Instagram Collaboration:
Benefits of Collaborating with Instagram Influencers
Do you want to boost your social media engagement? Have you thought of collaborating with influencers on Instagram?
All brands expect more out of their social media presence, but using just one business account you are limited to a smaller audience or can say the same old audience.
That’s where Instagram collaboration comes in, where you reach a larger audience with different accounts by collaborating with the influencers in your niche.
Here’s a guide on everything you need to know about collaboration on Instagram between a brand and an influencer.
Why do collaborate on Instagram?
Instagram is home to Millennials. It is a social media which has more than 800 million active users.
- 37% of Internet users own Instagram.
- 65% of users use it every day and spend an average of 15 minutes of their day on it.
- 50% of workers use the Explore tab each month to find new content.
- 500,000 active influencers are present on the network.
- There are 1.074 billion Instagram users worldwide in 2021
- Instagram generated an estimated $24 billion in revenue in 2020, which was 36.9% of Facebook’s total.
- In 2020, Instagram was the first social network for collaboration with 75% of the market.
What does Instagram Collaboration mean?
An Instagram collaboration between a brand and an Influencer is one where brands provide some incentives to influencers to create and post content for them. The content could be a product review, recommendation, promotion, or simply a brand mention.
Influencers are immensely trusted by their followers and they can help you convert their audience into your loyal customers. That’s one of the many reasons behind the increasing popularity of influencer marketing among brands across all industries.
Instagram collaboration can be key to your success. It’s the perfect opportunity to try out new ideas while reaching a new audience. There is an agreement between a brand and an influencer to help each other grow and learn through their collaboration.
Let’s discuss the main benefits of Instagram collaboration in more detail.
Reach New Audience
A good reason to work on a brand-influencer collaboration on Instagram is to tap into a new audience. When the influencers launch their campaign, you instantly gain new followers.
Instagram collaboration is an excellent opportunity to reach a new set of your target audience who might be interested in your brand. This helps you to increase brand awareness and it also benefits you to gain new followers.
What’s important is to partner with the right influencer who will get you to reach an audience who might get interested in your products/ services. The more they are interested in your brand, the easier it becomes to continue an effective collaboration.
Boost Engagement
Many Instagram collaborations involve engaging activities like running a contest, hosting a giveaway, or planning a live session.
No matter what you pick, there is a great opportunity to boost your brand’s engagement.
An Instagram collaboration should be engaging for both brands and Influencers. That’s why it’s important to come up with unique and attractive content which relates to all audiences.
Increase in Sales
Instagram collaboration can have direct and practical benefits. Conversion is one of the best benefits that brands look for.
Let’s say you’re about to launch a new product. You certainly want to promote it to your existing followers, who might be your most loyal customers. But you’re also looking for creative ideas to reach a new audience. That’s when you need to explore a brand-influencer collaboration on Instagram.
Finding the right influencer for a campaign can bring you closer to potential users and benefit you by new sales.
All you need is to discuss a creative plan with the influencer that makes it easy to promote your products/ service accurately.
Find New Content
Every new Instagram collaboration (for example: collaborating for 8-10 influencers at a time for a single campaign) can be an excellent opportunity to discover new content for your brand.
What if you launch an Instagram collaboration that encourages your followers to share their user-generated content? It’s a great way to think outside the box (for example A beauty brand that collaborates with an influencer and the influencer asks his/her audience to do a “self ready-to-go makeup” in 15 mins and share a video of the same with a hashtag #selfmakeup_15mins). This could be a great campaign for the beauty brand for everyday skincare.
We do agree not every collaboration shares the same aim behind its campaign. Therefore, we suggest planning the goal first, think creatively, and pick the best influencer that would help you boost your KPIs.
Moreover, you can re-use the content of an influencer for that you will need to have an agreement with them. The influencer may charge to use the images, videos, reels, or others but sometimes they can provide it to you free of cost. It’s interesting to integrate the content on your website or for an Instagram ads campaign.
Save Money
Here is a most important benefit that you may not have considered. Businesses have been spending a lot of money and time, trying to achieve their certain goals through paid Ads. No doubt some have benefited from it but some are at a loss.
Influencer Marketing is very cost-effective and cheap when compared with paid Ads. Hence, spending the time and money to launch a successful Influencer campaign via Instagram collaborations is worth it. It can help you reach the objectives you would usually achieve through paid campaigns is a less investment.
