Instagram Marketing Masterclass — Part 2
Next-up in the series are my learnings from Priyadarshini Vijay, an Instagram influencer at @highonstyl. She shared her experiences in Fashion and lifestyle blogging and suggested several ways on how to collaborate with brands on Instagram.
The journey of @highonstyl:
Priyadarshini started her journey as a fashion blogger back in December 2014. Certain high-profile fashion bloggers inspired her to start blogging in fashion. Now, she also writes about Food, travel, personal care, and technology.
“Start showing passion towards what you do and go with the flow.” — says Priyadarshini
Here are the key topics Priyadarshini discussed during the session:
1. How to become a blogger?
2. How to become an Instagram influencer?
3. What kind of content to post on Instagram?
4. How to approach brands for collaboration?
5. How to gain organic followers?
How to become a blogger?
●To get started with the basic blogging, focus on purchasing a domain. If you wish to do blogging as a hobby or want to try hands on it, go with the free blogging sites such as WordPress, google blogger, and wix. Other professional domains can be purchased in GoDaddy, Wix, and bigrock.
●Enjoy writing blogs on your favorite topics. Once you have grown your audience and started to get purpose out of your blogs, it is time to start making revenue from it.
How to become an Instagram influencer?
Invest your efforts in being both an Instagram influencer and a blogger. These days when you collaborate with the brands, they require you to promote and write reviews about their products/brands.
Here’s how to begin with:
●Pick your area of interest: It’s important for you to select the topic that you really like and are interested to share with the audience.
●Give yourself a good name: It can be either your name or the name that resonates with your personality.
●Build followers: Posting new, interesting and engaging photos will help you grow organically.
●Stay Unique — Be yourself: To stand out from the crowd, you should stay unique with your content creation. Don’t follow other people’s content style.
What kind of content to post on Instagram?
Priyadarshini explained on the type of content that she uses on @highonstyl for customer engagements. She highlighted a few important pointers to follow while posting content on Instagram.
●Content that reflects your brand and personality: Though Priyadharshini started with Fashion in the beginning, she later diverged into many areas such as Hair and personal care. Now, most of her follower’s engagement comes on her Haircare posts that provide personal tips and advises on hair growth and maintaining long hair. Similarly, you should post content that reflects your personal brand and personality.
●Caption it in the way that your followers can relate to it: The photos and the captions are two different formats that need to be relatable for your followers. You need to create a direct correlation between the photo and the caption that you post.
●Post quality content: Focus on the creation of the quality content for your posts.
Post content only when you have good content. — suggests Priyadarshini.
●Follow a theme: Your posts should follow a certain theme. When brands approach you for collaboration, they look for what they want to see. For example, if you wish to work with travel brands, then post pictures that are alike with travel.
How to approach brands for collaboration?
Brand collaboration may seem a difficult process in your beginning stage and you need to stay consistent in this whole process. Priyadarshini suggested the following ways, from her experience, on how to approach the brands for collaboration:
●Target startups: You need to start approaching the brands initially. Find brands that you can relate to and work with.
●Create a template — send out emails / call them: Introduce yourself as an Influencer to the brands and that you are interested to work with them.
●Join influencer platforms: Create an influencer profile in these platforms: Influencer.in, Aer media, PopXo and make your presence everywhere.
●There are three ways to collaborate and work with the brands:
1. Work for free at the start and build your followers.
2. Work in terms of barter/commercials.
3. Work for paid collaboration with the brands.
How to charge brands for collaboration?
●Understand the requirements of the brands. You need to figure out the ways to work on the requirements.
●Have a media kit ready. For example, You can charge the brands based on the plans they choose (say, a plan offers 2 blogs and 5 Instagram posts).
●You can charge based on the efforts you are going to put in that collaboration. Take the following into account: Photography, travel, target reach, and other overheads.
How to gain organic followers?
●Interact with your followers on a regular basis — make use of polls, Q&A, stories. Priyadarshini engages with her followers to understand what kind of content to share.
●Support other influencers through likes and comments. Initially, you can support them and they will automatically respond back to support your posts.
●Go live. Your followers may be willing to interact with you. Some people might not be comfortable with Direct Message on Instagram. Also once you go live, your profile will appear on the explore tab and increases the chances for greater visibility.
●Hashtags. Use 8-11 Hashtags for your posts. The hashtags should be relevant to the picture.
●Tag location. This is the most important feature in a post. Location tagging can help your followers get notified once you post it.
●Collaborate with brands and Conduct giveaways. Choose brands with a good number of followers. Priyadarshini conducts one giveaway every month and this has helped her to reach more people.
●Keep track of Instagram algorithm. Instagram is constantly making changes to its algorithm. An example of how the latest algorithm works: When you get more engagements for your post in 1 hour, the post will appear at the top of your followers feed. If you receive any comments on your post, try to respond back soon to increase your post engagement.
Initially, @highonstyl used to get around 2000–3000 followers every month. Now, she gets only 100–200 followers per month because of the latest algorithm change.
The new Instagram Algorithm encourages you to be more authentic. So don’t worry so much about the numbers and start focusing on posting quality posts.
This is Part 2 of a 3 Series blog. Subscribe to HelloMeets publication to get notified as soon as Part 3 is live! Stay Connected for the updates.
