How a 17-Year-Old Paid His Way Through Grad School
I regret to not know earlier about SMM
“We live in a time that we get to use social media as a tool” — Gigi Hadid
The pandemic has forced us to spend more time in front of our TVs, on our laptops and our smartphones than we usually would.
We are either caught up in the algorithm game–mindlessly scrolling through social media feeds, or looking for ways to earn from home.
My brother, however, was smart enough to fall under the second category. And not only did he find a way to earn money from home, but he also earned enough to cover his entire grad school.
I’m shocked when I see the younger generations catching up with trends faster than the previous generation.
Glad that I learned some stuff from him and I got to share it with you now.
What is SMM? (If you read the subtitle)
Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service in any area.
SMM includes activities like posting text, image updates, videos, and other content that drives audience engagement, as well as paid ads.
Why SMM?
There are over 3.9 billion people on Social media. On average, users spend over 2 hours on this platform alone.
That is huge!
Isn’t this more than enough for a start-up or influencers to drive people to their content?
A perfect virtual on-stage platform to showcase our brand to the audiences.
The Viral Platform — Instagram
There are various social media platforms to brand your content, namely Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.
In the list, Instagram tops when it comes to personal or company branding, from fashion to business.
Estimated to be over 1.07 billion users and 500 million daily users on Instagram in 2021.
Instagram has added many features that benefit marketers — both paid Ads features and organic posts. Some are:
- Video Features — Video post up to 60 seconds, can add a filter, a caption and tag your location before you share the post.
- Story feature — Instagram Stories are similar to Snapchat in that users add clips of video to a story that is viewable for 24 hours before it vanishes.
- IGTV — gives users the ability to share videos that are up to an hour-long — like a TV episode. One of the fastest-growing trends in content marketing as over 80% of businesses are using video marketing.
- Turn Existing Posts Into Ads — Now businesses can turn their organic posts into ads in the Ads Manager and reach more targeted audience.
9 steps to earn nearly $200/day in Instagram (Ps: my brother’s way of marketing!)
Before hitting Followers
1. Create a brand with a niche
A simple yet prime step is to create a name, an eye-catchy logo with the appealing agenda of your brand for the people to see what it is you are offering and in what domain.
A Niche is what specific area you stand in? Ask yourselves 3 questions before choosing one.
1. Why am I starting a brand?
2. Whom am I going to influence on?
3. How can I help them achieve it?
2. Post/Re-post content
Reposting — it is when you get other’s content like taking screenshot of it, redesigning a bit in Canva or using Repost app to post it on your page.
Nevertheless, make sure to give credits to the respective owner to avoid problems.
Posting own content — Creating your own content has more benefits than reposting other’s content. Own content will make you stand out of a crowd with good brand cohesion. So when others repost yours, the logo/name will serve as passive traffic to your page.
3. Video Treat
Visual marketing makes users to stay a while. On Instagram, there are 2 ways of post video content.
IGTV — can post videos from 15 minutes to 60 mins for business accounts, which could give your brand a whole new level of meaning to a certain subset of users.
Reels — Reels allows users to create 15–30 second clips, like TikTok to create and discover small entertaining videos on Instagram. This feature is now widely used in Instagram where one reel video of my brother’s reached from 100K to 1M!
4. Engage more — 7x the Recommendation
The more you engage users on your particular content, the more it is recommended to others which is the simple algorithm followed by Instagram.
Like making carousels of images, attractive reel/IGTV video of your brand, catchy stories, and unique value you impose on people.
5. Paid Ads
Alternative for organic post is paid ones where you can invest money to reach a targeted audience in a particular region. From fashion brands to fitness coaches a viable way to reach quickly.
After hitting a good followers count
6. Promotions & Partnerships
This is where most of the IG influencers earn. If people value your content, you will be drenched with DM’s of requesting promotions and collaboration from other brands automatically.
You should be wise enough to choose based on your niche which one to move on and get paid for it ranging from 20 to $100 per promotion depending on your value in IG.
Collaborations — other Instagram marketers or brands request to partner a win-win deal, if both had good followers count.
7. Selling services/Products
After hitting a wonderful audience, users will be ready to invest in any products or services you offer owing to the use/value of it to the people.
Stuffs like E-books, Illustrations, T-shirts, Electronic gadgets and so on.
Earning range depends on your brand from 50 to $300.
8. Mentorship/Coaching
Providing mentorship for business start-ups, life coach, wellness coach, or anything that you can offer to your community that benefits them. Ways they connect are linking a course in separate website, WhatsApp calls or by zoom/google meets. This method of marketing is the best way to ensure trust, yet build up your relationship for the better in the future. Earnings range from 100 to $2000.
9. Affiliate Links
It is basically you are getting paid by commissions from a link you’ve given by a brand or a retailer. Essentially, getting paid for referring to a product or service. A company approaches you to refer to their link simultaneously you get paid by some percentage according to sales. Earning are from 50 to $200.
“Social media is about sociology and psychology more than technology” — Brian Solis
The Above methods are the ways my brother earned to cover up his future studies that me and my family are fortunate of.
This social media tool is accessible to everyone — and anyone who does it with strategy, triumphs for a lifetime!
Beginner students, entrepreneurs and tech-giants compete on one platform with unique identity and plan everyone benefits.
We can do this as side-hustle or full- time based on preferences.
The sooner you cope with the trend, the faster you get with it.
“In a digital space, attention is currency. We earn it. We live it “ — Brian.
References:
1. Brother IG account
2. Instagram features
3. Social media marketing
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