Instagram seems to be the perfect platform to become popular and promote your business. It seems like all you need is just making beautiful photos, adding some text, liking, commenting, and voila – you have 10K followers and hundreds of requests from brands to pay you for advertising. Perhaps it was in such a way a long time ago. But how can you make money on Instagram today? In this article, I will walk you through Instagram trends 2021, the biggest mistakes of first-time Instagram bloggers, an actual guide on how you can start promoting your business on Instagram, and key ways to make money there.
Page contents
- 7 Instagram trends 2021
- How to start an Instagram blog
- How to make money on Instagram
- Why do you need a personal brand
- The biggest mistakes of Instagram bloggers
Top 7 Instagram trends 2021
1. Stories are getting more and more popular
Instagram stories are about engagement and high interest in the relevant content. Showing real life without filters is a big trend. Bloggers and brands who show up in the stories will have more influential power in 2021. Additionally, followers’ interest in stories is caused by a limited time of such content availability. It brings more value and engages the audience.
As a result usual Instagram feed will attract fewer readers unless you post evergreen content there. Visiting your page for the first time people will watch your stories rather than reading long posts.
Instagram stories are watched with a sound on. People want to hear the voice behind the video. It increases the emotional connection and attachment to the speaker.
2. Be unique
The number of bloggers who copy each other and use Wikipedia for their content will decrease. People follow real and unique people. Perfect beauty and successful success is not a trend anymore. People want to see uniqueness. You don’t have to be like other successful influencers if you want to achieve success on Instagram. You have to be different and tell your own story.
3. Messengers
Instagram messenger will become more popular. Instagram users, as well as brands, will communicate with clients using bots, text, and voice messages.
4. Micro-blogging is growing
Bloggers with small communities of 10K-20K followers have more trust and influence on their audience. New bloggers are closer to people, they care more about their reputation and what to advertise.
The micro-blogging trend underlines the fact that there is no need to be BIG if you want to be effective and have your own community.
5. Tik Tok style
The Instagram content format will have more from the Tik Tok style. Tik Tok App has over 1.5 billion downloads showing real people in real life. Music, stickers, masks, video effects used in Tik Tok will be integrated into Instagram content 2021.
6. Explore section
Instagram considers users’ interests and interaction, types of profiles people visit
The better quality your content will be and the more interests of your target audience you consider the better chances you have to reach even more people on the Explore section.
7. Gamification
Challenges, flashmobs, and elements of games are a big social media trend of 2021. Gamification warms up interest in personalities and brands. People like to be a part of the story and feel their impact on the results.
How to start a blog on Instagram
Here is a step-by-step guide for everyone who decided to start a blog and make money on Instagram:
1. Decide on the Topic of Your Instagram Blog
Focus on what you love, your hobbies, or your spheres of interest. Very often starting bloggers select some trendy topics to write about having no expertise in them. As a result, the texts in posts are not interesting, a blogger is not inspired and finally quits the game.
The theme of your Instagram blog should give you an opportunity to develop yourself, inspire you to learn more, and share the information you’ve learned.
2. Learn The Competitors
Follow popular bloggers with similar areas of interest. Pay attention to how they communicate with their audience, which posts are more popular and which are not very successful. Analyze.
3. Define Your Target Audience
Try to imagine and describe your target audience: who is this person, what his interests and problems are, how you can help him to solve the problems.
4. Be Unique
Instagram is considered to be one of the more popular social networks with millions of business pages covering different themes. It is hard for the users to absorb all this information and remember who is standing behind the scenes of this or that Instagram page. Create your unique style, be creative, or just different from all the others. People should start associating you with the topic you are writing about. In this case, you have all the chances to get successful.
5. Create Quality Content Regularly
The first impression is important. If you are writing interesting texts, your Instagram page visitors could never notice it because of your page look. Create your own visual style. Spend some time editing photos and make them look professional.
6. Tell About Yourself
Do not forget that Instagram is a social network and people love talks. If you are promoting a business or a product on Instagram tell your followers who are standing behind this product.
Never try to be good for everyone. Do not be scared to show your opinion, even if it is different from anyone else. People will love and remember you for your personality.
7. Change
The more you will experiment the better. Try some different approaches you never tried before. Always develop and change yourself. Leave your comfort zone and you will see the results.
8. Promote
Even if you are a super talented and super cool blogger nobody will know you without promotion. Invest some money in Instagram ads. Create and promote giveaways, ask for reposts from your friends.
9. Do not quit
Remember at the very beginning of this post I told you that Instagram blogging is hard work. If it was that easy everyone would quit their jobs and start making money with blogging. There is not a secret button “to get success on Instagram”. You need to make efforts and invest time if you want to see the results.
How do people make money on Instagram?
