Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users and is one of the biggest social media platforms. The interactive and engaging nature of the app makes it even more interesting for users. This is perhaps the reason why more than 500 million people watch Stories on it daily.
Instagram has become a popular social media platform for brands as well, especially those who have embraced influencer marketing. Nearly 89% of marketers feel that Instagram is the best channel for influencer marketing.
A major reason for this is that the average influencer engagement rate on Instagram is nearly 1.87%. Now that you know why Instagram is important for influencer marketing, let’s look at how it can help you improve your influencer marketing strategy.
1. Plan Your Goals
When you’re doing influencer marketing, you need to have specific goals.
You need to make sure that the goals that you set are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) in nature.
You also need to establish some key performance indicators based on the goals that you set. Some of the goals that you can have for your influencer marketing campaign are:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating more leads
- Expanding reach
- Getting more sales
- Increasing website traffic
Key performance indicators (KPIs) could be the number of leads, sales, reach, or other metrics, depending on your goals. They will help you keep track of your campaign’s performance.
With the proper KPIs in place, you’ll get an idea of where you stand and what you might need to do to reach your end goals. You can also determine the ROI of your campaign through them.
2. Find Influencers
Once you’ve set your goals, you need to find the right influencers for your brand. It’s crucial for brands to find relevant and reliable influencers who can support their mission.
For this, you need to look for influencers in your niche. Additionally, must have values that are similar to your brand.
It is also necessary to check their tone to see if it matches your brand’s tone. You should also check their engagement rates, reach, number of followers, and their audience. If their audience doesn’t match your target audience, there’s no point in partnering with them.
You also need to decide whether you want to collaborate with nano-influencers, micro-influencers, macro-influencers, or celebrities. You can decide this based on your budget and the level of engagement or reach that you desire.
Typically, nano-influencers have limited reach but high engagement levels and are very affordable for brands. On the other hand, celebrities have tremendous reach, but their engagement rates are fairly low. You also need to have a much larger budget to partner with them.
One of the hardest parts about finding the right influencers is that there are many fake influencers on Instagram. These people purchase followers and likes to become influencers.
However, since their followers aren’t real, it can result in very poor engagement rates. Influencer marketing fraud is so rampant on social media that nearly 63% of all marketers have faced it in the past.
To find genuine influencers for collaborations, you can use platforms such as Influence.co.
3. Build Relationships
One thing that you need to keep in mind when working with influencers on Instagram is that you need to develop relationships with them. When you establish contact with them, don’t pitch your ideas for collaboration straightaway.
Instead, you should start by complimenting some of their posts or even discussing the content that they’ve shared. You should also consider engaging with them on their posts or through direct messages.
Only once you’ve managed to establish a good relationship with an influencer, you can pitch your proposal. When you do pitch your idea to them, make sure that it’s as personalized as possible.
You should take time to explain your brand and its values to them. It is also crucial to talk about your campaign and inform them how they would fit into it.
Also make sure that you are as transparent as possible with your influencers. Discuss compensation and expectations openly so that there’s no friction at any stage.
Building solid relationships may lead to long-term collaborations. The influencers will be better placed to understand your brand. This will allow them to showcase numerous products of your brand, and in some cases, they may become the faces of your brand too.
One brand that’s made it big through Instagram influencer marketing is Daniel Wellington. The company started with seed funding of only $15k and within 4 years had revenue of $220 million.
This success was achieved completely through influencer marketing collaborations on Instagram. They sent their watches to micro-influencers, who then posted photos of them on their accounts.
4. Design Your Campaigns and Optimize Them
Once your influencers have agreed to collaborate, it’s time to plan your campaign. Take their opinions into account but also give them creative freedom over their work – after all, their style and content is what attracted them to you in the first place You can, however, give them brand and campaign guidelines.
Additionally, you should create a contract so that the deal terms and scope of work are clear on both sides..
There are several options that you can consider when it comes to collaborating with influencers. You can create one-off posts, videos, Stories, and even slideshows; the opportunities are endless.
Instagram Stories perform especially well for brands. As many as 51% of brands use them. Additionally, videos in Stories perform better compared to images. They have a tap-forward rate of 5.65% more than videos.
Once your campaign starts, you need to begin tracking its progress based on your established KPIs.
These metrics will give you an idea of how well your campaign is performing and you’ll also be able to determine what changes need to be made in order to optimize it even further.
The best way to go about this is by using Lumanu’s tools. You can share content, audiences, and usage rights with your influencers and vice-versa.
Additionally, you can unleash the true potential of your influencer marketing campaigns through paid promotions.
You can easily see all of the content created by your portfolio of influencers and manage paid social campaigns all in one place through the Lumanu platform.. Lumanu’s tools make the entire process of creating ads and whitelisting quicker and simpler as well.
Final Thoughts
Instagram is the most important platform for influencer marketing and using it can help you improve your influencer marketing strategy.
You must ensure that your goals and KPIs are clearly defined. Then put time and effort into finding the right influencers and building relationships with them. Lastly, plan your campaign with the influencers, monitor the campaign’s progress, and consider optimizing results through applying paid media behind the influencer’s content.
