How to find Brand Sponsors with as little as 500 Instagram Followers
Every budding Social Media Influencer dreams of the day when they will get that email or phone call from a major brand wanting to collaborate with them. It’s the realist sense of accomplishment most Influencers get that tells them “they’ve finally made it”. When you think of an “Influencer” you probably think of people with hundreds of thousands of followers, amazing content and a whole team of people supporting them. You might not realize that Instagram just opened up one of it’s most exciting new features “Shopping from Creators” to pretty much anyone with an Instagram Account with over 500 Followers.
What’s “Shopping from Creators” you ask?
It’s a new collaboration tool by Instagram that Brands can utilize to work with Influencers directly using tagged products. An Influencer like yourself can create a post, tag a company’s product and post it your feed where your followers can make a purchase. This provides a wealth of opportunities to you as a creator to collaborate with brands, startups and product marketers wanting to leverage Micro Influencers.
Here’s what Shopping from Creators looks like (See Image Below)
How do I use this new Feature?
Great questions, first you need to switch your Instagram account type to “Creator”. This requires that you have at least 500 followers and decent engagement. As long as you aren’t buying fake followers and fake engagement, you should be good to go. For a detailed step by step guide to switching your account type to Creator, you can click HERE. It only takes a few minutes and is completely free.
How do I find Brand Sponsors?
Instagram doesn’t have a list of Influencers with “Creator” accounts. This makes it difficult for brands to find and engage creators on Instagram. Most brands use a platform called EngageCreators.com to find and collaborate with Instagram Creators.
EngageCreators.com connects brands with Micro Influencers who already have “Creator” accounts set up on Instagram and are looking for brand sponsors. The platform is 100% free for Influencers and is a great source of amazing collaboration opportunities from hundreds of companies.
Once you have switched your Instagram account to a “Creator” account, you can sign up on EngageCreators.com and add your profile to their directory of Influencers. New Influencers will need to go through a vetting period where you can participate in contests and win cash prizes. If your posts do well and generate sales, you will earn a commission on each sale and be eligible for direct sponsorships from brands directly. These direct sponsorships include a guaranteed upfront payment for tagging a brand’s products in your post.
How much Money can I Make?
As a creator on EngageCreators.com, you could expect to make between $100 to $5,000 per post depending on how many sales your posts have generated in the past. Contests can earn the top Creators up to $10k in cash prizes. The best way to start earning money is by participating in as many contests as possible and posting as many products as possible to your feed.
Tips for Success
To make the most of your Instagram Creator Career, follow these steps below:
Post highly targeted niche content — Find a niche and stick to it. Post the same type of content to your feed and try to get as much engagement as you can. Use relevant Hashtags to your niche as these hashtags help determine what product category your account will fall under
Never buy Fake Followers or Engagement — Fake followers and Engagement are easily recognized by Instagram’s algorithms and your account will lose all of its authority making it ineligible for inclusion in the Creator program on Instagram. Fake followers will also destroy your ability to rank posts at the top of the Hashtag search results making organic niche followers almost impossible to get.
Don’t post adult or sexually explicit or suggestive content — Brands stay away from Influencers with controversial content and NSFW type of posts. Keep it clean, on point and brand safe.
Start Collaborating
If you’re ready to start collaborating with brands and have already switched your Instagram to a “Creator” account, get started by creating your free Influencer profile on EngageCreators. Or, click SWITCH to learn how to switch your account if you haven’ already!
