What Makes Influencer Marketing Successful? Tips for Beginners You Should Know Now

What Makes Influencer Marketing Successful? Tips for Beginners You Should Know Now

Influencer marketing is not a new concept, in fact, it is a millennia-old practice, from Ancient Greece orators to nowadays celebrities and superstars. Just that in our digital era it reaches new dimensions and found new ways of evolution. When Jacqueline Kennedy appeared in public wearing a jaguar coat, half of the world rushed to buy and wear a jaguar coat. Well, that’s an influencer marketing example.

So, How Do We Define Influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing is the practice of collaborating with influencers – third parties that enjoy the trust of a certain audience, for the purpose of raising sales and brand awareness. Practically influencers have the ability to influence consumers in their buying decision. While using influencer marketing you have to identify the right influencers, built relationships with them, and use their influence as a promotion channel for your products/services.

Influencer marketing is a collaboration between influencers and brands, a mix of old marketing tactics and new digital ways of promotion.

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In the category of influencers, we can count: celebrities, public figures, journalists, experts in an industry, bloggers, social media stars, YouTubers, Instagrammers, etc. Influencers could be recognized experts in digital marketing, travel photographer on Instagram, makeup artists on YouTube, or technology executives on LinkedIn.

Today influencer can be literally anyone and you can find them anywhere. What defines an influencer is the dimension of his following on social media and on the web in general. Each industry has its influencers, they are to be recognized primarily by a large number of followers, hundreds of thousands or even millions.

Influencer Marketing Example:  Jeff Bullas on Twitter
Influencer Marketing Example: Jeff Bullas on Twitter

Influencer Marketing Example:  Foundr on Instagram
Influencer Marketing Example: Foundr on Instagram

And to convince you that influencer marketing is worth giving a shot, I am going to show you some influencer marketing statistics:

·       The influencer marketing market was estimated at $2 billion in 2017 and is expected to touch $10 billion by 2020

· Research made by Activate by Bloglovin reveals that 67% of marketers consider influencer marketing to be the channel that helped them reach better results via a more targeted audience

·       88% of consumers sustain they fully trust online reviews in the same way they trust a personal recommendation

·       A Reuters Institute Report from 2016 found that ad blocks range between 10% and 35% and is higher among young people under 35

·       Social networks have the power to influence 74% of buying decisions made by consumers

·       Rhythm One Report of 2016 on Influencer Marketing sustains that well-managed influencer marketing campaigns can bring up to $11.20 ROI for each dollar spent.

How Can Influencer Marketing Help You? Influencer Marketing Tips

When done correctly you will see shortly great results. Here are the influencer marketing benefits:

–          Expand your reach to new audiences – those of influencers you collaborate with. The engaged audience of an influencer will react better to your targeted promotions

–          Build credibility and brand awareness through the association with a certain influencer

–          Increase engagement and connection with your buyer persona

–          Minimize costs and improve conversion rates, as influencer audiences are more targeted and help reach the right buyer personas

–          Create great content that your audience will love. Influencers have wide experience in creating highly valuable content that their audience consumes and will help you with creating content for your products.

–          Increase search engine rankings and SEO authority, thanks to influencers backlinking to your site

–          Expand social media following thanks again to influencers, as part of their followers will follow you

–          Increase sales – this is the final scope of influencer marketing: attracting more sales and high-quality leads for your business based on influencer endorsement and reviews. This way you can close larger deals, and shorten the sales cycle.

[interact id=”5b8ed2e728483b00147dabf7″ type=”quiz” mobile=”false”]

How Do You Find the Right Influencers for Your Niche?

By now you should be convinced that influencer marketing may have a great impact on your business.

Good.

Of course, primarily you have to establish an influencer marketing strategy, your goals, and how are you going to use influencers to achieve them. Establish a budget that you want to invest in an influencer marketing campaign, what type of influencers you want to reach, outline the campaign, and identify the KPIs to help you measure the results of your campaign.

Now let’s get to work and see how to identify relevant influencers for your niche.

You have two options, either search for influencers yourself via search engines, social media, etc or use an influencer marketing platform like Fame Bit or Hypr where you can create campaigns and influencers will pitch to collaborate. We will talk about influencer platforms a bit later in this post.

Tip: Take into consideration that if you want to maximize the benefits of influencer marketing, you have to consider it a long-term game. In order to attract influencers, you need to put in place a strategy that emphasizes long-term partnerships and creates for you, reliable brand ambassadors.

Search and Identify Reliable Influencers for Your Niche

Your purpose is to find voices and influencers that not only have a good following but even more important appeal to your buyer personas and can entice them.

The most relevant influencers for you might not be the most popular with the largest audiences, but those voices can influence your audience. Investigate who your buyer personas listen to, and where they go to obtain the information they need.

The starting point is to make a list of industry leaders and experts, speakers that your audience pays attention to.

After that go to Google and do a simple search with “keyword” + blog, for instance, travel blog, WordPress blog, cooking blog, etc.  And check the first most promising results.  Here is an example search for “digital marketing blog” and it’s obvious you arrive at lists of influencers:

Finding influencers digital marketing

To help you decide among the results you obtained you may need further support from tools like MozBar, an SEO toolbar that indicates the domain authority of a blog. The higher the number indicating the domain authority DA the better. Aim for blogs with DA higher than 25, in general, they are established sites with large audiences, rank well, and can provide valuable SEO benefits.

Another modality to identify influencers is to search with hashtags or keywords on social networks.  Check on the persons that B2B marketers mention or retweet often on Twitter. To find influencers via Twitter just write the target keyword in the search bar and click the “People” tab:

Find Twitter influencers

For other social media networks, you proceed in a similar manner: to find influencers on Instagram search with the hashtags related to your niche, to find YouTubers search for videos valid for your niche.

Or you have the possibility to use tools like ContactOut, Hunter or NinjaOutreach to identify the most shared articles in your niche and to find the email of the person who wrote them.

Influencer Marketing Tips – Selection Criteria for Influencers

When deciding to put an influencer on your list, first do your research and check the following factors:

·       Relevance for your brand. The content published by influencers is relevant to your products and brands? Is his audience overlapping with yours? Take a close look at the content that the influencer creates.

·       Engagement. Has the influencer an engaged audience? Inspect social shares, comments, likes, etc. Is the influencer involved in discussions? Does he answer his followers?

·       Following. Verify the overall audience that the influencer has across all channels: blog, Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc.

Among the above three factors, the following ranks last. Be aware that an influencer with a smaller following but a more engaged one may be more valuable and provide better results.

Here is an infographic comparing the results obtained by micro and macro influencers on a sample of 700 Instagram-sponsored posts made by MediaKix. But for specific niches, the results may be different.

Infographic medikix micro macro influencers

Also take into consideration other supplementary elements as:

·       Quality of content that the influencers publish

·       Consistency of content publishing

·       Knowledge or expertise in the niche

·       Relevancy of content for their audience

·       Focus on a specific topic

·       Connections with other influencers in their niche – verify LinkedIn and Facebook page

·       Their voice. Do they use a cynical tone, a funny one, or maybe a sarcastic one?

Pick influencers that know their stuff and have the power to sway prospect leads. Also, pay attention to contacting influencers whose content is aligned with your brand strategy. They will be your brand ambassadors finally. Pick them wisely!

