Some Brilliant Tips to Help You Become a Golden Instagram Influencer

Influencing is one of the fastest growing career categories in the marketing industry, especially over the past 10 years and it’s relatively new. After all, before social media became so popular, no one had ever heard of being an Influencer.

Past Influencers

However, there were still Influencers around and that’s because the key to influencing is being able to influence others and having a significant number of followers – when it comes to social channels.

Celebrities, Film Stars, Pop Stars – They’re All Influencers

Traditional celebrities, film stars, pop stars, royalty – all of those people are top Influencers in their own right and fight amongst each other for the most followers.

As a celebrity, their life is your brand. And in today’s world, that means they need to be an influencer. With over 1 billion active users, Instagram is one of the most powerful platforms for promoting your brand and connecting with their fans. and how to get more followers on Instagram is something that they know!!

Back in the 1980’s Madonna influenced millions of young girls to become more independent and wear different types of clothes – fingerless gloves, crimped hair, even laddered tights! She still has millions of social media followers today.

The Influencers of Today

Celebrities, film stars, and pop stars all have huge followings on social media. And their posts are often liked and shared by millions of people. This gives them a lot of power to influence the way people think and behave. For example, if a celebrity posts about buy ig likes, their followers are likely to do the same.

Let’s talk influencers today. For example, one of the biggest Celebrity Influencers is Selena Gomez, the famous Hollywood actress. One of the most popular Instagram Influencers is James Charles. These types of Influencers work with brands as well, as part of their social media marketing strategy, using a media kit to target the right influencers.

Princess Kate (Catherine), the future Queen of England – who had no title before she was married and was a “commoner” and influenced millions of young girls to believe that anything is possible – if you want something that badly! She married a Prince! However, brands struggle to get royalty to endorse their products. They certainly wouldn’t be able to pay them to promote their brand, so they reach out to other celebrities and others to find the right influencer for their business.

So influencing isn’t new, but the role of Influencer is.

Becoming an Instagram Influencer Takes Time

We’re going to tell you more about what an Instagram Influencer is and help you to become an Instagram Influencer along with lots of useful tips to grow your very own Influencing business, posting consistent content and improving engagement rates.

It doesn’t happen overnight – you need to put in the work to gain more follower count. Of course, there are many Influencers’ platforms, but Instagram continues to be the biggest.

What is an Instagram Influencer?

You’ve heard the term countless numbers of times and you probably follow a few big Influencers on Instagram and their Instagram feed, but what does influencing really mean?

We’ve given you a little information above and answer all of your Instagram Influencer FAQs, but we’ll go into it in more detail here.

Influencing is exactly that, it is influencing others to wear certain things, use certain products, behave in a certain way, go to a certain place etc.

As a result, they can be effective at promoting products and services to their followers. Brands typically buy Instagram views in order to reach a larger audience, and they often work with multiple influencers in order to maximize their reach.

We Are All Influencers

We are all influencers. Let’s give you an example of how we are all Influencers.

Let’s say you wear a brand-new outfit, and you go out with your friends. One of your friends comments on how great your outfit is and asks where you bought it from. You tell your friend and the next day; they go and buy the same outfit. That’s because you influenced it. It’s the art of persuasion (without being that persuasive at all!).

Here’s another example.

Perhaps you’ve gone on a fabulous vacation! You’ve taken a picture of a deserted beach with golden sands and the sea is deep blue, clear as glass. The sun is shining, it’s hot, there’s a breeze and a palm tree sways gently next to a hammock where you’re snoozing reading a good book.

You post that idyllic image on your Instagram account, your social channel. Within half an hour you have over 100 likes and a bunch of comments.

“Where are you?”

“Wow, that looks great – I’m so jealous!”

“Tell me where you are on vacation!”

“I want to be where you are…”

And so on.

So you post replies to your comments and tell everyone where you are and just how wonderful your vacation experience is! Your commentators immediately start to research your destination, perhaps one books it as their next vacation and others remember it for future use. You’ve just influenced a load of people. In essence, you are also a travel Influencer – and what’s more, you’ve just done it on Instagram.

Look at travel bloggers, just by writing about what they love, they influence thousands of likeminded individuals.

What does that mean?

It means you definitely have the potential of becoming an Instagram Influencer (if you want to be) and now you know what Influencing is, we can move onto the next section.

