How To Become A Successful Instagram Influencer

Becoming a successful Instagram influencer is not an easy task to do anymore, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not possible. It’s important to keep in mind that having hundreds of thousands followers is not as important as having an engaged community. The good news is that brands are realising the power of micro-influencers. Below you can read our tips and strategies that will help you to succeed.

1. Identify Your Niche

When people come to your profile, they want to know what to expect by following you and they want to be sure that they will consistently receive the same type of content. Because of this, niching down is absolutely vital because it will help you grow your audience faster. Ask yourself what are you most passionate and knowledgeable about when identifying your niche. Based on your answer identify 3-4 content pillars that fall under your niche. It will help you get more clear about the type of content you want to post about. These content pillars are smaller, more specific topics that fall under your broader niche.

For example:

• @itsstephanieemma: fashion, lifestyle, street-style
• @carolinamutdelucchi: fashion, travel, photography, parents
• @chloedebarros: fashion, aesthetics, lifestyle

Once you identify the pillars, it’ll be a lot simpler for you to create content because you can rotate between your content pillars every day. If you find it difficult to create content at home, then read some tips on how to make amazing photos indoor here.

For example, if you are a fashion influencer and your content pillars are street style, jewelry, and beauty, your week of Instagram images could look something like this:

• Monday: street style (workwear outfit)
• Tuesday: close up of jewelry
• Wednesday: street style (casual outfit)
• Thursday: favorite lipsticks flat lay
• Friday: fancy outfit (evening wear)
• Saturday: street style (weekend outfit)
• Sunday: make up look (weekend make up look)

Visualise your feed in advance and make sure you're posting content from all your content pillars. Read here which are some of the best feed preview apps that will help you reach your feed goals.

2. Write Meaningful Captions

People want more than just a pretty photo and few words caption. Start conversations with your audience and start writing captions that deliver greater value and are meaningful. Some examples:

• The caption should provide value and inspiration.

• Use microblogging captions which are like a mini blog post.

• Start a post with eye-catchy sentence, like:
  "The ultimate guide to"
  "Top 5 things to do"
  "Things you need to know about"

• End captions with a call-to-action such as questions, ask for advice or an invitation to share.

• Add emojis to make captions more visually pleasing.

And lastly, make sure that your captions are fun to read.

3. Stay Consistent

If you want to grow and stay top of mind with your followers, it's vital to stay consistent. Set a posting schedule for your feed and stick to it. As Instagram stories are increasing in its importance, try to be active on stories every day. Here you can read which are some of the best apps for creating eye-catchy and outstanding Instagram stories.

4. Focus On Building Community

Follower growth and engagement rate are important factors to be mindful of, but you should be focusing equally on the quality of the community you are cultivating with your audience. Building relationships within your community is the most important thing you can do. You want to have an audience that trusts your recommendations and follows you on other platforms too.

Here are some ideas on how to build strong and engaged community:

• Get Conversational: Always respond to photo comments and make sure to respond to all DMs and strike up a genuine conversation. For more personal touch, you can also send a voice message.
• Get your audience talking to each other: One way of doing this is by asking your audience to engage with one another in the comments of your post. This way you will build more engagement and more connected community among your audience.

5. Learn About Your Audience

In order to create a content that your audience resonate with and that performs well, you need to know everything about the people who follow you. This information will help you when deciding with which brands to collaborate with as you should collaborate with brands that are a good fit for your audience and from which your audience might buy from.

Knowing your audience's interests and desires is also crucial and extremely helpful if you want to create your own product one day like an online course or clothing line.

Some ideas how you can learn more about your audience:

• Spark conversations in the comments: Use captions to ask your followers to tell you about themselves.
• Create polls on Instagram stories and use them to create questions connected to your niche.

• Make a survey on Google forms or Typeform and use it for questions that require longer answers. For example: "What do you wish I posted more about?". To be sure to receive many answers, provide an initiative for completing the survey.

6. Get On Influencer Marketing Platforms

Get on Influencer Marketing Platform where you will be able to collaborate with brands that see you as a good fit for their campaigns.