influencer collaborations can drive more traffic to your website so you can convert more leads.
They Convert Leads.
If you think of ‘leads’ as your potential customers, influencers are crucial to converting leads in the sales funnel. From the moment a consumer sees your product on an influencer’s page, they’re thinking about the product and what it would look like in their life. Now that the product is top of mind, it’s much easier to convert the lead into a paying customer.
They Give Brands Access To Their Target Market.
Influencers have a very targeted following of people in the same demographic, which brands can tap into if they are strategic with their prospecting and 'Call To Action'. My advice is to work with influencers in your niche as they will no doubt not only have have a relationship built on trust, they also loyal following of consumers interested in the topic, which is essentially your target market.
They Are Generally Transparent.
One of the great things about influencers is that they’re genuine, so they will include a disclaimer if they were gifted a product, or paid to promote a product. They’re also authentic when it comes to working with brands and are known to decline an opportunity that is not the right fit. This is good news because it means you'll only be working with influencers that really support your product or service.
They Distribute Content.
While influencers are predominately content creators themselves, they can (and do) also distribute other content on their channels. If you wrote an ebook, a blog post or created an instructional video, share those assets with relevant influencers and ask whether they’d be interested in sharing it with their followers, ultimately widening the reach for your content.
They Think Outside The Box.
Influencers are really creative! They also have this ability to think outside of the box and generate thought provoking questions. Once engaged with an Influencer, give them a high level brief of the campaign and what your goals are, give them creative control to put the content together but retain your decision making power
They Become Brand Ambassadors.
Working with influencers on one-off campaigns is great for raising brand awareness and generating visibility, but it’s when they become long-term brand ambassadors that you truly start to see their value.
They Improve Your SEO Scores.
Just as influencers drive traffic to your website, online store and social media channels, they also help to improve your SEO rating.
They Are Information Providers.
Whether the campaign is about introducing a new product or service, promoting purchase incentives such as discount codes or giving FREE stuff away, influencers are great when you want to get a message out to the masses quickly.
They Have A Fresh Perspective.
The beauty of working with influencers is that they have their own ideas, perspective and experience, they know their audience, so they can put a new flair on your marketing campaign and uncover a better route to market.
They Can Grow Your Social Following.
Always tag your influencer so that your social media platforms see the large following as a result of the campaign.
So, why wouldn't you work with influencers?