The Different Types of Instagram Influencers

You know what Influencing is, but did you know that there are lots of different types of Instagram Influencers? We’ll tell you all about them in this section.

Here’s a list of the different types of top Instagram Influencers. Read on for more detail.

Brand Influencers.
Micro Influencers (also known as Nano Influencers).
Celebrity Influencers (Macro Influencers or Mega Influencers).
Blog Influencers.
Key Opinion Leaders.
Leadership Influencers.
Social Media Influencers.

What About Brand Ambassador?

Don’t get confused between an Instagram Influencer and a Brand Ambassador – they are different. We’ll tell you why below.

An Influencer (sometimes referred to as a Brand Influencer) relates to a person who has a following in an area, whether that area is fashion, music, fitness, haircare – any industry area. They engage with their followers on Instagram regularly, sharing tips, new products, ideas, and their lifestyle.

They have a large following and that makes them powerful as they’re able to persuade people to make purchasing decisions. Lots of industry players employ Brand Influencers to publicize their products or services.

The Types of Brand Influencers

Brand Influencers covers a variety of different types of Influencers, for example, there are Celebrity Influencers (big superstars with huge followings, sometimes more than billions), there are also Micro-Influencers, who are smaller with a smaller following, sometimes a few hundred thousand. Micro-Influencers tend to work with start-ups and small businesses, often they have a very niche area and they’re less expensive to employ than big Influencers.

There are also Blog Influencers, Lifestyle Influencers and Lifestyle Bloggers – these people have a strong blog following, with a big readership and they also usually use social media platforms to draw people to their blogs. Other brands use Blog Influencers and Lifestyle Bloggers to write about their products and services as they have such a big following.

Examples of Brand Influencers

Brand Influencers include Leadership Influencers and Opinion Leaders. Both of these tend to be more business or political leaders with big followings. As an example, President Biden is a Leadership Influencer, the Ukrainian President, Zelensky has become a huge Leadership Influencer in recent months. Political commentators are also often Key Opinion Leaders (Leadership Influencers). Businesspeople such as Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos are also Leadership Influencers and people regularly follow and engage with their Instagram posts and Instagram Stories.

Brand Ambassadors

A Brand Ambassador is different as they are usually employed by a business with a contractual agreement. Their job is to work exclusively for that business for the contracted period of time and to increase brand awareness.

As an example, a Brand Ambassador in the fashion industry might only wear a certain brand’s clothing and will also represent the lifestyle of the ideal buyer for that brand. They will have a strong knowledge of the business, including its products or services. Yes, they have Influence, and lots of them have Influencer accounts but there is a difference as discussed. Influencers tend to have lots of brands that they work with.

Statistics – Influencer Marketing

Becoming an Influencer doesn’t happen overnight but with courage and determination, plus an affinity to the area you want to influence, could really reap results. Here are some stats to support your goal:

In 2021, Influencer Marketing was the biggest trend in social media and reaped better results than search engine optimization (SEO), marketing activity offline and video – according to marketers.
It’s a cost-effective method of marketing which means more and more industries will invest in it going forward. 80% of marketers agree with this comment.
In 2022, most big businesses plan to invest in the area with a bigger budget than previously.
Instagram is the biggest social media marketing network for Influencing, followed by Facebook. TikTok is the one to watch (like having a YouTube channel), it’s growing so quickly that there’s plenty of scope for that Influencer marketing platform.
GenZ are the most “influenced” generation and trust their favorite Influencers, more than the other demographics.
To get started you do need a strong following of at least 10,000 (to be a Micro-Influencer) and while you can reach out to big brands (small brands too) and businesses, lots of start-up Influencers go straight to an Influencer Marketing Agency to kick-start their Influencing career.

So if you’re still convinced that being an Influencer on the Instagram platform is the career for you – let’s help you get started with some tips to help you become a golden Instagram Influencer, it’s all about having an Influencer social media marketing strategy.

Get To Know Instagram

You need to understand your social accounts’ mechanics if you want to do a good job so explore Instagram and all of its features. Posting is easy – what about using Live Stories? Uploading video? Using emojis and stickers? Posting polls and questions? Have you used IGTV yet? Do you know about Carousel Posts and even Instagram Creator Studio? All of the aforementioned features will be useful to you in your Instagram Influencer marketing career.

Create a Business Account

One of the important aspects of being an Instagram Influencer is getting a business account as this will help you to grow your career faster. There’s no minimum requirement of followers to have an Instagram business account and it does give you more kudos.

