10 Tips on How to Become an Instagram Influencer and Make Money

Influencers and brands alike are obsessed with Instagram right now. Influencer marketing is one of the fastest-growing segments of digital advertising. According to InfluencerMarketingHub, Influencer marketing is already a $16.4 billion industry.

Today, Influencers have grown in prominence on social media as they've become a primary source of information and inspiration for an entire generation, which has led to an increase in the number of people trying to become an influencer on Instagram. 

Becoming an influencer is not as easy as snapping a few photos, posting them online, and going viral. However, one can become an influencer with the right strategy, creative content, and measurable results. Read on for our ‘10 Tips on How To Become An Influencer on Instagram and Make Money in 2022’.

1) Choose a niche

Before you even begin thinking about becoming an influencer, take some time to think about what type of content you want to create for your audience. Here the very first step is to choose a niche, and this will help you figure out what kind of photos and videos you want to upload.

For example, if you're a fashion blogger, your Instagram feed would make sense to feature fashion-related posts and photos. You could post outfit ideas, styling tips, or some fashion-related memes. If this is the direction you want your Instagram feed to take, then all of the content on your Instagram page must fit with this theme.

You can also have multiple niches on your page although try not to jump around too much as it can confuse your followers and lead them away from your profile. Instead of following, they will be more likely to unfollow you because they don't feel like they are getting the correct type of content from you.

Hence choose a niche that you're passionate about and find sub-niches within your niche to come up with content ideas that can serve a broad range of audiences, and also by choosing multiple sub-niches will leave you with more room to play with.

2) Work on your content pillars

Content pillars for social media are nothing but the themes (or) sub-topics around which you create content and post it on your account. 

For example, if you look at Ronaldo's Instagram account, you would notice he posts around these four topics, football, products, lifestyle, and family. 

Obviously his content pillars are very broad but for you content pillars can be very relevant to your overall Instagram account.

Here developing content pillars can play a crucial role in establishing your brand presence and expertise on a topic. Unlike Ronaldo's example, your content pillars can fall into a single category that resonates with your exact niche. 

For example, if you're into health and fitness, your content pillars can be diet, exercise, protein powders, etc. Thus making it a little broad and, at the same time, specific to your actual niche.

3) Learn photo and video editing

If you want to create compelling content, let it be reels, IGTV videos, or even a carousel, you need to be good enough with your editing. 

Since Instagram is a visually-appealing platform, and its users are bombarded with tons of content on their feeds, it's damn important to upload pics and videos which are appealing and at the same time should convey your content with ease.

Hence with decent design skills and editing skills, you are helping yourself to get more eyeballs and make it easy for your followers to consume your content. That being said, you don't have to be a pro at this.

Probably fundamental photoshop skills (or) use of tools like Canva can get the job done.

Getting your designs and editing right is just one part of the game, and in fact you can take inspiration from other Instagram influencers in your niche and try to understand how their posts are designed. 

You can often mimic some influencer's designs, however, you need to customise those designs according to your account. But in case you're not interested in designing and editing your content. You can always hire a freelancer who can bring your design ideas to life.

4) Batch out and schedule your content

No matter if you're a micro-influencer (or) a well-established influencer. On Instagram, you can’t expect to edit and publish posts manually and that too one at a time. 

As we all know, social media is a game of content, and the more content you put out there, the more you can establish yourself as an influencer.

However, to publish more content consistently, you need to have an excellent in-flow of consistent content ideas, and at the same time, you cannot repeat the same content across multiple Instagram posts. Hence, this makes it impossible, especially if you choose to publish content manually, one at a time.

As you're an Instagram influencer, you're also a human being who has a life and not just an Instagram account.

So how can you make it work? The answer is to batch out your content and schedule them for publishing.

You can use the popular Instagram tools like Later, which allows you to schedule your posts on Instagram and other social media platforms like Pinterest and Facebook.

Later allows you to create content in bulk. You can create and schedule multiple posts for different days of the week and other times of the day. You don't have to publish them manually every time you post something new on your account. Instead, later will automatically publish your post at times scheduled in advance.

