Now an almost $2 billion industry, Instagram influencer marketing has taken the social media world by storm. In recent years, Instagram users around the globe have begun making a living from paid posts and collaborative marketing campaigns.

The app offers the perfect space for brand ambassadorship, with influential users authentically recommending products and services to their loyal audience. With the influencer space estimated to grow to a $5-10 billion industry by 2021, it’s clearly a marketing force that isn’t going anywhere…

We’ve compiled all you need to know about Instagram influencer marketing and the way it works into this simple guide!

Contents:

1. Instagram Influencer Marketing: In A Nutshell
2. Why Instagram Influencer Marketing Works
3. How Much Do Instagram Influencers Cost?
4. What Makes An Instagram Influencer?
5. How To Work With Influencers On Instagram
6. The Future Of Instagram Influencer Marketing

1. Instagram Influencer Marketing: In A Nutshell

People who have built a large and engaged following on Instagram are known as ‘influencers’, due to the fact that their followers idolise them and respect their opinions. They may have acquired a loyal following due to their lifestyle, their job or hobby, the clothes they wear or the stories they tell.

The pool of influencers is vast and diverse, meaning almost any brand has the potential to utilise Instagram influencer marketing for their industry and target demographic. 

The emergence of Instagram influencers opened up huge opportunities for businesses looking to authentically market their products to their target audience, and thus the ‘paid post’ phenomenon was born.

In the early days, it might have been enough for a brand to send an influencer one of their products as a gift, in return for them posting about it on their profile. But this changed with the rapid growth of the space, as influencers realised they could not only gain free products, but actually charge brands for grid real estate on their profile.

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2. Why Instagram Influencer Marketing Works

Influencer marketing allows brands to reach their target audience in a way that feels far more genuine than traditional advertising.

Rather than businesses selling directly to consumers, they are building relationships with influencers who can sell for them. Instagram influencers have a strong and loyal relationship with their followers, as they share many aspects of their lives with them. This leads us to feel like we know them personally, so when an influencer we like recommends something, we listen as we would if it were a friend.

For example, if you follow a travel blogger for their beautiful photos or funny captions, and they post about an airplane pillow that gave them the best night’s sleep on a long haul flight, you’re more inclined to remember the brand and buy it for your next holiday because you like and trust them. Makes sense, right?

With 800 million active users, Instagram has become the platform of choice for influencer marketing. 72% of users said they have made fashion, beauty or style-related purchases after seeing something on the app, proving its power in the digital marketing landscape of 2020. 

72% of Instagram users said they have made fashion, beauty or style-related purchases after seeing something on the app, proving its power in the digital marketing landscape of 2020. By @Nicola_HHQ
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3. How Much Do Instagram Influencers Cost?

To give an idea of numbers in the Instagram influencer marketing world, Hopper HQ’s annual Instagram Rich List disclosed just how much money the top influencers and celebrities can earn from a single post.

Kylie Jenner bagged the top spot, charging over $1 million for a product-related post on her Instagram profile. Considering the 21 year old wiped out $1.3 billion of Snapchat’s market value with a single tweet earlier last year, her influence — and that of her whole family — is certainly not to be underestimated.

The amount an influencer can charge per post will vary depending on a number of factors, including follow number, engagement rate, and industry.

Elle Cuthbert-Edkins, our Customer Success Manager here at Hopper HQ, spoke on the BBC about the current state of Instagram influencer marketing. She emphasised the importance of engagement over follower number, explaining that “we’re typically seeing brands work exclusively with influencers who have a 10-20% engagement rate”, ensuring that the followers are truly interested in what the influencer is posting.

Engagement rate = no. of likes and comments ÷ no. of followers

'We’re typically seeing brands work exclusively with influencers who have a 10-20% engagement rate' @Elle_HopperHQ on influencer marketing
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From our Rich List methodology and data, we found that many collaboration deals are worked out by 100,000 followers. For example, the beauty industry charges on average £162 per 100,000 followers for a single post. For many influencers that have followers in the millions, this level of sponsorship enables them to make a living from Instagram.

