Welcome to this lesson of our Instagram Academy. Today we talk about Instagram collaborations. As we saw in an earlier lesson, you can make money on Instagram, and collaborations are one of the best routes.
It is certainly an uphill road, but follow our advice and you can genuinely earn on Instagram through collaborations. There are millions of companies in the world looking for collaborations on Instagram to promote their products, and plenty of profiles earning well through them.
If you want to propose collaborations on Instagram, or want to know how to do Instagram collaborations and which companies on Instagram run them, you are in the right place — read on.
Before we get to what brought you here: in our Academy you will find plenty of other lessons on Instagram, on SEO, on Facebook and on growth hacking.
In our Instagram Academy you will find other lessons on buying Instagram followers, on Instagram bots, on how to make money on Instagram, on how to grow your followers, on how to improve your profile and plenty more.
Let’s not waste any more time and get to this lesson’s subject: Instagram collaborations.
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A good profile is what wins Instagram collaborations
Let me start with something you have probably already guessed: you have to have a good Instagram profile. The first thing brands that run Instagram collaborations look at is the quality of the profile.
So pay attention to:
- an Instagram username in line with what you offer, distinctive and easy to remember;
- choosing the profile photo carefully — it is your calling card, the first thing other users and brands see;
- looking after the bio, which has to make clear immediately who you are and what you offer, and give a way of contacting you to propose a collaboration.
Free image from Pixabay
Winning plenty of followers on Instagram
This second point may look obvious, but it is fundamental when hunting for collaborations on Instagram: you need a profile with plenty of followers, or you need to grow your followers.
The companies that collaborate on Instagram look for profiles with a high follower count. It is hard to give the exact number you should have to get noticed, since it varies from brand to brand. I work with clients who have 5,000 followers and already get collaborations off the ground, but broadly, profiles from 10,000 — better 20,000 — followers with an excellent interaction rate can do very well. And clearly, the more you have, the better.
How do you grow followers to win Instagram collaborations? Follow the rules and best practices we covered in an earlier lesson: how to grow your Instagram followers.
In summary:
- publish good, professional photos;
- publish quality content;
- be different: try to stand out, find your style and communicate in a distinctive, original way;
- connect Instagram to your other networks and build a single strategy;
- use the right Instagram hashtags;
- make the most of your captions;
- seek out interaction with other users;
- make the most of video and stories;
- be consistent in publishing;
- use slightly more complex strategies like the ones we covered in these two lessons: buying Instagram followers and Instagram bots. Please follow what we wrote and don’t use bots or buy followers at random.
Engagement
As we wrote, having plenty of followers is one of the main things that gets you noticed by companies looking for profiles to promote their products and services.
Just as important is your profile’s engagement rate.
Plenty of followers and few interactions is not a good sign. To a company it can look as though you bought followers and that the count is not real.
So it matters a great deal that your posts get plenty of likes and comments.
How do you get there? By following the guidelines above. Growth in follower count and in interactions is proportional, so if you follow all the advice for growing followers, interactions will grow too.
To understand the quality of your profile and your engagement rate you can use MightyScout (go to the official site), a very useful tool used by many companies to find the influencers that suit them. Try it, see how companies view you and work out where to improve.
To give you a number: an engagement rate should be at least 5%.
Now that we have covered how to put yourself in the right position, let’s get specific and look at how collaborations on Instagram actually work.
Free image from Pixabay
Why do companies do collaborations on Instagram?
Why should a brand be interested in your profile? Because it wants visibility. Your followers see the content you post, and the company gets plenty of visibility from that.
And for a company it is far better to find a profile that promotes its products and services than to run advertising. That is because you, through your profile, can be considered an influencer (or a micro influencer) able to shape your followers’ behaviour: they trust you and are therefore inclined to listen when you say something in your Instagram posts.
For that reason companies are willing to reward a profile for this advertising work, which goes by the name of an Instagram collaboration.
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How to get a collaboration off the ground on Instagram
There are several ways to start an Instagram collaboration; let’s go through them.
A company contacts you
This is the most comfortable and simple situation. The brand notices your profile, contacts you proposing a collaboration, you agree a fee and off you go.
Obviously it isn’t easy to be noticed by companies while doing nothing. To get noticed, what you have to do is involve the company you want to work with by tagging it in the content you post.
If you want to get noticed by Zara, for instance, go to a Zara store, buy something, wear it, take a photo and post it on Instagram tagging Zara, in the hope they notice you and see a potential influencer worth proposing a collaboration to.
Free image from Pixabay
You contact a company on Instagram
Contacting companies and brands to work with is the option most used by people who want to make money with Instagram.
The first step is to find the company with a simple search from your own profile. Type the name of the company you want to work with, start following it (if you don’t already) and send a direct message with your collaboration proposal.
If the company doesn’t reply, don’t lose heart — try contacting them by email, which you can find in the profile description or on the contact page of the company’s website.