5) Write engaging captions for your Instagram posts

Writing interesting captions for your posts is a great way to increase engagement on your Instagram account. Captions are the best place to express your personality and tell people why they should like/share/follow you.

The most important part of Instagram's captions is the first two lines of the captions because for your followers, those two lines are the only visible part of your whole caption, and most people will only read your complete caption if they like those first two lines/sentences.

That being said, you can't neglect the other part of the captions as well. If you want to write engaging Instagram captions, use these tips:-

• Start with a question (Make users click)
• Tell a story (Make users stick)
• Leave a Call-To-Action (Make users take some action. It could be anything like 'Check My Bio' etc.)

6) Leverage hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to gain exposure on Instagram. They help you connect with new users and get in front of the right audience. Hashtags are keywords you can tag your posts with, and users can find your content by searching for these hashtags.

For example, if you're a fitness trainer, you'd want to use #fitness, #fitfam, and #gymrat as hashtags. This will help get your posts in front of those who follow these tags.

To find the most popular hashtags, you can use tools like hashtags.org or hashtagify.me. There are literally dozens of videos on YouTube that talk about how to find the best hashtags for your Instagram posts and as well as for your individual account.

In terms of hashtags, you can't expect to copy someone else's hashtags despite them being in the same niche and expect to get the same results (likes, shares, and followers). 

As a content creator, you need to experiment with multiple sets of hashtags across your multiple posts before finally settling on the best set of hashtags for you.

Generally, you can consider three types of hashtags:-

1. Branded hashtags (Ex:- #YourName, #UserName etc)
2. High-competitive hashtags (Hashtags with a high number of posts and more competitors)
3. Low-competitive hashtags (Long-tail hashtags which are less competitive)

There should be a good mix of the above three hashtags to help your content rank on unique hashtags and generate additional exposure through hashtags.

Using too many un-relevant and broad hashtags will make your caption look spammy or unprofessional and reduce your chances of getting likes or comments. Hence try and test out for yourself.

7) Double down on Reels and IGTV videos

It's no surprise that today's Instagram is all about reels and videos. These are great for users as video content can be comparatively easier to consume than audio content. 

Creating a ton of video content for creators and influencers is a great way to gain additional exposure and followers on Instagram.

Just don't take my word, an insider from Instagram said in this interview that creators can double down on reels and IGTV videos to grow their engagement which eventually leads to improvement of other metrics as well.

Along with reels and IGTV videos, you can also incorporate videos in your Instagram stories. You can use stories to give sneak peeks of upcoming content or promote something only available for a limited time (like an event).

8) Leverage analytics to your advantage

Analytics play a significant role in your Instagram growth. Checking and analysing your content regularly will give you an idea of what's working and what isn't. 

Analytics has its own place if you’re trying to become an influencer and later want to make money as an influencer.

I mean, without analytics, you can be stuck in one place, trying the same strategies, and growing like a snail when other influencers in your niche who are most probably doing the same stuff as you but are much more susceptive to the numbers will be pivoting to the right strategies time to time, making progress like a snake instead of a snail.

Analytics is not only considered to grow your accounts, while communicating through brands for sponsorships, some brands will be very particular with engagement numbers. Such brands like to bet their buck on Influencers who have the potential to boost their products.

Hence, brands might be interested in looking at your analytics through you (or) they might stalk at your numbers using any software. So keep an eye on your analytics, understand the numbers, and improve those overtime.

9) Focus on community first

Don't forget that Instagram is a community-first platform. Like other social media platforms, there is very little to no shelf life for each post. If you post something today, it might entirely disappear on Instagram within a week.

It's just that Instagram likes promoting fresh content each second, and also, at the same time, your followers would love to consume fresh pieces of content everyday. Hence apart from just posting daily and being freshly relevant, you also need to be active on Instagram to engage with your followers to let the algorithm know you're not a bot.

To serve and nurture community through your content, you need to start communicating with people. It could be directly through messages, comments (or) it could be through stories and image posts.

I suggest you invest additional time daily apart from publishing content on engaging directly with your followers. Because having an account with 10k followers with a 0-1% engagement rate will not make you an Instagram influencer. 

As an influencer, you need to build a community of followers who know you, listen to you, and look up to you.