After identifying the marketing influencers that you are interested in, put them on a list and start contacting them. You can of course contact them directly, but if they are huge authorities in your niche, a strategic approach is better. Meaning taking the time and investing the necessary efforts to build connections and earn the trust of influencers.

To engage with leaders and experts you need to appear on their radar and attract their attention. So, choose an indirect way. Concentrate your efforts to build solid relationships. Don’t just contact them with your request, there are high chances to fail to obtain the results you want. Instead, comment on their articles or on social media, share their best content or the one you found most helpful, and start a conversation by asking a question or with a pertinent observation.

Influencer Marketing Tips – Mistakes to Avoid While Using Influencer Marketing

When you work with influencers you want to obtain the best results possible. So, avoiding mistakes that other businesses made with influencer marketing might help you improve your score.

Decide for influencers in your niche that do not match your brand

Targeting influencers in your niche is a no-brainer, but keep in mind that you need to be specific also. If you have a product for those who practice yoga, it’s better to approach yoga instructors or yoga experts than fitness bloggers or healthy life influencers.

To help you decide, create a buyer persona profile and decide if the influencer’s content is of interest to this persona. Would this persona consume the content created by this influencer, would she follow him on social media?

Superficial research

Getting impressed by a huge following without digging deeper and analyzing engagement. Shares, likes, and comments give the exact measure of the influence and impact an influencer might have. Also, asking for referrals and past results for other campaigns would be helpful to support your decision.

Pay close attention to posts that promote products and inspect if followers are really interested and ask relevant questions and not just write generic comments like “super”, “great stuff” or a collection of emojis.

Failing to build strong relationships with influencers

Influencers receive lots of pitches for sponsorships and collaborations. To be successful you need to differentiate yourself to entice the influencer to work with you. Remember that influencer marketing offers the best results in the long run.  

When contacting an influencer don’t send an all-fits-one pitch. Personalize! Write for each influencer a dedicated copy, speak a bit about him, tell him how you identified him, and why you think their work is great.  Emphasize the reason you consider the respective influencer will be a good fit to evangelize for your brand.  

Skipping on influencer marketing strategy and goals

Having a clear simple strategy and realistic, measurable goals will ease your efforts. Will give you the right direction to concentrate, the platforms that the influencers should use in your campaigns, and the content that is likely to help you hit your goals.

Set for your influencer marketing campaigns other goals than simply increasing sales. Strive to help your customers, educate them and support them to use the full potential of your products.  

Failing to track and measure results

Track the influencer campaign and check analytics to know exactly what results are generated by which influencer. Use coupon codes or tracking links to clearly identify which clients are redirected from which influencer. As influencer marketing is a long-term endeavor, the gathered data will support you in your future decision for future campaigns.

Influencer Marketing Example:   Bigelow Tea  Case Study

Bigelow Tea created an influencer marketing campaign to emphasize the health benefits of drinking tea. The main scope was to promote tea products and stimulate a healthy lifestyle.  

The selected influencers creatively incorporated the Bigelow tea products into their promoted content. For instance, Ashley Thurman, the pen behind Cherished Bliss, created an iced tea recipe that mixed together iced lemonade with Bigelow tea.

Blogger Jess of A Million Moments came up with another creative idea, she conceived a guide to teach her audience how to create flower pots using tea packages.  You can see below the result:

Influencer marketing promotion content sample

Output of the campaign

Influencer bloggers generated sponsored posts with about 32,000-page engagements. Bigelow Tea obtained a sales increase of 18.5% and its media value tripled. The key element in this campaign was the flawless integration of the sponsored posts within the usual content that influencers provide.

Influencer Marketing Tips: Influencer Marketing Platforms You Can Rely On

If you are a brand planning an influencer marketing campaign and thus in search of influencers or an influencer in search of a new collaboration, influencer marketing platforms might be the answer to your endeavors.

For brands in general, using micro-influencers might prove to be a winning card.

Here is a selection of top influencer marketing platforms you can choose from:

HYPR Brands

HYPR claims to be “the World’s largest and smartest Influencer search and discovery directory that provides real-time analytics for social Influencers across major social platforms.” They host over 10 million influencers indexed via demographic information, interests, and revenues. Also, detailed audience analytics is provided for brands to better support them in finding the right influencers for their own niche.

HYPR is proud to reveal that more than 30% of the largest brands across the globe trust their data and their services are used by more than 500 brands and influencer marketing platforms.

Hypr Influencer Marketing Platform

Find Your Influence

Find Your Influence (FYI) is the first SaaS acting as an influencer marketing platform and gathers more than 100,000 influencers. Brands like Sony, Honda, BestWestern, Nivea, and Walmart trust this platform for their influencer marketing campaigns.

FYI covers a large variety of niches from fashion to culture and is a marketplace that allows businesses to easily find relevant influencers. They provide a full-option platform with analytics tools, secure payment, and active support.

Findyourinfluence influencer marketing platform

Shoutcart

Shoutcart is one of the largest social media influencer marketplaces. Their model is different from other influencer marketing platforms because it is conceived as an e-commerce platform. Influencers publish their prices for posts or “shoutout” and brands shop what they find convenient as on any other e-commerce site. 

Shoutcart provides scalable campaigns, followers demographics, tracking and statistics, and lower fees.

Shoutcart influencer marketing platform

Revfluence

Revfluence relies on the power of machine learning to propose the most relevant influencers for your influencer campaigns. They leverage data from over 500,000 influencers, containing audience demographics and content quality, and deliver it via a sophisticated search engine.

Revfluence influencer marketing platform

Julius

Julius allows brands to sort influencers via a comprehensive collection of forty search filters. They promise to connect you with highly targeted if not the perfect influencers through “one million hand-curated influencer data points”.

It offers a handful of campaign management tools such as integrated messaging, fast activation, comprehensive reporting, and extensive influencer data.

Julius influencer platform

So, there you have it, a general introduction to influencer marketing and influencer marketing tips. It’s up to you to decide if you are going to use such strategies or not. Just keep in mind if you decide to go for it that, this is a long-term game and you should constantly make efforts to engage with influencers and build solid relationships.

Remember influencer marketing works, if properly executed, because it leverages the power of social media combined with content marketing, based on authentic authority already established for the target audience.

Influencer marketing infographic - influencer marketing tips - influencer marketing instagram - influencer marketing strategy
Best Off-Page SEO Techniques You Need to Profit on

Best Off-Page SEO Techniques You Need to Profit on

That SEO is paramount for ranking in search engines and driving more traffic to your site, is not a secret for a long time now. The two main areas of SEO are on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Test the best-considered off-page SEO techniques in 2023 to push up your content in search engine results.

The present article will focus on off-page SEO techniques and methods. First of all, let’s clarify what is off-page SEO: simply put all the techniques executed externally, outside your site, to boost rankings. Off-page SEO tools and tactics impact the position your site gains in SERPs and include brand awareness, links, and external site relationships.

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Here are the best off-page Search Engine Optimization techniques valid for 2020:

Off-Page SEO Strategy: Obtain Backlinks from Authority Sites

Most SEO experts agree that in terms of off-page SEO optimization, backlinking is the most prominent. Backlinks are impacting heavily on your rankings particularly if you want to appear on the first page of search results.

 Reason?

Search engines like Google will trust you just after many others will trust you. If sites with high authority will link back to your site, Google will consider your site more trustworthy.

