Nowadays, social media plays a vital role in bloggers’ and influencers’ careers. Previously, most brands approached bloggers and influencers based on their blogs’ or websites’ quality, performance, and readership. However, in the current scenario, more and more brands prefer influencers with strong social media following.
When it comes to creating visual stories for brands, Instagram does a great job in engaging consumers. Therefore, many brands who are active on Instagram, prefer to work with influencers who are strong on Instagram. However, to be a thriving Instagram influencer, you need to have highly engaged and responsive followers, who can resonate with your Instagram posts.
We have compiled some of the best practices that you can follow to be a successful Instagram influencer in India.
When it comes to Instagram, it is prudent to decide the niche of your Instagram account. Firstly, selecting a particular category, like travel, fashion, food, technology, etc., helps you to have a streamlined Instagram account. Secondly, if your account is focused on one particular genre, say travel, then your followers will obviously be the ones who can resonate to travel-related posts and brands. Therefore, you will have engaged and responsive followers, which, in turn, makes you a preferred influencer amongst your niche-based brands.
To be a great Instagram influencer, you must post only high-quality photos – This is a rule of thumb when it comes to Instagram marketing. While it is preferable to use a DSLR camera, you can even click some amazing photos using your smartphone.
If you’re using a smartphone, it is advisable to use the grid setting on your phone’s camera. Also, turn the “auto HDR” feature on. Use natural, outdoor lighting whenever possible – this is an amazing trick that will help you click brilliant photos using your phone.
If you follow the Instagram accounts of famous influencers, you can notice that they use a significant amount of hashtags. For starters, hashtags are an amazing way to get you more followers. To be a popular Instagrammer, you need to follow two rules when it comes to hashtags.
Consistency is critical to be successful on Instagram. To be a popular Instagrammer, it is not enough if you share hi-quality, unique posts. You must also keep sharing relevant stories and posts relevantly.
The uniqueness of Instagram is that it is all about capturing a moment the instant it happens. Therefore, when you are in an event or when you find something relevant to your niche, immediately capture it and post it.
Alternatively, you can also schedule your posts in advance with the help of tools like Schedugram and Latergramme. These tools can be quite useful for influencers who want to post a series of similar posts.
Another interesting, new feature is the Instagram stories, where you can also post videos and photos that will be on your followers’ feed for just 24 hours. If you are a travel influencer, Instagram stories are a quirky way to engage your followers.
One of the key traits of successful Instagrammers is that they socialize, help out, and collaborate with other influencers. Success doesn’t exist in a vacuum; seek out to other influencers. It is advisable to follow and comment on people and brands that post about similar things.
You can also work with other influencers in creating collaborative posts. Be it an outfit of the day (OOTD) post or a one pot one shot recipe (OPOS) post, you can always collaborate with other Instagrammers. By doing so, you not only create a cordial relationship with your fellow Instagram influencers, but you also get to increase your follower count.
Another way of reaching out to Instagrammers with similar tastes is to find hashtags related to your niche and give your genuine comments on them.
Following others and commenting on their posts can increase your reach. That being said, you must also unfollow unrelated and inactive Instagram accounts as often as needed. However, you don’t have to manually search for those inactive accounts; you can use Crowdfire to keep your account clean. This tool allows you to see the number of people who don’t follow you, unfollowed you, or have inactive accounts.
Just like how you run analytics on your website, you can also check how your Instagram account is performing via Instagram Analytics. By using tools like Social Insight, Iconosquare, etc. you can understand your followers’ behavior. These tools provide you with most important analytical points, like the most engaging post, most appealing filters, best time to post, etc.
Read our blog on Top 10 Instagram tools that you would need to be successful on Instagram.
We hope, by now, you might know what works on Instagram. However, being a successful Instagram influencer is not an end point; it’s an iterative process. As we said before, consistency is the key.
Namrata
October 26, 2016That's pretty awesome! Thanks for this informative post.
Shanaya Malhotra
July 31, 2019To be a successful Instagram Influencer you need to write an eye-catching content and also make use of the correct hashtag. Hashtags are also one of the ways people search the most.
Ambuj Saxena
December 25, 2020This is an amazing blog post on how to become an Instagram influencer. Maybe there should be a case study on Kusha Kapila here.