For example, product promotion directed for a new audience can be more successful through an Instagram collaboration. This means that you may decrease your budget for paid Ads to compensate for your organic content and the time you’re spending to make the collaboration on Instagram
It doesn’t necessarily imply that you will not require any advertising for your new products through Paid Ads. However, in any case, you can explore with the right balance between Influencer Marketing and the existing paid advertising strategy.
Which type of Instagram collaborations can you do?
The content that IG allows to do:
- Image posts: The most common post on Instagram is an image post. When posting, share a variety of photos. This will show your brand is diverse and engage your followers in different ways.
View this post on Instagram
- Instagram Video: You can upload professionally made videos or videos that you have on your mobile. The video on Instagram should be less than equal to 1 minute.
- Instagram Story: It is a very helpful feature for everyday posts. You can showcase live events, you can also post stories about your brand, brand values, and culture or behind the scenes, or even showcase your office without over posting and clogging up their main feed.
- Reels: It’s a new feature on Instagram in competition to TikTok. You can create quick tutorials, challenge videos, and informational videos. Regular posts like images, videos, and stories don’t show up here. So your business could have a great opportunity to see engagement from your audience with this content type.
View this post on Instagram
- Instagram LIVE: Going LIVE on Instagram helps you to share content and information in real-time. Unlike other Instagram, publications Live videos should be used sparingly to showcase exciting, real-time content or engaging moments like Q&As or reveals.
- Instagram LIVE Shopping: With this type of publication brands interact with viewers, engage with potential customers in real-time, and can simultaneously sell products directly from the app, engaging with potential customers in real-time. You can also save your videos so that customers can continue shopping for featured products after the live broadcast. To know more about Instagram Live Shopping click here.
Note: This feature is in a testing phase in the USA at the moment.
Get inspiration with our article 7 inspiring examples of Live shopping video replays from influencers
- Instagram Video (before IGTV): The feature Instagram video previously known as IGTV was removed by Instagram on October 7, 2021.
How to find an Instagrammer?
One way to find an Instagrammer is to do it manually, search for Instagrammers in your niche, then note down the no. of followers, no. of posts, average no. of engagement on the posts, and other details that are important for you. But when it comes to managing more than 10 Instagrammers at the same time it becomes tedious and you will lose time.
Another way to find an Instagrammer is much more convenient. You can simply use Influencer Marketing platforms which give you tons of filtered data in just one click. Nowadays these are the trending platforms to select the right Instagrammer in your niche, to manage a massive amount of data, and to manage influencer campaigns.
If you want to collaborate with Star Influencers you need to contact an agent or an Influencer Marketing Agency who will help you through the process.
What are the steps to find an Instagrammer Influencer?
Based on your budget and your product or service:
- Find the Instagrammer account that matches your value and your target. For example Lifestyle, Sport, Tech, Travel… you will have to find a good “theme” for you.
- Analyze the data: number of followers, engagement rate, the profile of the audience (gender, interests, city, country…)
- Analyze the quality of the profile and his audience to avoid fraud.
Below you will find an example of a profile from our platform with all the data that you need to take the right decision:
1) Contact the Instagrammer
- Send a message to propose the collaboration for each Instagrammer that you select.
- Manage the exchange (You may have a small meeting with the Instagrammer or simply have a Q&A session).
2) Contract
- Create a collaboration contract to secure your Instagram collaboration.
- Think about the rights of image, the conditions, the deadline, the legal information that Instagrammers have to show in case of a remunerated collaboration for example. In this case, the Instagrammer has to make appear “sponsored content”.
3) Share products or promo code
After you select the right influencer, you will have to send your product and the promo code (if any) to the Influencer. In this step, it’s important to track your expenses and follow if everything is working well.
4) Remuneration
- An Instagram collaboration can be remunerated or may not.
- It depends on several factors such as the number of followers, the value of your product, the country, the type of publication.
- The remuneration of an Instagrammer is a jungle and can be a nightmare to determinate
5) Analyze the performance
- At the end of your Instagram collaboration, you will need to analyze the performances.
- Check the main KPIs: Engagement rate, number of likes, shares, comments, number of views, and others.
- Use a trackable link to be able to analyze the performance precisely.
This process may sound mind-numbing when you wish to collaborate with more than 10 influencers. Hence using an influencer platform or outsourcing this to an influencer marketing agency will help you to manage all the steps of Instagram collaboration which we discussed above with all the advantages.
If you are looking forward to benefiting your business through Influencer Marketing platforms or thinking of outsourcing your work to an Influencer Marketing agency, don’t hesitate to contact us.