Off page SEO techniques Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first

These backlinks are very important in the algorithm used by Google to rank pages in a list of results for a certain query. This algorithm uses a series of criteria baptized by Google Ranking Factors, which counts about 200 factors that are taken into consideration when deciding the hierarchy of sites when answering a search query.

Some of the most impactful are:

Google SEO ranking factors

 

The more links from authority sites point to your site, the more value you gain in Google’s eyes. As it analyzes several aspects concerning the link: from which site comes the link? Which is its quality? Which is the logic of this connection? How fresh is it? Etc.

Ok, we get the importance of backlinks, especially from renowned sites. But, the $1million question is:

How do you obtain these authoritative, relevant links?

Here are some ways:

Off-Page SEO Techniques: Guest posting

Guest blogging is a reliable way to attract new links and traffic, even if some might consider it outdated. While contributing to other sites besides building links, you promote your brand building authority and acquiring referral traffic.

When posting on other sites, take into consideration the following:

* Make a list of sites that accept guest posts, that are connected with your niche, and that you are interested in publishing on.

* To cover all opportunities, search in Google and on social media networks with “your target keyword” + ”guest post”

* Check each site from your list and verify which is most popular, and which has the highest traffic, and prioritize them in the function of the results you obtain. Use a tool like similarweb.com, to help you.

* Use a social media analyzer to verify the number of social media shares the latest posts from the respective site had. This will help you establish the potential shares your articles may achieve.

* Write a high-quality guest post.

* Remember not to insert too many links to your site.

This method involves a lot of homework, that’s obvious: you need to research your niche, find out which are the influencers and top bloggers, get in contact, and send pitches. But, if your request is accepted, your article will be published and voila, you obtained a valued backlink.

Off-Page SEO Techniques: Create high-impact infographics

That human beings are visual creatures in general, is demonstrated and proved with numbers. We all, are more attracted by visually appealing content – “an image makes more than 1000 words” and statistics show this.

In this category, infographics are still at the top, even if they saw fulminant growth in recent years and some may consider this practice arrived at saturation. Great results for backlinks and traffic can still be achieved if great graphics, information, and original idea are used.

 To help promote your infographics you should consider publishing them on infographics submission sites and link them to your blog or site.

Some of these sites are:

·       https://visual.ly/view

·       http://www.reddit.com/r/Infographics

·       http://submitinfographics.com/

·       http://www.infographicsarchive.com/

Infographics have a high potential of going viral if properly made and intensively promoted. When your infographic is shared, organic traffic is directed toward your site. So, you made it, backlinks are generated.

Off-Page SEO Techniques: Broken link building

A more efficient method to acquire links may be identifying broken links on authority sites and getting in contact to acknowledge this, offering in exchange a link of yours to replace it.

Broken links are all over the Internet, and authoritative sites are no exception. This arrives because initial links change, hosting expires, or links are damaged during migration processes. Having broken links on your site does not impact ranking, but affects user experience and you want to avoid that. Authoritative sites are aware of that too, and that’s why this technique is relevant and works.

Thus, make a backlink analysis on relevant sites for your niche, identify broken links, contact the owner and inform him about those dead links and propose a replacement link, preferably yours. Chances are that your effort is paid back with a backlink.

Off-Page SEO Strategy 2: Leverage Your Social Media

Off-Page optimization finds a massive pillar on social shares. Check below how this happens.

Social Media supports off-page SEO. Source: postano.com
Social Media supports off-page SEO. Source: postano.com

Using social media helps you meet your target audience, know her better, and find out which are her pain points, where is she hanging out, and when.  

Off-Page SEO Techniques: Increase Engagement on Social Media

Engaging on social media platforms is a primary Off-page SEO technique that will have a major impact on your site’s visibility and popularity. Being present and involved in social conversations on multiple platforms will expand your reach and help grow your business.

Off page SEO checklist - Off page SEO optimisation

Off-Page SEO Strategy 3: Leverage Question and Answer Sites

Another way to boost your site visibility through off-page SEO techniques is to use question-and-answer sites like Quora.

Search and join questions associated with your business or niche and provide pertinent answers to these questions. Offer a link to your website to help you gain visibility.  

A good selection of question-and-answer sites is:

·       https://www.quora.com/

·       https://answers.yahoo.com/

·       http://askville.amazon.com.w3snoop.com/

·       http://www.ehow.com/

Some specialists consider that if you don’t use Quora, for example, you do not use the full potential and you are missing points on your SEO efforts. Quora is a platform where you can obtain pertinent answers to any question you may have.

For brand awareness, link building, or for a certain marketing campaign, Quora is a not to be missed place.

Now!

How can Quora as an off-page SEO tactic serve your purposes? Note some advantages:

–       Allows you to prove your expertise: Answers you provide on Quora should relate to your business and reveal your expertise in the mentioned area. If you gain readers’ trust they will turn to you with further questions they might have.

–       Answers appear in Google results: If people upvote your answer, it will display in Google as an answer to the respective question.

–       Boosts your traffic: Your answers can generate traffic in the long run.

–       Enhances your knowledge: You can find out and learn tips and tricks for your business from other experts.

Off-Page SEO Strategy 4: Create Video Content

You may wonder what’s the connection. What has video content to do with off-page SEO? Well, video search engines like YouTube, can drive massive traffic, in fact, YouTube is the 2nd ranked search engine after Google. So, links obtained via videos published on YouTube are valuable for your off-page optimization and drive traffic to your site.

Video content is the next megastar of marketing, do you know that 54% of users are interested in seeing more content? And 51,9% of marketers consider the video has the best ROI among all types of content. Not to mention that YouTube can bring high earnings if the needed effort is input.

Create video content and publish on YouTube

When publishing video content, aim for high quality, aim for differentiation how are you distinct from others, and what makes you unique. Gaining awareness on YouTube takes time, up to two years so be patient and consequent.

Off-Page SEO Strategy 5: Network with Experts and Influencers in Your Niche

Building relationships with other bloggers in your industry, prominent authors, and influencers is another great way to support your off-page optimization efforts and create brand awareness. Linking with professionals in the same vertical will increase your credibility in front of readers and search engines alike.

Collaborating with niche authors to create and exchange content and interviews gives you the possibility to have access to new high-quality content assets and to new audiences. Entertaining relationships and collaborations with experts in your area allow you to access a particular market segment and new opportunities for partnerships.

Off-Page SEO Strategy 6: Pay Attention to Google Penalties

We already established that backlinks are extremely important for your site ranking. Hence in some cases, backlinks may have a negative influence.

Source: Moz

That’s why is compulsory to stay away from Google penalties because recovering takes time, money, and effort, and besides that is a very difficult process.

Nowadays Google aims for valuable content and high-quality user experience. The focus is not directed anymore to the words people use for a search, but to the scope, they use those words.

There is no established procedure that guarantees you are out of the penalties radar, but there are some actions you can take to avoid such issues:

·       Analyze and audit your site. Use a tool like SEMrush to identify and solve SEO-related problems.

·       Create valuable and useful content for your readers. Put your users first and write for them, and insert images, videos, graphics, and data in your posts. Provide value and a great user experience for your audience.

·       Apply different anchor texts. After performing your backlinks audit and identifying the sources of your links, you should consider diversifying your keyword phrases. This is a way to show Google your links are natural. So, use various keywords, brand names, and generic words as anchor text. Make sure your anchor texts are relevant to your topic and related to the referring page. Consider using your brand name as an anchor as often as possible.

