How to get collaborations on instagram
Brand Collaborations On Instagram: How To Find Them?
Instagram is the main income source and a platform for building relationships and significant collaborations for many content creators and influencers. You have a great audience with high activity and engagement rate, and you probably want to monetize it, don’t you? Brand collaborations are one of the most effective ways content creators and influencers use to make money on Instagram and reach a wider audience. In fact, 93% of brands use Instagram for influencer marketing.
Brand collaboration means finding a brand in your niche that is suitable for your Instagram page and will make a deal to promote their products or services. As a brand ambassador, you need to post content on your Instagram page using their products or posing with them.
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Your goal is to bring new potential customers to a specific brand and get paid for it.
In today’s blog post, you will find concrete real-life examples of effective brand collaborations. Also, you’ll find tips and tricks on how to establish brand collaborations on Instagram. Let’s walk through the whole process from start to finish together.
Table Of Contents
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- Benefits of successful brand collaboration
- Examples of effective brand collaborations and cross-brand collaborations
- 5 ways to find Instagram brand collaborations
- Instagram features to improve your brand collaborations
- FAQ about brand collaborations
- Key takeaways
Benefits of successful brand collaboration
As an influencer or content creator with a decent audience on Instagram, collaborating with a brand will bring you more benefits than you can imagine.
You will get noticed
Brand collaborations can increase your popularity and help more people hear about you. Imagine that you collaborate with a big brand in your niche and promote their products on your Instagram profile.
When they feature you on their Instagram page and show their followers that you use and recommend their products, a bunch of new people will hear about you and probably enter your Instagram profile. It will also bring you many new followers and increased engagement rates, making your content and profile way more noticed than before.
When you start a new collaboration with a brand on Instagram and start promoting their products to your followers, you will instantly build more trust than usual. Moreover, they will look at you from another angle.
If your followers see that a popular (or a new) brand from your niche trusts you and deals with you for brand collaboration, they will feel better about your work and trust your efforts.
That’s how a brand collaboration can help you build trustworthy relationships with your Instagram followers.
In fact, it is crucial for higher-profile growth and higher earnings.
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New content ideas and experience
As an Instagram influencer, you have probably accustomed your followers to a certain type of content on your page. There is a risk of your monotonous pace and straight line because they can easily get bored of that and will not engage with you anymore.
Brand collaborations can give you an idea of placing new types of content in front of your followers. They will have a chance to engage with something new and fresh. This is a huge step in converting them into customers.
Maybe your brand will require you to post more video content like reels or more daily IG stories of you using their products. This can bring different content to your Instagram page and get your audience more interested than you can imagine.
Opportunity to be face-to-face with your followers
Instagram is a social media platform where people love to find additional information about certain products, ask questions about them, or take a consultation with other people in the niche or Instagram community.
Content creators and influencers who collaborate with brands in a certain niche are mostly susceptible to countless DMs and comments where people ask different questions, tell their experiences, or want a product recommendation.
This situation will allow you to be face-to-face with your interested followers and communicate with them directly. Also, it would be beneficial to build customer relationships by showing efforts to help your followers and give useful information about the products.
Source user-generated content
User-generated content created by your audience is an amazing asset every social media content creator dreams to have under his belt. It helps build trust and brand awareness, increased engagement rates, profile growth, and so on.
For example, ask your customers to use your unique hashtag on their posts so that they can be featured on your page for free. Everyone wants to be featured by an influencer, so they will probably love the idea.
Another example is reposting testimonials and product reviews your followers make for the products you promote. Repost every Instagram story you are tagged on, and comment on every post your followers create with a certain product.
Show real-life experiences on your Instagram page to motivate other people to become your customers and build trustworthy relationships with you.
Examples of effective brand collaborations and cross-brand collaborations
We are witnesses to how popular brands collaborate with celebrities and big influencers with millions of followers on Instagram. But, not just famous people are included in the brand collaborations game.
Many big brands collaborate with micro-influencers and take advantage of their small but super-hyped audience in a certain niche.
Let’s see some concrete, real-life examples of effective brand collaborations:
Nike and Cristiano Ronaldo
One of the biggest sportswear brands on the planet, Nike, has collaborated with the famous footballer Cristiano Ronaldo for a long time. Cristiano Ronaldo has over 400 million followers on Instagram, making him the most popular person on the platform.
