So it's no surprise you want to become an Instagram influencer, and reach a large audience with your own personal brand. As Emma Hoareau (@emmahoareau), a beauty and travel influencer who boasts nearly 40k followers, tells me, "Don't set out to be Instagram famous! How to Become Instagram Famous Make sure your content is genuine and authentic. Make sure your content is genuine and authentic. Morgan Raphael (@bun_undone) a health, wellness, and inspiration influencer with nearly 15k followers, offers some advice when it comes to whether or not you need to find a niche. Ultimately, becoming an Instagram influencer is a professional role like anything else, so it's important you consider what you can offer your audience. Ultimately, Instagram is a platform meant to connect real people with true experiences. Find micro-brands to work with. But to set yourself apart as an influencer, versus just an Instagram user, it might be worthwhile to invest in better photography and editing equipment. As with any profession, one of the most critical components to becoming successful on Instagram is persistence.
Instagram is no longer just about connecting with friends — in 2018, it has become an incredibly powerful platform for finding your voice and creating a business. In fact, Instagram’s estimated mobile advertising revenue is expected to reach 6.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2018, compared to 1.8 billion two years ago.
Nowadays, Instagram is capable of turning stay-at-home moms into successful hat designers, or a woman working in corporate wealth management into a world traveler. So it’s no surprise you want to become an Instagram influencer, and reach a large audience with your own personal brand.
Since I myself am not an Instagram influencer (I think an average 60 likes per post falls a little short of most brands’ minimum for sponsorship opportunities), I set out to interview some real Instagram influencers in the industry, so you can get the full scoop.
Throughout my conversations with these influencers, one thing became abundantly clear — the term “famous” makes most of them uncomfortable. Apparently, “famous” denotes something less substantial than what most of these people are chasing. As Emma Hoareau (@emmahoareau), a beauty and travel influencer who boasts nearly 40k followers, tells me, “Don’t set out to be Instagram famous! Create beautiful work and use the app as a source of inspiration … not a numbers competition.”
If you think about it, “fame” and “influence” are two drastically different measures of success. While fame is measured by a certain number, influence is measured by something a little less quantitative — a deep, authentic connection with your audience.
Here, we’ve compiled some critical tips from fourteen Instagram influencers, so you can get one step closer to sharing your brand with the world and influencing your own audience.
How to Become Instagram Famous
- Make sure your content is genuine and authentic.
- Remain flexible and authentic as your brand shifts.
- Focus on your audience.
- Find micro-brands.
- Refine your photography skills.
- Be persistent.
1. Make sure your content is genuine and authentic.
Across the board, all the influencers in this list insisted on one tried-and-true practice — authentic content.
Emily Roberts (@thelipstickfever) a fashion and beauty influencer with over 57k followers, told me, “Focus on quality over quantity when it comes to your content. It’s better to post top notch images less frequently, than to post something subpar very frequently.”
To me, this makes sense — the same is true for any type of content creation. An audience would rather read one high-quality Facebook status than a hundred less interesting ones. At HubSpot, we’d prefer to publish a few exceptional pieces of content per day, rather than laboring away to produce hundreds of barely average pieces.
Emma Hoareau (@emmahoareau) concurred: “Make sure the content you’re sharing is true to yourself, and try not to compare yourself to others.”
Of course, authenticity is easier said than done, particularly when you’re following other accounts and feeling envious of their posts or their brand image. You might, at times, doubt your ability to remain honest about your life when it’s tempting to portray something a little shinier.
Nic and Nat (@sneakymommies), two women who create kid-friendly, healthy recipes on their Instagram account and have over 6,000 followers, say you should “stay authentic and always be you. This means being truthful and honest about who you are both online and offline and staying true to your personal brand.”
Morgan Raphael (@bun_undone) a health, wellness, and inspiration influencer with nearly 15k followers, offers some advice when it comes to whether or not you need to find a niche. “I heard a lot of advice to find your niche and what makes you stand out, but truthfully, if you share your real self, people will relate and therefore respond by continuing to follow you and engage with your content.”
Finally, Chelsea Martin (@passporttofriday), a travel blogger and influencer with over 17k followers, says commitment to your brand is critical — “don’t take just any collaboration offer that comes through the door. Stay loyal to your personal brand and your followers will stay loyal to you.”
While it can be tempting to take the first sponsorship offer you receive, long-term growth is about remaining committed to partnering with brands that can offer meaningful value to your audience, as well.
2. Remain flexible and authentic as your brand shifts.
When you follow Instagram influencers, you might feel like they joined the app with an inherent and instant understanding of their brand — at least, that’s how I’ve always felt. To verify this, I asked Nicole Loher (@nicoleloher), a health and fitness influencer with over 14k followers, whether she knew what she wanted her brand to be when she first created her Instagram account.
Nicole told me, “I’ve always had a…
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