Search engine optimization is not a sprint, is a marathon. Endeavors made today for optimization will fructify step by step in the future, in a compound effect. To see results from off-page SEO takes time and constant improvement efforts.

Amplify your site authority with the best off page SEO techniques off page seo checklist off page seo tips

How Do You Make a Quiz Step by Step? Tips and the Best Online Quiz Maker

How Do You Make a Quiz Step by Step? Tips and the Best Online Quiz Maker

How to create an online quiz? Great question. I guess I am not wrong in saying most of us are attracted by quizzes like a magnet. I know I am, every week at least 2-3 quizzes pop up in my mail, and quite rarely I resist not taking them. “How skilled are you with grammar?” or “Can you identify all these universal literature writers?” are titles that catch instantly my attention.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. If you decide to make a purchase using one of these links, I’ll make a small commission without impacting the price that you will pay. I recommend just services or products I find useful and that I have tested or currently use.

To be honest I never thought about making a quiz of my own. Until recently, when a client of mine asked me how to create an online quiz, an interactive one. She said: “Well, I would like to make a quiz, but how do I do it effectively?”. Since I lead marketing operations for her business it was my job to come up with the best answer. We need a quiz maker app, I answered.

Correct. But which?

And I approached the issue as I always do, I did a detailed research to find out which is the best online quiz maker. After checking 4-5 quiz maker software apps and playing around the answer is Interact. I will explain immediately why.

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I am not exactly a tech nerd, but I manage to find my way even if I have to deal with a WordPress Dutch interface (I do speak three foreign languages, but Dutch is not one of them 😊) or something that looks equally tricky. Anyway, I always appreciate intuitive and friendly user apps that do not eat uselessly my time while solving small details.

And Interact is exactly that – an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that allows you to make a quiz in minutes if you wish by using an existing template for example. Of course, you can be as elaborate as you want and spend days crafting your quiz, but the idea is you can choose what best fits your needs.

Since I was testing several options I choose the simplest path and with Interact my test had the nicest result and my quiz went live in about 25 minutes. And you can see my quiz live on my site, check below. (The initial version was polished and adjusted, making a quiz is a process and you do not create a quiz just to be created, but to bring the results you need.)

Following my research, I decided to run a test: use a tested template for conversion of Interact and make a quiz laser speed; create another one from scratch more targeted to my audience, run both for two months and compare the results.

Now back to basics and numbers!

Ok, quizzes are fun, interactive, and entice easily our curiosity, but we are talking business here. Which is their impact on your business and will worth the effort to create quizzes?

BuzzSumo research reveals that on average a quiz is shared 1900 times and some of their quizzes have reached no less than 4 million shares. Also, 84% of quizzes shared on social media are on Facebook. Email subscribers aroused from quizzes will have email open rates up to 150% higher than other subscribers. Thus, quizzes are a reliable tool to build a qualified mailing list.

Marketers reinforced this theory sustaining that interactive content is highly efficient in converting visitors into leads. The truth is quizzes can be a great way to gain new subscribers, they are entertaining, and fun and if your quiz is interesting enough your visitors will share it.

A sample quiz that caught my attention initially and subsequently simply wowed me with its results is “What Type Of Digital Marketer Are You? “. Creativity at its paroxysm! It worked perfectly in my case, I was simply not able to resist and shared it!

Quizz sample
Source: Jeff Bullas

Why are quizzes so successful? They appeal to some of our primordial desires: pride in front of others of how good we are and the curiosity to find out more about our skills and capacities.

In short quizzes:

  • Are fun, interactive, and have high shareability rates
  • Are versatile, they can be adapted to virtually any brand, from ridiculous topics like “What type of cake are you?” to “Which is your statistics strength?
  • Extend your email list with qualified leads. With Interact the results of the quiz are delivered via mail, so this is a good way to build a properly segmented mailing list based on correct information.

Consequently, using quizzes in your funnel strategy can generate great results and enhance your business growth.

Conceiving a quiz is a process, no matter how you approach it, and is not a function of a certain builder, the quiz maker software will just make your life easier, depending on what you choose. 

The main purpose of a quiz is to rise the engagement of your target audience and attract more primary buyer persona to your email list.

So, How to Create an Online Quiz? How to Conceive Quickly an Interactive Quiz?

Decide on the scope of your quiz

Do you want to provide information and details on your area of expertise? Do you want to screen prospective clients?  – identify which is the goal that your quiz needs to achieve and note it down.

Determine which are the final options for your quiz

Outline which are the results that the quiz takers should obtain. This step is important as it helps you reverse engineer and establish the questions that you will insert in the quiz.

For example, my ad-hoc quiz using an Interact template named “As Solopreneur, Do You Actually Master Digital Marketing?” has as its purpose to assess the marketing knowledge of my site’s visitors, and encourage them to subscribe to my email list. Solopreneurs needing improvements in their know-how might need my strategy consultancy services and those already in an advanced phase might need some of my templates, future products, or courses at a certain moment.

Decide on the type of quiz you want to use

Interact and other builders provide several options in terms of quizzes:

·       Personality quizzesthis type of quiz assigns the quiz takers into categories. If you are interested to have in your email list a certain type of customer, like creatives or lifestyle addicts, this is the best type of quiz to choose.

·       Assessment quizzesthis type is knowledge-based. My example quiz with digital marketing for solopreneurs is such an example. The output of the quiz is identifying the knowledge level of quiz takers guru, master, intermediate and basic. Knowing that will provide me with information on what type of marketing services or products they might be interested in.

·       Scored quizzesthis is also a knowledge-based quiz, but it displays the entire results, and shows how many answers were responded correctly. Something like “What’s your emotional IQ” is a scored quiz.

Interact quizzes types. How to create an online quiz

Create the quiz questions

This is the funniest part, being the wizard behind the scenes that writes the questions.

By now you know the purpose, you know the final options, so you have to create the content in between, meaning the questions. It’s important to find the right balance: to have not too many and not too few questions, in general, a quiz having 6-9 questions is considered the best option. Also, the quiz must take a maximum of 2 minutes to complete, after all, we are busy people.

Test your quiz after you finish it and be careful when choosing the quiz maker tool, it’s highly frustrating to have the quiz crushing your browser or something similar when you are anxious to see your results. Even a minor technical issue might ruin your efforts with your quiz. That’s why I recommend using a reliable and tested tool like Interact, to avoid such unpleasant situations.

How to Create an Online Quiz with A Quiz Maker Software

Here are the exact steps I followed to create the “As Solopreneur, Do You Actually Master Digital Marketing?”  quiz with Interact

You can get started too, with a 14-day free trial.

I simply love Interact because assembling a quiz is a breeze. Let’s hope the success of this quiz as a lead magnet will be spectacular too, just for the set to be complete.

  • Open an Interact account
  • Choose Create Quiz.
  • You have 2 options either create a quiz from scratch or choose an existing template that corresponds to your niche, templates that are conceived by experts and designed with conversion in mind. If you select the option to create the quiz from scratch the path is a bit longer.

Interact sample of marketing quizz templates
  • Choose what type of quiz you want to create. For example, Assessment type
  • Insert your company’s basic branding elements
  • Design the Cover Page for your quiz.

In this section, you add the title of your quiz, a cover image – one that you upload or that you identify within the Interact base, a subheadline describing your quiz, and a call to action. In this section, you can modify colors, choose fonts and insert your logo (on premium accounts).