If you go to his profile, you can notice that he has a bunch of photos and videos with Nike footwear and sports clothes. On the whole, he is promoting their sportswear as their brand ambassador. Also, we can notice Ronaldo in many Nike ad commercials on TV and on social media. This is amazing proof of how big influencers collaborate with popular brands and promote their products worldwide.
HP and Elle Magazine
Another example of cross-brand collaboration is between HP, one of the biggest technology companies for device manufacturing, and a fashion-related Instagram page, @elleusa.
This is a great example of how Instagram theme pages in a specific niche can collaborate with big brands too, and not just influencers.
HP and Elle Magazine collaborated for the “Women in Hollywood” event for a series of magazine photos, showing them on HP devices.
They have a mutual benefit because the customers from different industries are in touch with different products, subsequently leading to a bigger reach and new market share for both sides. If you have a page on Instagram in a specific niche without showing your face, you can establish a brand collaboration easily and take advantage of it. See the latest collab that allows Elle US to deliver the world’s first sustainably printed fashion magazine.
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A post shared by HP (@hp)
Coca-cola and hundreds of micro-influencers
Coca-Cola uses a marketing strategy supported by many micro-influencers from around the world. They collaborate with hundreds of smaller influencers to promote their product on social media, like eating food, dancing, and doing sports together with Coca-Cola.
During the Christmas period, for example, we can notice different social media ads and promotions on Instagram with specific hashtags for Coca-Cola and different dancing trends on TikTok supported and sponsored by this brand.
5 ways to find Instagram brand collaborations
1. Do in-depth research on brands
Do you want to collaborate with brands on Instagram, but you don’t know which brands are suitable for your Instagram profile? You can do regular research on Instagram as your preferred platform for content creation and look for brands in your niche with a product interesting to your audience.
In the search tab on Instagram, type any specific keyword, search for different hashtags (like #ad, #collab or #sponsored), and check more significant business profiles that best fit brand collaborations. As an alternative, you can go on Google and directly search for certain names in your niche, so you can contact the most interesting ones and start a conversation about future collaborations.
Once you find the best hashtag to explore for collaborations, look for a particular user who might offer collaborations in your niche.
And once you discover the user, look for their email or send them a DM to offer your collaboration opportunity.
2. Check your competition
Obviously, you are not the only content creator in your chosen niche, and there are a bunch of other bigger and smaller Instagram profiles creating similar content like you. One of the easiest ways to find relevant brands for collaboration is to check your competitors’ profiles and find the brands they collaborate with.
Look for sponsored photos and videos and content with certain products and tagged profiles in the description. You will find brands that deal with that content creator and take advantage of their audience. You can reach out to them on Instagram or by email and offer a brand collaboration with better and more engaging content ideas for promoting their products to your audience.
So if you are a hotel on Mykonos you might want to look for hashtags that possibly your competitors use when promoting their offering with collaborations. For example, we used the hashtag #miconoshotel:
In just a few minutes we found a travel creator who promotes certain hotels and spas in Mykonos. So if we are a hotel that is a competitor, we can see how they use collaborations to spread brand awareness.
3. Check influencer marketing platforms
Influencer marketing platforms are an amazing opportunity for both brands and influencers to start a collaboration. Brands are looking for influencers to join their marketing campaigns and promote their products, so here you can search for brands in your niche and reach out to them. You can get gifted or paid brand collaborations and gain a decent experience when it comes to creating sponsored content on your Instagram profile.
4. Reach out to brands that engage with you
No matter how many followers you have or what type of content you prefer, some brands will still be interested in your Instagram work.
Find out which brands interact with you and engage with your content. Afterward, reach out to them and offer a collaboration. It’s most likely that such brands will respond positively instead of brands that have never heard about you.
Also, you can check your followers’ list and check your DMs and comments to select relevant business profiles. Contact them via DM or email and offer interesting ideas for promoting their products or services. Even if you have a lower number of followers, keep in mind that brands love to collaborate with micro-influencers in certain niches.
5. Check the brands that use Instagram paid ads
Scrolling up through your Instagram feed or stories, you will come across different ads and promotions brands post to reach their target audience in a specific niche. Open up their profiles and check their content. If you think that their products are suitable for your audience, first reach out to them and offer them a free feature and a brand collaboration later.
Paid ads become more and more expensive. Therefore, you can make a deal with them for a gifted collaboration or a price they are comfortable paying for a series of posts on your Instagram profile with their products. This will be a win-win situation for both of you with many mutual benefits.
