Influencer marketing on Instagram: a complete guide
An introduction to Instagram
The likelihood that you never heard of Instagram is minimal, but nevertheless we thought it would be good to quickly go through the basics.
Instagram is an image-based social media platform owned by Facebook, whose popularity has grown dramatically in recent years. Each user has their own profile where they can write a little about themselves and include a link to a website. In addition, Instagram consists solely of pictures with associated text.
In general, Instagram attracts younger users in their twenties and thirties and compared to other social media, the involvement on Instagram is enormous.
All of these factors play an important role in why Instagram is so good to use for influencer marketing. First, the image-based format is perfect for those who want to sell stylish products and trendy lifestyles. Second, the young users are often used to shopping online, making it easier to sell products to them online. Last but not least, the high level of involvement contributes to you being able to achieve high sales figures.
In other words, Instagram is a win-win-win situation for anyone involved in influencer marketing!
Contents
Ads on Instagram
The focus for ads on Instagram is always pictures, which in most cases means that you need a product that can easily be sold with an image. The advantage of using influencer marketing compared to regular marketing is that you are not responsible for producing your own content.
Instead, you can focus on finding an influencer who has the best potential to reach out to your target group, which we can help you with. Then you make sure that your influencers get the product you want to sell and with the help of guidelines from you it is their task to be creative and create a good ad.
Don’t forget that influencers are best at what they do and they are usually extremely good at offering their readers exactly what they want. If you work with the right influencers, you do not have to worry much about which content they create.
The relationship between image and text
As said, Instagram is a platform for images and therefore you should limit the use of text. Those who use Instagram want to see pictures and nothing else and long pieces of text can feel like spam and can distract your potential customers from the product you are trying to sell. Because of that, we suggest you stick to as little text as you can.
That being said, you must take this opportunity and explain the product to the customers and you want to
also preferably that your influencer shares his view. In addition, you need to make sure that the influencer links to the page you want correctly, which brings us directly to the next point on the list.
Use links on Instagram
One of the ways that separates Instagram from all other social media is that each account can only use one clickable link each. The link can be included in its profile but there is no possibility to link directly from a post.
Sometimes this can cause problems as many influencers link to their own blog or e-commerce store from their profile and they may be reluctant to change it. Although most people are okay with linking to your site while the campaign is running. Just don’t expect them to keep the link forever.
We always advise our customers to use unique links for each influencer in a campaign as it is otherwise impossible to track how they perform. Because data driven influencer marketing is our specialty is unique and traceable links are part of all our strategies.
Instagram and videos
You can choose to upload videos on Instagram instead of images, though it is not as common, especially not in influencer marketing. If you are in need of good video content, there are other platforms that are better suited for that type of content.
Influencer marketing with Instagram Stories
In addition to regular posts with pictures, there is another format on Instagram. This format is called Instagram Stories and is a video format. The concept is based on users being able to upload short, personal videos in their “story” and 24 hours later the video is automatically deleted.
This hugely popular format originates from Snapchat and is also available on Facebook but it is most popular on Instagram.
There are two ways you can use Instagram Stories for influencer marketing.
Influencers can use stories to alert their followers that they have uploaded a new post.
Influencer can also use the format to sell and market products as part of your campaign.
How you streamline stories is something you must work out for each campaign, but of course the method is most effective for most campaigns.
Swipe up
Do you remember how we said that each user can only share a link in their account? That is not true. In 2017, a new feature for Instagram Stories was added, which most people call “Swipe up”.
The feature lets influencers link to a URL in their stories and users can go directly to it by wiping up the screen. The result is that many companies today use Instagram Stories to promote products with text that says “Swipe up to see more”, “Swipe up to purchase”, or the like.
As you probably understand, the “Swipe up” feature is hugely useful and used correctly, it can greatly increase engagement in a campaign.
Instagram Stories: Format and filters
Instagram Stories also comes with a large selection of formats and filter functions that can be used to attract users to purchases. Most influencers are experts in using these filters and we recommend that you leave that bit to them.
A summary of influencer marketing on Instagram
The reasons why Instagram is the most popular and effective social media platform for influencer marketing are many. Since the platform is entirely based on pictures and videos, it is easy to sell good products. In addition, most people who use Instagram are younger people who are used to shopping for products and services online. Most importantly, Instagram has a level of engagement that is several times higher than any other social media.
Instagram also has a fun and creative video format called Stories and that can boost your campaigns to a new level.
It is the combination of these features that creates a good starting point for influencer marketing and that is why we at Beatly next exclusively work with Instagram. In fact, Instagram is so effective that we think everyone should use the platform for their campaigns. If you also want to improve the results, you can ask us for help in optimizing your strategies.
Please contact us to learn more about the products and services we can offer you!