Here is mine.

[interact id=”5b8ed2e728483b00147dabf7″ type=”quiz” mobile=”false”]

The thing I like most about the Interact interface is that it is very flexible, you can start with the stage that you want, save, go back, and jump to another section, as your ideas pop up. You can even create the quiz directly in the Interact interface without preliminary preparation, but you will spend more time in the app.  

How to make an online quiz and the best quiz maker Interact quiz maker app editing ta
  • Craft the results of your quiz. As you already have them written just inserting them into the Interact interface is kid’s play. This section works in the same simple manner as the cover page.
  • Insert the questions. You can add text answers or image answers; of course, each question deserves its own catchy cover image.

Quiz maker app question sample
  • Assembling phase – correlate results with answers. This is really a no-brainer to connect the dots of the question with one of the corresponding results.
  • Almost ready! Now it’s time to set up the opt-ins and sharing on social media. Set “Enable lead capture and data collection for my quiz” on.
  • Determine the details you want to collect, I think email is enough, the fewer the better. Also, I consider it appropriate to offer the possibility to skip this step. Click Update.
  • You have the possibility to offer an incentive to those finishing your quiz to encourage them to subscribe. For example, for my test quiz I provide for the “Master” and “Guru” results, a free content marketing strategy template, for the results “Beginner” and “Intermediate” I offer my comprehensive marketing toolkit for solopreneurs with 200 resources. You also have the possibility to provide coupons for your paid products. I will do that for my second quiz, the more elaborate one.
  • Integrate with your email service provider. MailerLite in my case. Just follow the guidance and it will be made in seconds.
  • Set up a new form in your email service provider to collect your subscribers from the quiz.
  • Again, you have two options at your disposal, either you can direct all subscribers to a single funnel or you can personalize and make a different funnel for different results. I have two, function of the results and freebie.
  • Ensure the email address (just this in my case) and name are pointing to the right list in your email service provider interface.
  • Test Integration to be sure there are no ugly surprises.
  • Get the link from “Share and Embed”, then hit publish. A clear gem of Interact is the easiness to deploy your quiz publication in a series of mediums and platforms.

And That’s It. Your Quiz Is Live and Ready to Face the World!

Interact has several advantages that cannot be ignored:

·       Possibility to create polls and giveaways

·       Mobile responsive

·       Multiple options to promote your quiz on your site like pop-up, announcement bar, direct link, direct share, embedded inside blogs

·       Analytics

·       Using Facebook pixel to retarget  

·       Add new subscribers to a sequence

·       Possibility to set delays “don’t show again for x period of time”

And also, some cons to consider: the impossibility to split testing, the impossibility to tag subscribers, and recurring fees.

It’s a good idea before starting to create your first quiz and choosing a multiple choice quiz maker to study a bit of these best practices based on a wide experience gathered while creating over 40,000 quizzes and generating more than 5 million leads.

Find below some best practices and tips to help you obtain better results for your multiple-choice quizzes:

*   The call to action button “take the quiz” performs better if it’s orange or blue

*   Aim for minimalism, keep the completion time under 2 minutes and the number of questions between 6 and 9

*   The best options are questions with either 3 or 6 answer variants.

*   Offer the option to skip sign-up to get the results, because there is no use to have unqualified leads on your list and because of GDPR

*   Insert a call to action in the results of the quiz to entice quiz takers to subscribe

*   Turn your best-performing content into a quiz

*   Quizzes get the most shares on Facebook, so profit on

*    Mondays and Wednesdays are the days of the week when quizzes are most shared

*   The better the score obtained rise the chances to share the results

*   Questions should be easy enough to have high scores otherwise shareability will descend

*   76% of shares are realized by people scoring in the top 20%. 45% of shares come from people obtaining the highest score. 12% of shares are from scores of under 69%.

Quiz share rate.  Source :    BuzzSumo
Quiz share rate. Source: BuzzSumo

*   Make sure that each result is something quiz takers are proud to share.

*   Create quizzes on trending topics

*   Inject your own personality into your quiz

*   Create the quiz as a conversation among friends, so that the taker will feel comfortable

*   Use images and text combined for the questions

*   Use images that are worth sharing

*   Pay huge attention to your title, it is the cornerstone piece of content on which depends the click-through. 80% of users decide to click based on the title

*   Offer incentives to strengthen leads capturing process

*   In the form ask just for the data you need, just email if possible

*   Inform your audience that they are subscribing to your newsletter

*   Share your quiz on Facebook and Twitter, in Facebook groups, on Pinterest, and as a lead magnet on Instagram

*   Share the image together with a caption and a shortened link for tracking the results

*   Eventually use Facebook ads to increase reach

After reading this quite long post you should be by now ready to adventure in creating your own quiz. Sign up for an account with Interact and get started!

How to Create the Best Quiz. Tips and Quiz Maker Apps
Native Advertising for Beginners – How to Boost Visibility and Gain New Clients

Native Advertising for Beginners – How to Boost Visibility and Gain New Clients

If there is an industry that has radically been affected by the growing spheres of influence of Google and Facebook, it’s the advertising industry.  They control a duopoly of about 61% of US digital ad spending. The digital age has dramatically reshaped the advertising model from the traditional 30-second television spot to having to maintain a myriad of platforms and devices. Native ads are one of the venues to test.

This market fragmentation means audiences are grouped into different segments with varying preferences and needs. It’s for this reason that advertisers had to drop the “one size fits all” approach and embrace more personalized and authentic ways such as native content advertising.

The thing that makes native ads seem more authentic is how they incorporate subtle advertising that naturally blends into another source of content or material.

So, What Is Native Advertising?

In simple terms, native advertising is content that’s been paid for but disguised as typical and organic content for a specific platform.  Visually, it matches the website design and covers topics that resonate with the website’s audience. If used through the right channels, it can capture the minds and hearts of your potential audience in an excellent way and can take your brand’s visibility to the next level.

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Are Sponsored Posts Different from Native Ads?

Sponsored content or sponsored ads are a type of native advertising. It’s content that’s created by the publisher on behalf of the brand. For the purpose of differentiating the two, native ads are a media placement offered by the publisher; they fit the form and function of the surrounding editorial and are filled with the type of content the brand wants to promote.

Sponsored content is not created or published by the brand, nor does it appear on the brand’s pages. It can look and read like a news story that can mention a product or service and includes a call to action. Native ads on the other hand can be created and published by the brand and appear on its pages. It also can look and read like a news story BUT doesn’t promote a product and neither does it have a call to action.

However subtle it is, the difference is evidently clear.



Native Advertising Vs. Content Marketing. Are They the Same Thing?

No, these two are not one and the same thing; content marketing is a larger idea than native advertising because it has a wider and longer focused goal.

Like native advertising, content marketing offers valuable knowledge to create brand awareness while targeting a specific group of prospective customers.

The difference, however, is that content marketing takes it further in that its main focus is to sustain the lead as part of a long-term process with a target of more conversions. It doesn’t just do a single piece of content; rather it integrates into an overall marketing campaign.

Native advertising is a form of content marketing.

Another difference is that the media used to share this marketing content, is owned by the brand itself (like they own their own publishing house, etc.) while native ads use media that they do not own, so they pay to play.

This long campaign often involves the use of content assets such as newsletters, blogs, videos, and guides.