Fill In As Much Information As Possible

You should also make sure your bio is completed fully, add a link to your blog or website (if you have one) and make sure that your profile is switched on to public. If it’s private, it will become almost impossible to branch out and be noticed by others and you won’t get likes on Instagram app or grow your Instagram users.

Who Is Your Favorite Influencer?

Who is your favorite Influencer? We recommend looking closely at their social channels and working out what you love about their Instagram posts. It’s also about finding Influencers that you enjoy following.

Build a Community

Most importantly is building your community on your social network of choice. Start by reaching out to friends, family, colleagues, old school friends, acquaintances – the obvious people who you’re pretty sure will follow your account! If you’re just starting out, you have to start somewhere!

Try and Be Unique

The very successful independent Influencers on Instagram are usually unique. However, with 1.4 billion people on Instagram and 500,000 active Influencers using the platform – it’s hard to be original!

So – even if you can’t be completely unique, have your own style and this is easy because we are all unique, just inject some of your internet personality into your posts!

Research the Competition

Of course, you have competition and it’s worth noting what they do, what they do well, what they don’t do so well (could you capitalize on that?) and emulate some of that but always add your own personal element.

Can You Find a Smaller, Niche Area?

If you can, find a smaller, niche area that’s got more opportunity to tap into. Of course, most people tend to sway towards fashion, beauty, lifestyle, health, fitness, cooking etc. but if there’s another area that you’re pretty clued-up on, then why not use that as your area? Remember, to start with, you could try more than one area to see which gets more engagement.

If you want to Influence in a heavily populated area (e.g. beauty), look at other beauty influencers or makeup line artists to see what they do well and areas where you think you might be able to do a better job!

Research Your Niche Area

On the topic of niche, don’t be too niche that you restrict the opportunity of growing fans! Research your area and make sure that other Influencers in your niche have followers. It’s unlikely you’ll find an area that hasn’t been attempted before…

Have a Uniform Look

Whether you’re on one platform, two platform or you use every platform, try and be instantly recognizable and give yourself a brand. By that we mean use the same style of photography, the same fonts, the same colors, and the same tone of voice. This not only gives you that instant recognition that you want from your followers, but it also gives you kudos.

Put it this way, there’s no point in being one style on Instagram, another style on Facebook and a third style on TikTok – it’s just confusing. If you want a brand to take you seriously, you need to be serious about your own Instagram Influencer brand!

Be Active On Other Social Media Platforms

Following on from above, if you want to be an Instagram Influencer then that’s great but we would recommend some activity on other platforms because you might find you also have a large, engaged audience on Facebook or TikTok. Lots of platforms allow cross-posting, so you could link your accounts and when you post, your post immediately becomes visible on your other platforms.

Get to Grips With Creator Studio

Facebook and Instagram are both owned by Meta so using both of these platforms allows for a seamless posting exercise. Do check out Facebook Creator Studio as you can use this feature for Instagram as well. It’s a brilliant tool that allows you to schedule all of your post, access insights and information on your demographics and keeps all of your content together in a Content Library. It also gives you access to sounds and free music.

Instagram also has the Instagram Creator Studio (if you don’t use Facebook) but if you use both, just hop onto Facebook Creator Studio and manage both of your social media networks from there.

Always Post Good Quality Images, Video and Text

To succeed as an Influencer on Instagram and be taken seriously by brands and businesses, you need to look slick and professional. That means across all of your images, your videos, your LIVE streams, your IGTV AND your text.

That means checking your text – making sure it’s grammatically correct, with the right punctuation.

It also means good quality images, no blurriness or grainy images allowed!

Your videos must also look seamless but what’s brilliant is you don’t need a video camera. Using your phone is the quickest, easiest way to upload videos to Instagram. For the ultimate videos, do pay attention to Instagram Story Dimensions as they give you the correct pixel size and method to upload really professional looking videos.

Never Rush Your Instagram Posts!

Practice makes perfect, look at what other Influencers do – even outside of your niche area – and gain inspiration. Do a few practice runs before you’re comfortable with what you’re posting. NEVER post in a hurry, you’ll regret it later when you remember to add something or there’s a huge error!