Check out the Hopper HQ 2023 Instagram Rich List to see which celebrities and influencers topped the charts across all industries

4. What Makes An Instagram Influencer?

There’s no strict criteria for being classed as an Instagram influencer. Any user who has a fairly high, engaged following — of people who actually care about what they do — will have an influence over their audience and is a valuable marketing proposition for brands.

If you’re a social media manager looking to start Instagram influencer marketing, do your research to ensure:

1. Their follower demographic is well matched to your target audience
2. Their following and engagement is genuine

Due to the existence of bots giving out likes and comments on users’ behalves, as well as the ability to buy followers, some Instagram accounts may look like influencers, but actually don’t have a loyal following or any real influence at all — we call them ‘ghost followers’.

Generic comments such as ‘’ or ‘Awesome shot!’ are likely to be from accounts using an engagement bot, so if these are the only kinds of interactions on an influencer’s posts, it’s likely that they don’t actually have the influence they’re making out.

NOTE: these bots will comment on posts of users in a chosen target demographic or using certain hashtags in order to increase brand awareness and get more followers. It makes sense, however they have become very easy to spot and don’t actually start genuine conversations! 

Another important indicator of a good influencer is that they are responsible with their partnership choices, truly taking into consideration their followers’ interests and ensuring they only do sponsored posts with brands they believe their audience would be likely to engage with.

Going hand in hand with this is that the influencers make their own content for a brand, hence why it’s often referred to as a ‘partnership’ or a ‘collaboration’, rather than them simply posting a photo the brand sends them.

Building an engaged following is hard work, and a good influencer will not want to post anything that looks alien to their audience or their feed. When strategising an influencer marketing campaign, it’s therefore important to make sure your brand image complements the influencer you’re looking to reach out to!

5. How To Work With Influencers On Instagram

If you decide that Instagram influencer marketing is the right step for your business, the first thing to do is set your budget. It’s an expensive game, and with influencers charging per post and for Stories, a whole campaign can set you back a long way.

With a smaller budget, you will be looking for micro influencers to promote your brand. These are influencers with a relatively smaller following (1,000 – 10,000) but who have a high engagement rate on their posts.

It is a far more cost effective option for smaller businesses, and micro influencers can have a great deal of influence over a specific audience. On a larger budget, you can think about bigger influencers, but try not to be fooled by vanity metrics such as number of followers and focus predominantly on engagement rate.

Once you’ve found people you think could be perfect, do your research as we mentioned above. Ensure they have a genuine following and a trusted, loyal community. See if they’ve worked on influencer campaigns in the past and look at the kinds of products or brands they promote, this will help to inform if they would be a good fit for your company.

As well as this, take a read of their comments to see if your target demographic are engaging with their content. And finally, check out which type of posts they’re excelling at (i.e Stories, video, gallery posts) to help inform your campaign. 

Then reach out to them! Micro influencers are likely to manage themselves, so contact them through the email on their profile or send them a direct message within Instagram. If you’re looking at a larger influencer, they will probably have an agency who manage their campaign requests – this is typically listed in their bio.

When approaching agencies, ask for the influencer’s rate card and explain your brand and the campaign brief you have in mind. Go into as much detail as possible (i.e budget, how many posts, the type of content etc) in order to best manage expectations on both side of the collaboration.

If you’re looking for inspiration, check out this report of the best performing brands in influencer marketing last year!

 Importantly, treat your working relationships with Instagram influencers as partnerships. Remember that they know what their followers engage with best, and to trust them in the content creation process!

6. The Future Of Instagram Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has had its fair share of criticism in recent years. Consumers have felt misled as a result of being unaware somebody they follow was getting paid to recommend certain products.

This has led to a huge push for transparency among influencers. Hashtags such as #ad and #spon have become standard in a paid post caption, in order to distinguish the sponsorship deals from ‘genuine’ recommendations. Instagram also created their official ‘Paid partnership’ tag, which sits above a post to inform users that a brand is collaborating with that influencer.