What Are the Types of Native Advertising?

As brands are hunting for the least intrusive ways to reach their target audience, publishers are seeking new ways to monetize their content, native content comes to complete the game and provide effects so seamlessly.

So, there are 6 types of native advertising according to Interactive Advertising Bureau.

1. In-Feed Units

Here sponsored content is promoted within a publication’s native environment and it’s marked as sponsored. Its format is identical to the format of the publication. This content may be written by either the publisher or by the corporation of the sponsoring brand.


In feed native advertising

Source: Facebook

2. Promoted Listings

These are just listings without editorial content and are created to fit harmoniously with the browsed content. They’re characteristically used by e-commerce sites to feature sponsored products and resemble already existing products on a particular site.

3. Paid Search Ads

Have you ever noticed ads on top of your search results page? Those are paid search ads. They’re similar to promoted listings, the only difference is that they specifically appear at the top of the search results page. They are also localized; this means they promote businesses around the user’s area depending on their preferences. They are considered native as they are made to appear as organic search results.

Paid search ads- native ads version

4. Recommendation Widgets

You most likely have come across a widget like “You may also like” or “Recommended for you” at the end of most articles you’ve read on most websites. Those are content recommendation widgets. They are paid content discovery links distributed by content amplification networks meant to amplify a brand’s content by recommending it to sites with a similar audience.

5. Custom Ads

These are personalized ads created to fit perfectly into the media hosting them.

6. Ads Created with Specific Native Elements in Mind

These ads don’t look any different from other ads; the difference is that their context is very relevant to the publisher’s site as well as the content they appear next to. They may easily look like one flowing story.

Native Advertising Examples

There are so many amazing examples of native advertising. Here are just two of the best.

The Mercedes Benz E-Class series in the Washington Post

Native ads example

This is a great example of simple and clean content designed to arrest the user’s interest. The campaign dubbed “The rise of the super-human” is centered on various technologies that can turn people into super-humans by reducing human error and allowing you to achieve your potential through the use of the robotic exoskeleton suits, and the fact that this Mercedes Benz E-Class series integrates this intelligent driving system.

The Landrover

This nail-biting movie-like native ad campaign by Landrover that was shared in their networks is the perfect example of how to sell your product, without looking like you’re trying to.

Why Do Native Ads Work So Well?

There are loads and loads of content being generated daily, and all this content is always accompanied by ads in such an intrusive manner, that many consumers come up with ways of ignoring ads, while others seek help from ad-blocking software to get rid of these ads from all sites altogether.

But since native advertising is not meant to look like a common ad, it’s often consumed and pretty hard to ignore. Native ads Statistics show that consumers engage with native ads more than traditional banner ads and have the potential to boost conversions by up to 18% more than display ads.

Native ads statistics

Brands and advertisers also love native ads because of the main fact that the click-through rates tend to be much higher compared to typical ads. 70% of people prefer learning about products through well-written content than through traditional advertising.

With this in mind:

Here Are 3 Main Reasons Why Using Native Advertising Gives You an Up Leveled Advantage

a. It Captures More Attention

The main purpose of any advertisement is to access and capture the attention of your target audience. In marketing, performance metrics are essential and native advertising when used right generally offers higher viewership rates, greater conversions, and more engagement compared to traditional advertisements.

b. Native Advertising Builds Up Brand Relevance

As a brand, the more you engage with your audience using their own tools and language, the more you’ll be able to resonate with them and build a relationship. With the countless ads that consumers are bombarded with on a daily basis, the possibility of building a relationship with your target market encourages trust and loyalty.

This is an indispensable part of building a network of devoted, repeated buyers as well as encouraging the arrival of new fans into your tribe.

Using native advertising to associate your brand content with the target taste and the publisher in question, you boost your level of shareability which gives you an opportunity to go viral.

c. Native Advertising Empowers Your Target Audience

Most consumers don’t just shop for new products or services when they get online, what they look for are solutions to problems they have. As such, they value useful content from companies that seem to provide solutions or assistance to them, rather than content that out rightly seeks to make profits.

Native advertising offers content in a subtle and convincing way that presents useable and empowering information to customers, by convincing them that they’re valuable. This effort is always rewarded with their loyalty.

How Does Native Advertising Boost Visibility?

Research shows that readers spend almost the same amount of time reading native ads as they do editorial content; it also indicates that 53% of them pay more attention to this kind of advertising compared to other forms such as banner advertising.

Native ads are simply the solution to banner blindness. They are often received well by the target audience because they always seem less intrusive compared to say popups or other ad types that are easily ignored as people see them as noise in their everyday environment. Native ads offer a different feel to the audience and entice her to consume the content. So, how then can you get the best visibility using native ads?

How to Get the Best Visibility from Native Ads

1. Identify the right channels

Create a list of channels where you’d like your native ads to appear, have in mind that not all channels will offer the option for native advertising and some may not be fitting because they may not appeal to your target audience.

When you think about the visibility of native ads, think of related industry websites, digital magazines, and social networks where your ads might blend in naturally. Your aim should be to pick a platform that will seem organic for your brand and the target audience you want to serve.

2. Position yourself as an authority

Once you’ve identified channels that will be relevant to your ads, research how ads are placed on these platforms and make sure that yours will look exactly like the native sites. While you’ll need to write about topics that are relevant to the reader, quality should your top priority.

Consider how you can create content that’s a step above what the readers are used to seeing. Think of things like thought leadership, unexplored news items, and such approaches. This will build your authority and attract many potential viewers.

3. Make the most of A/B testing

A/B testing can help you judge how certain elements of your ad can perform in the right circumstances. Whether you’re looking to try native advertising or are getting paid to create content for it, elements such as headlines can hold so much for your success. So, it’s critical to test and optimizes frequently.

How to Create Effective Native Advertisements

Before proceeding with these steps, it’s critical that you have a look around at what’s trending and what’s going viral across the web. This will give you a hint on concepts that are already working having been tried and tested by others.

When properly executed, native advertising will improve your

  • Customer engagement
  • Brand’s reputation
  • Content exposure
  • Brand reach and awareness
  • Traffic to website
  • Email List

Step 1. Set Your Goals

It’s important to have a plan and a goal for what you want to achieve. Understand the demographic formation of your audience in terms of brand size and industry etc. Is it digital? What platforms will best fit your advertisement? Is there any other method of distribution in the native ad package?  All this information will help you draw a plan that’s practical.

Step 2. Create Content That Will Sell

Having a clear image of what you want to achieve and with the best strategy identified, content creation becomes the next most important thing. It must include a mission statement that’s in tandem with your goal.

To be able to create content that’s relevant to your audience, you must understand their preferred platforms and content of choice.

As you tailor your copy to your publisher’s culture and design, consider who will write the content. If your team writes it then it means they’ll have more control over what to say and the brand voice will be stronger. However, if the publisher’s editorial team will be writing it, just know that your content will most likely be tailored to lean on their brand voice.

That said though, you can provide your publishers with a topic of your choice. This will help get your message to your audience, but with a voice, they’re familiar with.

And just for good measure, you may want to find out if your publisher allows a link back to your website because you’ll need this for lead generation.

During content creation consider visual content as well, over 80% of marketers are leveraging visual elements and components in the content they’re publishing, with video alone having over 60%. This means video content is quite important if you want your campaign to thrive in engagement. They can go together with the written content to give a powerful and irresistible campaign.