However, this is something that you need during the early growth of your account. But once you get the content strategy right, the ball keeps rolling, and your community seems to grow organically. 

Till then, you can try to mimic some of these strategies:-

• Reply to your comments and start a convo
• Regularly reply to other influencer posts in your niche
• Tag your followers and influencers in your stories
• Run free contests and provide any free lead magnets (Like eBooks, Videos, etc.)

10) Build a brand through collaborations

This point is an extension of the above tip. Collaborations are one of the most popular and effective ways to build a brand, and the beauty of collaborations is that they are very organic.

Often collaborations with influencers and brands can leave you with these:-

• Great content pieces for your account
• Additional exposure to an audience of other influencers and brands
• Establish your name within the niche
• Hefty amount of money through sponsorships if done right

No matter how many followers you have on Instagram and how much engagement you get on Instagram. If you don't sell any products/services of your own (or) if you are not an affiliate to any. Then making money on Instagram as an influencer is only possible through 'Sponsorships' which are nothing but brand deals (or) branded collabs.

But to get to that point of the brand deals, you first have to establish your brand, create an engaging audience, and appeal mainly to those brands. Thus in this case, you need to collaborate with as many influencers as possible within your niche through stories, reels, IGTV videos, etc.

To start collaboration directly, reach out to your prospects and request them for a collaboration. However it's not as simple as it sounds but once you start reaching out for collabs you have to come across a way to find and land long-term collaborations.

Top 3 Instagram Influencer Etiquettes to Keep in Mind 

Now that you know the basics of becoming an Instagram Influencer, let's go over some of the rules to abide by while becoming an influencer because you don't want to be an influencer who hides behind an account with a random logo and re-posts content from the existing content pieces of other/actual influencers.

Although it's not guaranteed that every Instagram influencer follows these three etiquettes, you would eventually notice what most influencers do.

1) Maintain a good Instagram bio and theme

Your Instagram bio is one of the very first things that a potential brand would look at. Not just brands, even your followers would notice your bio whenever they stumble across your profile and they might follow you only if you have an organised bio that talks about what you do and what you will provide if they follow you.

Hence you must make sure that it's filled with relevant and necessary information. You don't have to put your entire life story in there, in fact just a couple of crisp lines mixed with emojis, a CTA (Call-To-Action), and a link to your website (or) anything is more than enough.

Once your bio is set, your Instagram theme is the next thing people will notice as they scroll down on your profile. And this is where if you have developed a good sense for designs and colours, you will be able to maintain a sleek theme and that’s mostly if you have learnt basic editing (which I mentioned above).

2) Be consistent, no matter what

Be it posting, be it engaging with your community, or be it finding influencers to collaborate with. It would only help if you are consistent with anything and everything. In the initial days of your journey, you could easily forget about posting daily because you most likely are gonna get fewer views and likes on your content.

But consistency is the major difference between someone who becomes an influencer and someone who tried to become an influencer. One sticks to their plan while the other drops out once they stop seeing results.

Also, being consistent doesn't mean blatantly posting whatever you want and whenever you want. Everything should be strategic, and you need to be flexible enough to pivot your strategies while constantly experimenting with your work no matter what. In the end, it all comes down to whether you’re moving forward (or) not.

3) Avoid buying followers and using spam bots

Instagram is very particular and against any spam bots. While it can be tempting to buy followers and likes, there is no point, and it will only look fake and make your account look like a bot account. Also, excess use of bots for engagement and followers can lead to a ban.

However, I am against using any bot to boost engagement numbers, but I am not against the usage of any software which offers automation and makes your work damn easy. There's a clear difference between a bot that you use to improve likes versus software that you use to schedule your monthly posts.

As I mentioned above, consistency is the key and by using automation, you can be consistent on Instagram without having to give too much attention to your Instagram account.

Wrap Up

The idea behind this article was to give you some essential pointers on how you can become an Instagram influencer by following simple and sorted tips. 

I assume the above '10 Tips on How To Become an Influencer and Make Money' might have motivated you, if not least give you an insight into what you can do while looking forward to your journey as an influencer.

Let us know if you have any exciting tips to add to our existing context?