There are lots of ways of how you can make money on Instagram. I would like to share with you the list of the most effective and popular business opportunities you can have on Instagram:
Become a brand ambassador
As far as you already know microblogging is getting more and more popular on Instagram. It means that big brands will collaborate with small bloggers more and you have more chances to make good income advertising other brands.
Sell your own products
If you have your own brand or your hobby is handmade you can start using Instagram as a platform for your sales.
Become a tutor and sell online courses
Tutoring on Instagram is highly popular. If you are a teacher of English or math you can share basic information for free. This strategy will attract more people to your personality and increase your hourly rate as a tutor.
Sell coaching / consulting services
There is at least one thing you are better at than anyone else. Start selling consulting services on Instagram helping other people to master the skills you have experience in.
Sell your own book
If you are an author you can promote your own book. There are so many successful authors on Instagram who boost sales of their books. Think about engaging activities like making live streams while signing up your books for your clients.
Sell professional offline services
If you are a photographer you can start an expert blog with professional advice on how to make better photos. Additionally, this strategy will promote your expertness and the number of clients.
So, can you make money on Instagram? Definitely. And there is no need to have thousands of followers for that!
Why do you need a personal brand for Instagram success
Most people associate the word “brand” with business. But nowadays the “brand” has a considerably wider meaning. A doctor, speaker, sportsman, entrepreneur, you and I can be branded.
People trust people. They would rather buy from a well-known coach than from a company providing the same service.
Running a business on Instagram consider building your personal brand.
Why?
A personal brand helps to reach better results in the promotion and building loyalty.
People associate particular emotions with your brand.
It is a personal brand that helps to create warm relationships with the audience, build trust and friendship.
Some more small business ideas:
- How to start a dropshipping business
- How to start a Virtual Assistant business
- How to start a t-shirt brand
- How to start an event planning business
- How to start a fitness business
- How to start a lip gloss business
- How to start a tutoring business
The biggest mistakes of starting Instagram bloggers
Money as the key motivation
You will not start making money on Instagram from the first day, week, and even month. Be prepared to work HARD without any rewarding. That is why start with what you have a passion for.
Need everything and now
Do not wait to get amazing results very fast and for free. Thousands of followers will not come from anywhere. Get ready to invest your time, money, efforts, creativity, imagination, skills, and everything you know and do not know.
“Successful success”
Stop writing fake positive texts about the ideal world around you. People are not interested in such content anymore. We live here and now. Show your natural feelings, people around you, and interests.
Making money on Instagram is not as simple as it may seem (sorry if your life will not be the same after reading this):
- If you want to make money on Instagram you should start a successful blog and build a tribe of people who will be ready to buy whatever you sell them.
- Instagram blogging is hard work. You need to know how to take photos, write engaging texts, collaborate with other bloggers, and promote your page.
- Inspiration to make new posts can disappear at any moment, one day you will have a bad mood or feel depressed and have no desire to create interesting content. Your followers feel that and stop liking and commenting on your posts. As a result, you’ll have less organic reach.
- Sometimes, you will see negative comments on your posts and you should know how to react and respond in such cases.
- And finally, you will be lack time. You are always busy with your regular job, family, educational courses, home staff, etc. And you also need some time to rest. And how can you start your Instagram blog with all that stuff?
Making money on Instagram FAQs
1. How many followers do you need on Instagram to make money?
Instagram is not about quantity anymore. It is all about quality and engagement rate. There are thousands of Instagram bloggers with tons of followers and a 0,1% engagement rate which means that people can hardly see their content.
You can start making money on Instagram having 200 followers by selling your services or products.
If your goal is to make money with advertising and ambassadorship you need at least 2000 followers with a 7-10% engagement rate.
2. How to make money on Instagram with 500 followers
500 followers on Instagram is enough to start making money as an expert. If your audience is active consider the following monetization:
- Sell your service. Think about your experience and the way you can help people. If you are a good writer offer your copywriting service. If you have design skills help people with ad banners or Instagram feed design. It can be anything you are good at. The only way to start making money is to tell people about your skills.
- Become an Instagram expert. Find bloggers with thousands of followers and offer them your help. You can become a blogger’s manager or a virtual assistant.
- Sell your digital products. If you have anything to share you can easily create a digital product to sell on Instagram. Do you know how to generate leads or cook? Create a guide on this.
Conclusion
At the very beginning, you can be inspired by making cool photos and writing awesome texts. But after some period you will see only several followers, a couple of likes, and maybe one comment on your post (from your friend 🙂 ).
What’s next?
Looking at your competitors who are extremely popular with tons of likes and attention, you are getting more and more upset.
“Why are they so popular and I am not? I am doing the same. What is the secret there?”
It is simple.
Do not compare your beginning stage to somebody’s mid-stage. You do not know how much time and effort your competitors invested to get such results.
Be patient. Be persistent. Be confident.
Good luck, entrepreneur!
Tetiana is a business coach and owner of IStartHub, a business media for ambitious female entrepreneurs and small business owners.