Lastly, remember native advertising is simple marketing. It’s all about capturing the audience’s attention by telling them something interesting and helpful to them. So, by all means, keep it simple and clear.


Step 3. Optimize

Well, it goes without saying; the key to perfecting any marketing channel including native advertising is optimization in both top and middle of the funnel.

It’s important to know the average conversion rates of all your campaigns, this way you can break them down to campaign type and performance. This will aid your optimization process. Here is how you can identify what requires to be changed if the campaign is not performing as expected.

  1. The number of distinct views/ total impressions= strength of the headline.
  2. Number of clicks/ distinct views=strength of the content/ article
  3. The number of leads/clicks = strength of the landing page.

For the strength of the headline and the article, you can work with your publisher to make changes where necessary if the results are not pleasant. If the issue lies in the landing page, then work on it and see why you’re not getting conversions.

It’s however, important to remind you that these metrics can only compare against your own brand data, not the whole industry.

So, because the real goal of your native ads campaign is lead generation, the best metric to show success is the sales opportunities that arise from these leads. Great leads mean more sales opportunities. Publishers here can help since they have the visibility to see the quality of traffic that’s being driven to the article. This leads to the next point.

Step 4.  Build a Good Relationship with your Publisher

Even after all the work has been done, if you don’t have a good relationship with your publishers, then all that effort may not amount to much. Having open communication with the editor ensures that your content is aligned with your goals and the message you want to pass.

A good relationship ensures a flexible working environment where any challenge can easily be resolved.

Step 5.  Evaluate and Compare

Whether it is conversions, page views, impressions, or time on the page, the results of the goals you set out in step one above are what you should be getting now. So, track your metrics, take a look and see how they have performed.



Take Home

Native advertising is effective if done correctly.  Your ad must add value to the audience and must be placed alongside relevant content for it to be native. More and more customers are choosing products offered through content compared to traditional ads.

So, to learn properly how to incorporate effective native ads into various publishers’ cultures, designs and audiences, you should look at it both as an art and science and you will need to master it.

How to Earn Money From Instagram? – You’ll Like This

How to Earn Money From Instagram? – You’ll Like This

Can you make money on Instagram? Let’s get an early hint by looking at some of last year’s statistics.

Instagram images get an average of 23% more engagement than their Facebook counterpart while brands see engagement rates 10 times higher on Instagram than they do on Facebook, 70% of users look up new brands on Instagram. Plus 31% of people who make more than 75K per year are present on Instagram.

So, being constantly glued to your phone nowadays actually pays off. Sort of.

With over one billion active users, Instagram is proving to be a powerful marketing tool for businesses, whether new or existing, it can expand your presence and the visibility of your products because, through its users, you gain reach and influence. And these are the two main avenues that offer great opportunities for Instagram creators to explore various streams of potential revenue and eventually earn money on Instagram, be it for their business or personal benefit.

Instagram statistics make money instagram

Source: Statista

So, before we delve deeper into understanding the ways to make money on Instagram, let’s first start with the basics.

First, the Basics

Just like any other project, in order to derive the true value of Instagram, it’s important to put first focus on building a solid foundation by going beyond an average Instagram user and considering yourself a real business. To be able to effectively monetize Instagram, you need to identify what will set you apart from the rest of the competition as you strengthen your brand identity. Having a strategy would be a good place to start.

a. Have a marketing strategy

Determine what your core business is. What are you hoping to gain out of Instagram? Have a plan on:

  • How Instagram can make a difference in your business compared to other social networks
  • Be clear on whether visual content works in line with your brand’s image
  • Have knowledge of whether your target audience is active on Instagram (demographics)
  • Is your plan to boost brand awareness or improve conversions as well?

Having an effective content strategy allows you to carve out your own marketing path in the vast marketing jungle.

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b. Have a budget

Instagram is pretty much the vanity fair of social media. You will need a budget to support your lifestyle or that of your brand. No matter what your niche will be, quality does not compromise if you want to get paid for Instagram posts.

So, this budget could be for a good camera, locations, food items, clothes, shoes, gadgets, you name it.

Calculate a minimum budget that can support your strategy and work with it. And if you’re planning to leave your 9-5 job, then this budget will be bigger because it has to include your basic needs for a reasonable period of time before you start to make money on Instagram.

c. Your followers

If you don’t already have a substantial following, then you will have to grow one because very few followers mean low visibility. On the other hand, you might have a huge following of inactive users and this will also harm your engagement rate. Regularly analyze your audience quality using tools like Skedsocial to identify and block bots, inactive subscribers, and unhelpful business accounts. You can also consider your followers’ demographics to target your posts more effectively.

d. Reach and influence

As said earlier, the two most important things that any marketer is looking for at any given time are reach and influence. Your Instagram is a perfect place because they get your audience and the influence you have over them. So, again the emphasis is on the size of your following, the larger it is, the easier it will be to drive sales. Your influence is required to persuade them to make the purchase. This whole process requires skillful planning

How to Boost Your Instagram Reach (Build Your Following)

Having seen how important is reach in the success of monetizing your Instagram, here are a few tips on how to boost it.

  • Analyze your popular content

Understanding the content that works and the one that doesn’t will direct your ideas on what’s relevant to your audience, and what they like. From hashtags to the use of videos, geo-tags or even frequency of posting will help you improve your content and subsequently your reach.

  • Know your audience’s quality

One thing that can hamper the organic growth and reach of your posts is fake accounts or inactive subscribers or both. How? Instagram displays your published post to 10% of your followers first. If you get many likes and comments, the rest of the 90% are shown. So, if your 10% is made up of inactive or fake accounts, you’ll not get any engagement, meaning that will be the end of the road for your post. No one will see it. So work on getting rid of such followers and gain new active ones.

  • Know the best time to post

Generally, most people are online at certain specific hours, e.g. lunchtime or evenings, and basically during free/ leisure hours. So, to get more reach, you need to be visible; this means you must publish your post at either of these times. To find out the most interactive time for you, try posting at different times and analyze the posts with the most engagement and repeat that time again to reaffirm your analysis. Leverage on this to have an impact.

[interact id=”5b8ed2e728483b00147dabf7″ type=”quiz” mobile=”false”]

How to Build a Sizeable Instagram Following

Instagram growth isn’t a very easy task; this is not meant to discourage you. On the contrary, with about a billion users and ever-changing smart algorithms, you have fellow creatives and brands to learn from as you compete to boost your following. It’s an opportunity for you to stand out and show off your brand by working harder and smarter. To make it easier for you, here are a few tips on how to grow your Instagram followers:

i. Have a complete and branded profile

Your Instagram profile is your first impression. If someone visits your profile, they’re able to decide within the first few seconds, whether they’re going to follow you or not, based on your bio. For you to convert these visitors into followers, you need to have a great Instagram profile photo, a bio that’s alive and effective (pulls you to want to see more), you need active Instastories, and high-quality and well-edited photos.

Can you make money on instagram - compelling profile

Source: Instagram


ii. Use hashtags and geo-tags on Instagram Stories

As Instagram grows, its developers are burning the midnight oil to offer you more sophisticated features such as polls, shopping stickers, music, GIFs, and much more. Taking advantage of such features helps you reach new followers.