Instagram features to improve your brand collaborations
To make your brand collaborations more effective and get the most out of your potential customers, you can use different Instagram features to collaborate with your brands:
Instagram Live
Going live on Instagram means being face-to-face with your interested followers and interacting with them in real time. Instagram Live is a free feature every content creator can use to promote different products directly to the audience and also start communication.
As a content creator, you can stream a live broadcast on Instagram to show your audience how to use a specific product and give them a chance to learn more about it and ask questions.
Answer their questions in person and resolve their misunderstandings. Give special offers and discounts to live viewers. Moreover, don’t forget to schedule your broadcast before, so your interested followers can set a reminder for it.
Instagram carousels
Instagram allows content creators to use up to 10 pictures in 1 post. This is a great feature to let your followers spend more time on your post and see all the pictures. It helps you to get bigger engagement rates and easily get noticed by the Instagram algorithm.
Also, you can use carousels as a call-to-action and present a certain product in 10 different ways using 10 different photos in a single post. You can create a mix of photos and videos as well. The latest example of Instagram carousel posts that showcase a strong brand relationship is the collaboration between Dolce & Gabbana and the Kardashians.
Instagram reels
Instagram reels are a powerful weapon every content creator needs to use to skyrocket engagement rates.
Brand collaborations will be more effective if you implement reels in your video strategy and post them frequently.
The chances are high that your reels will catch the audience’s attention and reach many non-followers who can check your content. Create catchy reels to promote products relevant to your audience and convert them into trustworthy customers.
Here is an example of a real created by Louise as an ad collaboration with SnugSofa
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A post shared by Louise (@thehousebythetreeviews)
Instagram stories and stickers
Want to be active on your profile 24/7, even if you don’t have daily content? Instagram stories are the right solution for it. Consistently posting IG stories will increase your profile activity. Therefore, your followers will have a chance to interact with your content daily.
All of this can help build trustworthy relationships and get insights into your audience’s interests using some stickers.
When it comes to stickers, you can use them on your Instagram stories for different purposes. Use the poll sticker to let your followers vote about any product or decision. The link sticker redirects the viewers to the product page, website, or online store. Use the quiz sticker to collect people’s opinions. Additionally, use the countdown sticker to put some pressure or announce a promotion of a new product launch.
FAQ about brand collaborations
How do brand collaborations work?
When a brand pays a content creator to create content related to any product for marketing purposes, it is called a brand collaboration. Brands often hire influencers to post content with certain products on their profiles and promote them to their audience for bigger product reach and revenue.
Q: How to ask for a brand collaboration on Instagram?
A: Before you jump into a brand’s DM, do regular research for regular brands that fit your niche.
Select the most relevant ones and check their products. If you think that their products are suitable for your audience, contact them. Introduce yourself and offer interesting content ideas for promoting their products on your profile.
How to spot a fake collaboration on Instagram?
Scammers give their efforts to manipulate some influencers in many different ways. You can receive an offer in the comments below your picture to DM them. Also, you can receive a message from an account with 0 followers offering you money for collaboration and similar scenarios. You will also notice profiles with copied profile pictures from a real brand. All of this is a huge alarm to block these users and don’t bite their hook.
Do you get paid for Instagram collaborations?
There are paid and gifted brand collaborations on Instagram, and it all depends on your mutual deal. Many influencers do get paid for brand promotion they collaborate with, so the prices are between $100 – $250 per post if the influencer has under 50,000 followers; and $1000+ per post for 100,000 followers or more.
Brand collaborations with famous people and celebrities are much higher, and millions of dollars are on the table.
How do you respond to a brand that wants to collaborate?
When a brand reaches out to you for a collaboration, check their profile first and see their products or website. If it seems like a legit brand and not a scam, reply to their message with gratitude, and let them explain their collaboration purposes. Be kind and honest and always tend to have a professional conversation.
Key takeaways
Brand collaborations on Instagram are an important asset. They build a relationship between a brand and the influencers, and they mutually grow and benefit. Often brands are looking for influencers to join their Instagram marketing campaign and help them promote certain products. Even if you have a smaller audience but still create content in a certain niche, you can find a brand for collaboration. In fact, micro-influencers are very important in many aspects.
There are many different ways to find relevant brand collaborations suitable to your audience. Also, there are different Instagram features you can use to get the most out of it.
