The goal of any influencer marketing campaign is to raise awareness about a specific product, service, or brand that you are trying to promote.
Instagram is no different.
Instagram prides itself on being a visual representation of your life/brand. To some, Instagram is a platform that is just pictures, but to me, it’s a world filled with opportunity.
To small business owners, the most valuable resource is time. Please note that with anything great, it simply takes time. Be consistent and over time, your hard work will pay off. If you are trying to market a product or business within the demographics of 14-25, this is the space for you!
Here’s a short list showing how small business can use influencer marketing on Instagram:
Find Influencers Within Your Friends
We all started the same way, get a bunch of friends on board with your product or service. Have them be your guinea pigs. It’s no different with Instagram. You need a base and your current friends list is an incredible start.
Once we have a foundation of friends, it’s now time to use our friends to our advantage. For this example we will reference Taylor Swift. Swift is probably one of the best marketers of our generation!
Now, although our friends may not all be celebrities and millionaires, we can still use the same approach.
Taylor Swift’s last hit song “Bad Blood” has been viewed half a billion times on YouTube.
That’s A LOT of views!
TSwift decided to use some of the strongest, sexiest, and most popular women on the planet to promote the song through her music video. Each week that went by, she would strategically promote the video with teasers of the women involved, then tagged each person in that video to eventually share the content.
With the broad scope of each member in the video, she was able to not only grow her fan base, but this strategy allowed her the opportunity to claim the prestigious prize of having the most album sales in over the past 10 years!
Recruiting Influencers by Using Hashtags
Now that we have exhausted our friends list, it’s time to interact with other individuals who are not our friends yet. With the recent updates to Instagram, the company has made it even easier for us to connect with other users we may not know.
By searching for specific hashtags within your marketing campaign, you can find content that is similar to what you are trying to promote. Feel free to comment, like, and friend these individuals.
People are friendlier on Instagram. Engagement after commenting is much higher and overall more successful.
Using Other Individuals’ Content
For this example, we would like to refer you to Starbucks’ Instagram page. Not only is it a great example of how to properly run an Instagram page in general, they primarily use content that is not curated by Starbucks themselves.
Starbucks has the luxury of being popular and so everyone and their mother uses the hashtag #Starbucks.
But there are other hashtags we can search, like #coffee.
Once Starbucks finds content worth sharing, they make a comment on the picture, asking that individual if they can use the content for their page. Starbucks then promises to give credit to the person that created the content, giving that individual 15 minutes of fame.
This is important because of what it does to your loyalty to the company.
Immediately, you begin to trust the company because they genuinely care about your content enough to use it. You’re also more likely to tell other people about our recent internet fame, giving even more exposure to Starbucks.
This is a huge win for any organization and the more strategic content sharing on Instagram, the more successful you will be in the world of influencer marketing on Instagram.
Overall, Instagram’s influencer marketing strategy can be adapted to other models on social media, and business for that matter.
Once you find success in using influencer marketing on Instagram, try the same approaches to your blog. You will see a rapid increase of followers in a short period of time, without actually developing content yourself.
It may not be TSwift status, but a success none the less!