If for instance you’re hosting a live event or you’re away for a holiday on a nice island, you’re able to publish it as it happens and show it to your followers. When you use say geo-tagging and hashtags, your story is added to the location’s stories as well as the hashtags page, this broadens your viewers and can earn you new followers.

iii. Promote your page

You have probably seen something like this as you scroll through your Instagram pictures, a sponsored page of someone you don’t follow, but their content is on your page because they paid to promote it there. This is what this is all about, more people will get to see you and when they visit your profile, they could easily turn into followers.

iv. Share selfies

Believe it or not, people want to associate with brands or influencers. Leverage this by making your page a place they can relate to. They might end up sharing the same selfie on their page and this will draw their followers’ attention to you. In fact, pictures with faces have up to 38% higher chances of getting likes as compared to other photos. So, flaunt those selfies, just remember they’re still part of your brand.

v. Post regularly and engage your viewers

When you keep your page active, it means your followers constantly have you in mind because they see you often. This helps in building brand loyalty and you get to retain their interests. It gets better when you engage them because you can get valuable feedback and this will enable you to offer them more relevant content in the future.

And once you build this credibility you gain their satisfaction. This is how influence is built.

So with all that said, finally, can you make money on Instagram? What do you think?

Here are the best ways on how to monetize Instagram in 2019:

1. Affiliate Marketing

Becoming an affiliate means getting paid each time someone makes a purchase because of a link that you shared. The way it works is that you get a unique URL and the affiliate program tracks the number of purchases completed through that link and gives you a commission out of those sales.

So, affiliate marketing is more inclined to make sales for your partner brand and not just about creating awareness. What you need to be aware of though, is that Instagram doesn’t allow you to create clickable links within your post, but you can include it on your bio because you’re allowed only one link. This means you can do only one affiliate link at a time.

You can review products through Instagram stories or by publishing posts or a video that can be linked through your bio. You can also use your website to do much more but then link it to your Instagram bio where people can follow through.

Affiliate marketing is also the only way how to make money on Instagram with Clickbanks  or other affiliate networks. Clickbanks is a platform with a network of high-quality products of all types that you can promote as an affiliate.

What’s important to note in affiliate marketing is that when you endorse or recommend a product or service, you’re associating your reputation with it, so it’s advisable to always recommend products you’ve tried and approved. And pick products that align with your niche, to be able to land the right audience. For instance, if your niche is on beauty and beauty products, you won’t pick up a Shell engine oil product to promote.

2. Sponsored Posts

As explained throughout the article, when you intend to monetize your Instagram account, you have to build a strong brand and must have a specific niche. Also, you must already have built a good sizeable following of active users that you have some influence over. These are the characteristics that brands look for when considering you for sponsorship.

So, how does this work? It’s pretty simple, once you’ve been approached to make a sponsorship you:

  • Create a post, whether a picture or video with the promotional content
  • Include a branded hashtag, a geo-tag, a mention, and a link (in bio) that promotes the brand
  • Publish it and share it with your followers
  • Get paid for Instagram posts

Instagram Sponsored Image

Source: Instagram

How much should you charge?

This might depend on a few factors like the content format, whether it’s a photo, a video, or a story. But because you’ll be teaming up with diverse brands to help push their campaigns, you could create your own package for all the brands you will work with.

This should be guided by understanding the metrics that will be used to evaluate the success of your campaign. The following may be considered:

  • They will want to see your influence and can use Google Analytics or UTM parameters to evaluate whether there is an improvement in their web traffic through your Instagram account.
  • They can check for an increase in their Instagram following based on your endorsement and recommendation.
  • They will also want to see conversions that are linked to your campaign.

In addition to the above, you can also find out (if possible) the brand’s budget, and how much fellow influencers in your niche charge for specific sponsorships such kind of information, will help you create reasonable packages

So, how can you find sponsors?

There are two approaches. First, you could try outreach. This involves creating a great portfolio and introducing yourself to different brands.

The second approach is via the influencer marketplace. Here, brands shop around the listed accounts for one they would like to work with. Such places include:

3. Sell Your Photos!

For starters, you wouldn’t be on Instagram if you didn’t love photos, right? As visual content continues to rule the content world, statistics have shown (2018) that most brands have included images in their posts securing 87% of all engagements on social media platforms.

This means that for anyone who runs a blog or a website, there is going to be a need for authentic photos. So how can you take photos that will be irresistible to the buyers? If you’re an amateur then you may want to horn your photography skills. For your photos to sell, they really must be outstanding.

Strategies you could include in getting unique photos include:

a. Capture some emotion 

You’re better at capturing emotions than situations with your photos because they stand out from the rest of the pictures, and it’s easier to resonate with people’s emotions.

Sell photos to make money instagram

Source: therealauroragram

b. Try shooting into the light

I know you’ve possibly heard that the best way to capture an image is by letting the light illuminate it. However, you can get some pretty dramatic pictures when you shoot while facing the light.

c. Create blur photos

I know this might sound misleading, but here is how it works. Assume a moving object on one side and another object on the other side to create the point of reference. If you’re able to capture the blurry image of the moving object but still keep your stationary object as your point of focus, you’ll have a very interesting photo that gives some tension effect.

d. Try flat rays perspectives

This is great when displaying a variety of items. The trick is in mastering the lighting and the palette color. The whole idea is more than just the assortment, for you the photographer it’s more about telling a compelling story.

So, how again can you make money on Instagram using photos? The answer is that Instagram becomes your great free portfolio. Once you’ve perfected your photography skills, post your photos using relevant hashtags. From there, you can get prospective buyers either through outreach or through platforms such as Foap or Snapwire

4. Sell Your Own Products

For this one, you either have products already, or are inspired to create some, whichever way, you’re welcome to give the Instagram money calculator some serious work.  This mode of making money on Instagram usually requires stocking some inventory. This means it requires capital to start.

It also means that you will have to find a place to store your stock, so rent options must be considered if you don’t own the space. Unless of course, you create digital products.

With online retailing increasing by 13.7% in 2018, here are a few ideas to make your online shop a success.

  • Build a solid relationship with your audience that’s based on trust.
  • Involve them in all the stages of creating your products because this gives them a sense of ownership, they feel they’re part of the process and this encourages them to make purchases later down the road.
  • Show them what happens behind the scenes in the production of your amazing products, as well as behind the scenes of all the fun photo shoots that you do.

5. Become an Instagram Consultant

As brands turn to social media for marketing, it’s inevitable that skills for running these social platforms are required especially as far as monetization is concerned. Helping Instagrammers and brands make money on Instagram, can be an exciting opportunity if you approach it with skillfulness. Here is what to take into account:

  • Have a strategy, this involves identifying your target, your niche, and the tactics you will use in building solid relationships with Instagram influencers and brands.
  • Prepare your pitch: build a portfolio highlighting your unique methods that will guarantee delivery.
  • Market yourself on Instastories, with posts, and also use other platforms to market yourself such as guest blogging, Facebook, and YouTube too.

All the basics discussed earlier in this article need to be in place for your consulting to be a success. You need to have a reach that has influence and a sizeable number of followers. Without these, is like selling what you don’t have.

Finally

Instagram has evolved from a simple photo-sharing platform to a multi-million money-making place. All you are required to do is take seriously the groundwork of building an engaged audience and creating trust between you and your followers as well as the brands that put their trust in you to improve their conversion rates. So if you were deliberating on how to make money on Instagram in 2019, now you have a pretty straightforward answer.

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