Want a template you could send? Here it is.
For the attention of [company name].
Hello,
I am [first and last name] and I have followed you for a long time. I love your products and follow your Instagram profile closely.
I run the Instagram profile “[link to your profile]”, which has [your follower count] followers. As you will see on my profile, the content I publish is very much in line with the products you make.
For that reason I believe my followers could be very interested in the products and services you offer, and I would like to start putting them in front of my audience and introducing them properly.
So I wanted to ask whether you might be interested in starting a collaboration.
If you would like to take this further, you can contact me through any of these channels:
Email: [your professional email]
Phone: [your phone number]
Skype: [your Skype name]
Thank you for your time and best regards,
[First and last name]
After sending that email (and I recommend sending it to plenty of companies) all you have to do is wait for a reply.
From experience: around 80% of the emails you send get no reply at all, 15% reply saying they are not interested, and 5% reply saying they might be interested in an Instagram collaboration.
Free image from Pixabay
You contact a company or shop in your area
This works very well, above all for profiles without a huge following. You can contact — or better, go and talk in person to — the shops and businesses in your area and offer them visibility on your profile.
If you have few followers you could start by proposing a free collaboration, to see whether it works, and if the collaboration brings results you could propose receiving their products in exchange (which works very well in fashion).
adMingle
Image from https://www.admingle.it/
Another route to Instagram collaborations is adMingle.
What is adMingle (go to the official site)? A platform that connects publishers (you, wanting to earn on Instagram by publishing companies’ advertising) with advertisers (the companies looking for Instagram profiles willing to publish it).
From that short description you can see it is exactly what we are talking about. Through adMingle you can find companies for Instagram collaborations.
On many platforms you only earn Amazon vouchers; on this one you earn real money.
How it works:
- you sign up on the site;
- you create your adMingle account;
- you connect your Instagram profile to the new adMingle account;
- you complete your adMingle profile with all the details required;
- you look through the campaigns and apply if you think you fit one;
- you wait for the company to approve you;
- you follow their instructions for publishing on Instagram;
- you wait for the money to reach your bank account or PayPal (once the €50 minimum threshold is met).
It happens that very good profiles (with plenty of users and interactions) are contacted directly by adMingle on behalf of companies wanting to promote their products and start a collaboration.
Buzzoole
Image from https://buzzoole.com/
Buzzoole (go to the official site) is a competitor of adMingle and works in practically the same way.
On Buzzoole you find campaigns from very well-known brands too, and this platform also lets you apply for campaigns and receive credits — credits you can convert into Amazon gift cards.
Other platforms for finding Instagram collaborations
There are other websites, apps and platforms you could use to find companies that collaborate on Instagram:
Types of collaboration on Instagram
There are several kinds of Instagram collaboration companies propose, or that you can propose when you contact them:
- products: the company sends you the products you will feature in your photos and videos. They give you the product in exchange for one or more posts;
- money: the company pays you in cash in exchange for advertising on your profile. Companies usually pay through PayPal once the work is done. I always suggest asking for 50% up front, so you don’t risk being left empty-handed if the company decides not to pay;
- a mix of products and money;
- discount codes: the company activates a code letting people buy one or more products at a heavy discount. You publish that code on your social channels and earn a percentage every time one of your followers uses it. It works like an affiliate programme;
- spending budget: a coupon you can use to buy the brand’s products.
Free image from Pixabay
How much do you earn from an Instagram collaboration?
What you can earn from a collaboration on Instagram varies with the quality of your profile. So it varies with the follower count, the number of interactions and, generally, the visibility you can give the product you promote.
You can earn from €5 a post up to several thousand euros a post.
Bear in mind that there are marketers and influencers earning from €100 a month to more than €10,000 a month.
What to do once you have accepted an Instagram collaboration
You have found the company and have to get the collaboration going. What now?
The first thing is to read the brand’s requirements carefully (this is fundamental) and to build a dedicated editorial plan setting out the whole posting schedule.
The second is “do more than they ask“. Above all when the relationship is new, try to do the extra thing that sets you apart from the other people collaborating with the company, so you can turn it into an ongoing relationship.
The third is to analyse the results. Do the posts you create hit the agreed goal? Can you improve them somehow? Optimise your collaboration work.
One last thing: as a matter of ethics you should tell your followers when content is sponsored. How? By adding a hashtag such as #ad, #sp or #sponsored.
Free image from Pixabay
Conclusion
In this lesson of our Instagram Academy we saw how to find Instagram collaborations. As you will have gathered, you can earn on Instagram through collaborations, but it takes work and dedication.
Now you have everything you need to choose the best road for earning on Instagram through collaborations.
Good luck.
We will see you in the next lessons, where we will go deeper into other Instagram subjects you are sure to find interesting. Stay tuned and keep following your favourite Instagram Academy.
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