While on some levels this takes away from the authenticity that made Instagram influencer marketing so successful, influencers also feel a loyalty to let their followers know they’ve earned money from a post. 

At one of our events last year, ‘The Power Of Influencer Marketing in 2018’, our panelist Harry Hugo, Co-Founder of The Goat Agency commented on the problematic nature of these CMA regulations, due to the fact that it’s not universal across other advertising channels or promotional sponsorship deals.

He gave the example of Neymar walking on to the football pitch wearing Nike boots as a result of his multi-million dollar sponsorship deal. A notice does not appear on our television screens to tell us the boots are being marketed to us, and the suggestion of such would seem ludicrous.

Therefore it’s one rule for traditional methods of advertising, and another for Instagram influencer marketing, and it will be interesting to see how the regulations change as the space develops.

Read the other top takeaway from our influencer event here

At Hopper HQ we work with hundreds of influencers all over the world, and always encourage them to only accept partnerships with brands and products they truly like and would use themselves. False promotion eventually becomes obvious, meaning the influence the person actually has shrinks.

As a digital population we are developing ‘ad blindness’, meaning we’re essentially becoming immune to marketing. The fact that we click ‘Skip Ad’ on YouTube the second it becomes available, and even pay for the privilege of not being sold to with services like Spotify Premium highlights this.

Consumers are becoming more and more savvy when it comes to advertising, and it’s no different with Instagram influencer marketing. As the industry gets more and more concentrated, brands and influencers will need to think outside of the box to keep creating highly engaging marketing campaigns, and we can’t wait to see them!

Is there any other areas of influencer marketing you’d like to know more about? Let us know in the comments!

Hopper HQ is a social media scheduling and management platform that frees up time for the fun creative stuff! Named in the Top 5 Most Popular Social Media Marketing Software list 2018. Start your 14-day trial today.

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The reason these celebrities are able to charge so much is less about their Instagram influencer status and more about them being popular celebrities in general.

The rest of us on Instagram are never ever going to be able to command such high prices mainly by virtue of our Instagram following. However, there are plenty of Instagram influencers who have been able to quit their day jobs and pursue their mini-celebrity status full-time. 

In this article, I am going to take you through a very solid step-by-step plan that can help you become an Instagram influencer from scratch. 

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That’s right – you do not need an existing following on Instagram to be able to succeed here. 

Let’s get started. 

Step 1: Sign up for Instagram

I doubt anyone looking up online to become an Instagram influencer does not already have an Instagram account. 

But hey, I did promise you that I’ll teach you how to become an influencer on Instagram from scratch. 

So, the first step, inevitably, is to get hold of an account. 

It’s no rocket science. Click on this link if you are on Android, or on this link if you own an iPhone.

Once you download the app, you may choose to either sign up with your Facebook account or directly with your mobile phone number or email address.

At this step, you will also be prompted to pick a username. Do so carefully since this will be the handle that you will be promoting.

Here are a few pointers to picking a good username: 

The first choice (and the best one) is your full name. There are a couple of reasons why I think it’s the best. First, it gives an air of credibility. The internet abounds with fake profiles and questionable information.

People are more likely to trust something that comes from a real person than claims from someone who hides behind the cloak of anonymity.

We will be discussing picking a niche further down in this article, but if you already have picked a topic, then you could also pick a username that aligns with this topic. 

However, this is only a good idea if you also own a website by the same name. This way, you can put elaborate content on the topic on your blog while sharing visuals and other related information on your Instagram profile. 

Regardless of what username you pick, make sure it does not come across as spammy or salesy. 

For example, if you are Lisa Smith publishing content about yoga, your usernames could be something like @lisasmith, @lisa_smith, @lisayogaqueen or @everythingyoga. But usernames like @_best_yoga_advice or @_yoga_queen__ may not be equally good.

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Step 2: Pick a niche

At this point, it is important to note that the success of an influencer is not measured by the number of followers they have. 

