How to Become an Influencer on Instagram Through Collaborations

It’s the age of social media influencers, and if you want to take their advantage and become another major influencer in the process, there’s no better platform than Instagram. The Facebook-owned social media website and app’s popularity is through the roof, with over a billion people using the platform every month as far as recent statistics suggest. If you want to take your endeavors forward and be on the same level as the influencers who command hundreds and thousands of views, you have to be ready to take on a fair few challenges.

One of the best ways to ride the challenges that lie ahead to is to collaborate with influencers on the social media platform, and in this blog, we’ll take a look at how you can generate more Instagram likes by joining hands with those who attract the attention of the masses and manage to capture it. But before we do, let’s go through all the reasons why you should consider Instagram collaborations.

Instagram collabs with influencers: The benefits

Greater brand awareness: Instagram is a level playing field for any individual or group or organization that decides to create an account on the platform. As a result, if a man emerges as a comedian or a woman emerges as a model on the platform and manages to earn 100,000 followers, he/she can be considered an influencer, at least in their respective niches.
As an Instagram user who wants to get their word out into the world, you shouldn’t hesitate to reach out to such influencers with your ideas. Ideally, you should try aiming for Instagram influencers who operate in the same niche as you do.

Every time you work on something with an influencer (ideally someone with more followers than you), awareness of your brand is generated within different audiences, making your Instagram page more visible than before.

However, just because you want to make your way to the top of the pile doesn’t mean that you only have to collaborate with content creators who are more popular than you. Occasionally, you should also stick your neck out for the ones in your niche who are still finding their footing in terms of their Instagram marketing. Remember, making as many friends as you can is the key to expanding your brand on Insta.
Going beyond traditional advertising: Conventional advertisements were all about promoting products as unabashedly as possible and for the brands that could afford it, promoting products with the help of celebrated public figures such as athletes, movie stars, and musicians.
However, social media platforms like Instagram have put their radical spin on the advertisement game. No more are conventionally-celebrated public figures required to sell a brand, and you don’t need a ton of money to collaborate with a fellow “Instagrammer.” What you mostly need is approval, and once that’s done and dusted, you can expect your collab venture to reap really big rewards.

The best thing about collab ventures is that if they’re successful, you can count on your collaborator to work with you again in the future when both of you have considerably more Instagram followers. In this way, you can keep supporting each other as long as both of you are active on the platform and willing to dish out content that’s craved by your respective audiences.
More trust: Trust is probably the most vital pillar that needs to be at the very foundation of your Instagram strategy because if your followers don’t trust you or lose faith along the way of your Instagram journey, you have simply no chance of excelling on the platform.
The greatest benefit that an Instagram collab can give you is more trust, and the reason for that is quite simple; if you’re collaborating with someone in your niche who has more followers, you are making a statement that speaks volumes to both your audience and your collaborator’s.

Since the probability of your Insta page being followed by your collaborator’s audience and vice versa is quite high as you’re both parts of the same niche, you’re going to build more trust not just for your respective channels, but also among your respective audiences. After all, social media platforms were essentially created for people to connect, right? And what better than trust to help people develop mutual respect?

Trust is especially important for “Instagrammers” who want to sell using the platform. As long as they don’t get popular Instagram users to vouch for their products, there’s no way that they’ll get people to trust them, especially if they’re competing in a niche where there are already many similar products.

Instagram collabs with influencers: The ideas

Find someone to complement what you’ve got on offer: Look for Instagram users that don’t just operate in the same niche as you do, but choose those who have got things up their locker that complements your qualities for the ideal results.
For example, if you’re a singer, you could approach a manufacturer of microphones, and your collab video could be one where you sing a song to showcase a specific microphone’s ability to capture your vocals.

If you’re into cooking and have garnered a strong-enough fan-following on Instagram, why not try and collaborate with a well-known manufacturer of kitchen utensils and tools? You could either use the manufacturer’s tools in your cooking videos or review them in separate videos or do both if you please!
Collaborate with graphic designers and videography professionals: Text content is slowly going out of fashion, but video content is here to stay, and in such a scenario, the demand for graphic designers and videography professionals is perpetually skyrocketing.
One of the best ways to collaborate with fellow “Instagrammers” in today’s times is to reach out to graphic designers and videography professionals. These are the people who can help you out in creating vital elements of your brand identity, such as the logo you use across Instagram and other social media platforms and, of course, your photos and videos that play major roles in furthering your Insta aspirations as well.

As there are so many graphic designing and videography professionals working as freelancers these days, there’s simply no better place than Instagram to approach them for collaborations. If you’re on a budget and want to get quality videos made without spending a fortune, approach a talented but up and coming “Instagrammer.” In many situations, those looking to make a name for themselves may even help you produce your photo and video-based content for free.

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Figure out each step of the collaboration: A successful collab that manages to draw in real Instagram followers is one where the duties of every collaborator are clearly defined. Once you reach an informal agreement with a potential collaborator, you need to brainstorm together and decide on a few things such as:
(a) What you will be promoting
(b) Who puts in how much effort
(c) The results expected
(d) The duration of the collaboration

Deciding on all these things can help you collaborate as and when you’re collaborating. If these factors aren’t considered and sorted out, you may run into troubles and clashes with your collaborator, which may bring the collaboration to a premature end.
Stop being perfectionists and be professionals instead: In an age where attention spans are decreasing with each passing day, it’s a pointless and, more importantly, thankless task to be a perfectionist. One thing that you and your collaborators should agree on is to stop being perfectionists as trying to perfect things often stretches collaborative efforts for far too long for them to remain fun.
It’s better to decide on the final product by sticking to the schedule that was decided on before the collaborative efforts got underway. Even though minor flaws may feature in your initial attempts to spread the word on Instagram, remember that they’re all learning curves that help you to get better on your journey forward.

A lot of Instagram users don’t ever reach the potentials they are capable of simply because they stagnate while thinking about how they can perfect themselves before putting what they’ve got out there. However, the trick to unlocking the immense possibilities that platforms like Instagram hold is to do more and think less.
Use all Instagram features to maximum effect: Instagram has numerous features for users to showcase everything they could want to. Users can engage with different posts in a wide variety of ways. From participating in polls to reposting to leaving comments, if your content has the “IT factor,” you can expect your followers to do the needful to make your content go viral.
However, as content creators on Insta, you and your collaborators have to fully utilize all the features that Insta gives you to get your respective voices out there for each other’s audiences.

There are also a wide variety of tools for content creators to gauge how much engagement their content is experiencing. With these tools, Insta users can keep track of certain key performance indicators (KPIs) such as engagements per follower, follower growth, and the number of comments received.

Collaborations are the present and the foreseeable future as far as marketing on Instagram is concerned, and if you have high hopes of becoming a social media influencer, it’s about time that you collaborated with a fellow “Instagrammer.”