Schedule Your Posts

It’s worth scheduling your posts as well, because then you free yourself up to do other things. Schedule a week in advance and book out a few hours to organize your schedule. You can always edit your scheduled posts and add in other posts as they come up. Just because you have a schedule doesn’t mean you can’t change it!

Planning out content will help you to do other things that you need to do but if you aren’t ready to get to grips with Instagram Creator Studio there are other planning tools that you could try.

A good planner that we’d recommend giving a go is this one:https://later.com/instagram-scheduler/visual-instagram-planner/ and don’t forget to mix your posts up with a combination of video, images, lives, quizzes and polls to keep your target audience engaged.

Always, Always Engage With Your Followers

The whole idea of Influencing is that you’re on a level with your audience. While your audience look to you for inspiration, they feel they can “talk” to you, they comment on your posts, share them, and engage with you, perhaps through DMs. However your followers engage with you, make sure that you respond to them as that generates conversation.

If you’re aloof – you run the risk of losing your followers.

So:

Respond to comments.
Ask questions to generate conversations.
Always reply to direct messages.
Tag your fans and followers as well if you can because that helps them grow their Instagram account and they’ll love you for it. They’ll also tag you back!

Use Instagram Hashtags #

Relevant hashtags are so important on social media but especially on Instagram. If you’re not sure what role they play, we’ll give you an overview.

Hashtags relate to the types of words and phrases that an Instgrammer might search. A hashtag doesn’t need to be a word, it could be a personality, such as #Rihanna or #BritneySpears, an actor, a politician, a celebrity, a pop star. It could also be an animal #cutecat or perhaps someone’s searching for inspiration for their home, #kitcheninspiration. It can be pretty much anything at all, but the more basic, the more likely it’s searchable and used before.

So, let’s say you’re a budding fashion Influencer, you might use:

#fashion, #girlsfashion #clothinginspiration, #outfitinspiration, #maxidresses, #croptop

Anything – but we also encourage you to create content that’s your own such as a personal hashtag and add it to every post so eventually, when you grow your followers, they’ll adopt your hashtag too. It might be your brand name or a feeling such as #happyInstaInfluencer or #bekind – although that’s obviously been used before. We encourage you to think outside of the box!

How Many Hashtags Can You Use on Instagram?

You can have up to 30 Instagram hashtags on a post, but we’d recommend around 10!

Be Fun and Conversational

Instagram is social media so it’s about, well, being sociable! So, don’t be formal, concentrate on an informal, conversational, and light tone. If your niche area is fun – be fun! If it’s formal, then try not to be overly-formal, you shouldn’t be too informal either, but you can lighten the tone up and talk to your audience as you’d talk to a friend.

Give Your Instagram Influencer Account an Instant Follower Boost

Being one of the best influencers means a big following, hundreds of thousands – maybe a million followers and it’s about building relationships. If you want to bump up your Instagram followers, Instagram likes and Instagram views quickly, the best thing you can do is to buy Instagram Followers, but make sure they’re genuine followers with real Instagram accounts.

Keep Your Audience Engaged

Once you have your new Insta followers, you must keep them engaged so they stay loyal to you and that’s all down to how creative you are with your content.

Always use a reputable Instagram marketing company that guarantees authentic Instagram followers that enjoy your niche area. Click here to find out more about buying genuine Instagram followers.

Try Quizzes and Polls

See what your followers are interested in by conducting weekly quizzes and polls. You can ask them what they like and what they don’t like, as well as what they want to see more of.

Ask Questions – Start Chatting!

Ask questions and start chatting with people, they love to share their own opinions!  You could also go live on Instagram, so you can interact with your Instagram followers in real-time.  This makes your profile stand out.

Think about things you could talk about, for example, if you run a fitness Influencers’ profile, you should definitely try a live broadcast to show people how to perform certain exercises.

Reach Out for Collabs

If you’re dead-set on becoming an Instagram Influencer, you need to get involved with collabs. Reach out to the brands you love, tell them what you can offer them by collaborating with you – whether its shout-outs, competitions, giveaways.

Make it sound really tempting and if you’re just starting out but have a few thousand Instagram followers under your belt, the best thing you can do is offer your Influencer service for free – or for a free product or service.

Final Words on Becoming an Instagram Influencer

We hope this has been a useful guide for those who want to know how to become a successful Instagram influencer.  To get started with real followers and real Instagram views, why don’t you try one of our affordable Instagram packages?  Click here to find out how you can get more Instagram followers fast.