Well, your follower count indeed matters. But from a business perspective, that is not the primary measure of a good influencer. 

Instead, a good influencer is one who enjoys popularity in a very narrow niche. 

Here’s why – building a large following is not too difficult. There are plenty of tools online that can help you grow your following. 

The problem here is that you are not the only one using such tools to grow your Instagram following. Plenty of other people are doing the same too. 

When a business wants to rope in Instagram influencers to market their product, they tend to go with those users whose audience tightly aligns with your target group. 

Otherwise, they may end up spending money on an audience that has no intention to convert.

So, how do you pick the right niche? Here is a quick guide.

Competitor Landscape

The niche you pick must have plenty of competitors vying for buyer attention. Marketers in such industries tend to experiment with different customer acquisition channels which means they may not be too afraid to spend money on something like Instagram influencers. 

Product is WOM-driven

When was the last time you checked online reviews from other buyers before ordering a ball of cotton, or corn?

Commodity products do not need reviews. They are literally the same regardless of who or where you buy from. 

The niche you pick must-have products that can be described visually and elicit customer interest in product reviews (word of mouth).

Beauty products, home decor, and automobile accessories are all good examples of products where a buyer may be interested in watching elaborate product reviews before buying a product. 

More importantly, from an Instagram perspective, these products need to elicit impulse purchases from the buyers. Influencer marketing may not be ideal for planned purchases.

Not too many influencers

There are a ton of beauty Instagrammers. That’s a problem of plenty for businesses looking to hire influencers. 

But for you, the influencer, too many fellow influencers in your niche only means that you are not a rare commodity. 

Pick a niche where there are not too many influencers already. This way, there are not enough of you already which means that businesses are ready to pay a premium to hire you for a campaign.

Step 3: Learn photo/video editing

One of the basics to earn a good following on Instagram is to be good with photos and videos. Sure, Instagram does provide you with the basic tools like filters and captions. But in order to stand out from other Instagrammers, you need to learn to capture good photos and videos.

Pro Tip: Do not overdo your visual effects. Pick a filter or image capturing style and stick with it for all your Instagram posts. The objective here is not only to make your posts look professional but to also be able to make your posts stand out. Your regular followers should be able to identify your posts even without having to look at the username. 

Pro Tip 2: Hopper HQ has a top-notch image editing software built right into our software. Do not waste money on another tool, and use our tool for all your scheduling needs.

Step 4: Publish Consistently

The key to becoming a successful Instagram influencer is to publish content consistently. There are a couple of reasons why. 

Firstly, your followers are not all online at the same time. Publishing content throughout the day lets you reach followers through different times of the day. 

Secondly, the Instagram algorithm takes a number of different factors into account while deciding the visibility of your posts. This includes post recency (how fresh your content is), post engagement (how well your post is received by the first few people looking at it), and past interactions (how well were your earlier posts received by the specific follower). 

When you post consistently, you take care of content freshness. Also, it gives you an opportunity to experiment with different types of content, hashtags, and also know when your Instagram followers are most active.

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Want to be a really successful Instagram influencer? Check out Hopper HQ’s scheduling tool. It’s free to try for 14 days and comes packed with features that let you plan out your entire posting schedule for days, or even months in advance. 

This way, you create all your content at once and can publish them throughout the day. 

While at it, also experiment with the different kinds of content that Instagram has to offer. Some kinds of content work well as Instagram Stories. Others work well as Reels. Try out the different content types to see what your followers enjoy. Keep experimenting.

Step 5: Grow a Following

At this point, you have the entire setup ready to start becoming an influencer. The only thing stopping you is a lack of followers. Targeted followers, that is. 

There are plenty of articles online that teach you the exact tips and tricks that you need to succeed here. Here is a short guide on how to do this. 

1. Follow other users in your niches. If you have picked a very small niche for your Instagram account, start by following accounts in the broader niche or shoulder niches. For example, if you post content about hairstyling, you could not only follow other hairstyling Instagrammers, but also beauty vloggers and people talking about makeup, skin care, etc. 

Also, follow all the hashtags relevant to your niche.

2. Engage with their content. Make helpful observations and tips in the comments. The ideal way to do this is by prefacing your comments with a sentence about what your Instagram account is about. Going back to the example of hairstyling, you could comment on a post about hair care with a comment like

“I’m a hairstylist and I talk a lot about this specific advice on my Instagram account.” – 

You could follow it up with some more helpful advice that the original poster may have missed. This way, you establish yourself as an expert and get people to check out your account. 

3. Once you have grown your account to a few hundred followers, start collaborating. Partner with other accounts of similar sizes in your broader or shoulder niches and share a shoutout about each others’ accounts on your Instagram profile. 

Pro-tip 1: Do not simply announce their account. Share something useful from their post and then tag them within the post. Also, seek the same from the collaborator. This increases click-throughs and following. 

Pro-tip 2: If possible, designate a specific day and time for collaborations. For example, Tuesdays at 2 PM. This way, your followers know to expect a shoutout to another account and may not lose interest in your posts simply because they don’t enjoy this kind of content.

You will just need to follow the above steps on a consistent basis for several weeks or months for you to gain traction and start seeing an organic spike in followers for your Instagram account.

Step 6: Open for business

At this point, you already have thousands of followers to your Instagram account. A four or five digit follower count may be impressive depending on the niche you have picked. 

In some cases, you will need to work more and grow your targeted following to six digits at least before seeking good influencer marketing offers.

There are three things you need to do in order to find successful offers. 

Set up a bio

The bio sets the tone for what your Instagram account is all about. Truth be told, you may have required a great bio from the beginning.

But regardless of what your bio read until now, you will need to reword to make it interesting for your potential sponsors. 

The best Instagram bios talk about two things: what your account is all about, and how potential sponsors can reach you. 

A lot of businesses trying to find suitable influencers on Instagram still do it the old-fashioned way – via Google Search. A great bio will help them find you with the right keywords. 

Giving them an email address or website contact form is a great way to be contacted directly. While your Instagram DMs work too, you may potentially lose their message if you already receive DMs from tons of regular users as well. 

Showcasing an email or website contact form is the best way to make sure you see every potential campaign offer that comes your way.

Switch to a Professional account

If you haven’t already done this, now is a good time to switch your account to a business profile (AKA Professional account). In doing so, you get access to several analytics features that a potential sponsor may want to look at before hiring you for their influencer marketing campaign.

Switching your account to a business profile is easy and can be done in a few steps. You will need a Public profile and also may need a Facebook Page associated with your Instagram account. Connect your Instagram account to this Page and voilà, you are done.

Partner with Influencer databases

There are several influencer database companies online that businesses subscribe to. The job of these database companies is to build a long list of potential influencers across different industries that a business may be interested to work with. 

Some of these companies also work as middlemen between the business and the influencer in setting up the influencer marketing campaign.

Write to these influencers and share your profile to be included in their databases. In most cases, it costs nothing. As a matter of fact, if you are already gaining a lot of traction with your Instagram account, chances are that your account is already a part of their database.

This way, when a potential advertiser is interested in hiring an influencer, your profile may be recommended to them by these database companies.

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In conclusion – be patient & consistent

Reading this article, it may seem like becoming an Instagram influencer is quite simple and easy to do. That’s because it really is. What separates you from the rest is how patient you are, and also how consistently you can churn out content – even in the early days when you do not have a lot of followers. 

Getting the first hundred or even thousand followers may be the hardest part of becoming an influencer. And it is here that a lot of people quit.

Dedicate a couple of hours of your day everyday to publish top quality content and follow these steps mentioned above to find success as an influencer.

If this seems daunting, don’t shy away from getting help. Hopper HQ makes it very easy for aspiring influencers to post quality content consistently. Check out our app by clicking on this link. It’s free for 14 days and costs less than $20 a month. That’s an investment you must make to be able to earn thousands of dollars in influencer marketing down the line.

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