Here are 5 key takeaways you should be aware of related to this blog post:
- Brand collaboration is when a brand pays a content creator to promote certain products and create content about it. Not just big influencers can collaborate with brands, but theme pages in certain niches and micro-influencers too.
- There are huge benefits from starting a collaboration with a brand, like getting noticed by more new people, significant profile growth and increased engagement rates, new content ideas, and building trust with potential customers.
- Instagram allows you to use different features to make brand collaboration more effective. Features like Instagram live, link in bio option, Instagram Stories link sticker, audience insights, Instagram reels, etc.
- Before you reach out to a brand, do regular research and see if their products are relevant to your page and your audience.
Start by introducing yourself and showing them a clear plan on how you can help in product promotion and increasing their revenue. - To find potential brand collaborations in your niche, you can use influencer marketing platforms and contact interested brands. Also, check your competitors and find the brands they collaborate with, do Google research for branded campaigns you are a good fit for, etc.
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How to Land Your First Instagram Collaboration (with 5 Examples)
Pete Davis
CEO, Ampjar
27 Aug, 2019
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In our guide to collaborative marketing, we talked about how collaborating with other brands on social media can be a super powerful marketing strategy. In this post, we’re going to be taking that one step further and showing you how to actually land your first Instagram collaboration.
Also, in order to help you grease the wheels of inspiration, we’ll be sharing some of our favorite Instagram collaboration ideas.
Let’s get started!
Want to make collaboration effortless? Ampjar was designed to help brands connect and grow automatically – see how it works.
How to collaborate on Instagram in 5 steps
For your first collaboration on Instagram to be a success, preparation is key. You need to make sure you nail every step of the process.
We’re going to breakdown everything step by step from planning right through to execution.
Step 1: Find someone you want to work with
A successful collaborative Instagram campaign starts with finding the right partner – that’s why step one is to start searching for influencers and brands that might be a good fit.
Start by drawing up a hit list of about 20 possible partners. The goal here is to choose collaboration partners that complement your brand.
You’ll narrow the list down later when you vet them, but for now, you want to get as many ideas down on paper as you can.
Here are some things to look out for when you’re putting together your list of candidates:
Similar target audience/market
Collaborations on Instagram allow you to tap into your partner’s audience to expand your reach. As such, you’ll want to make sure that your target audiences are similar.
Shared marketing goals
An effective influencer collaboration has to be beneficial to both parties. Look for brand partners that might have similar marketing goals to your own. That way, they’ll be more likely to get on board.
Complementary products or services
You don’t want your partner to be in direct competition with you, so look for a brand that offers complementary products or services to your own. For example, if you’re a sunglasses retailer, a swimwear brand might be a good option as it’s easy to see how these two products go together.
Related: A Guide to Working with Fashion Influencers to Grow Your Brand
Similar follower count
Ideally, your partner will have an Instagram following that’s a similar size to your own. This ensures that both brands benefit equally when it comes to audience reach. If they have 10,000 followers more than you, they probably won’t want to collaborate.
Vetting your partners
Once you have your list, you need to vet them for fit. Try to choose a partner that ticks all of the following boxes:
- Does this brand/influencer have a similar Instagram feed style/aesthetic to mine?
- Do they have a similar follower count to me?
- Do their posts generate good engagement figures?
- Is their brand image one that I’d like to be associated with?
- Is their target market similar to mine?
- Are they NOT in direct competition with me?
Step 2: Reach out to them
Now that you know who you want to collaborate with, it’s time to reach out to them.
Every brand is different and has a preferred means of communication. Your first port of call is to check their Instagram bio and website contact page. If they might have already specified their preferred contact method, take your lead from that.
If not, it’s usually best to reach out initially over email as opposed to Instagram DM. At the end of the day, you’re still negotiating a business deal, so you need to communicate professionally – email is the best way to do that. You should be able to find an email address on their website or social media pages – if not, you can always employ one of these tactics.
Your first email to them is ‘testing the waters’ to see if they’d be interested in collaborating. I’d recommend asking something like “Do you ever collaborate with brands to promote [insert product/service]?”.
You should also introduce who you are and explain a little about your brand and why you wanted to reach out to them specifically. Throwing in a compliment here never hurts either.
If they say they do, follow up and ask them if they’d be interested in collaborating.
Hopefully, you’ll have a few vetted candidates on your hitlist and can email all of them. Some of them might not respond – that’s okay.
Step 3: Structure your Instagram collaboration deal
Once you’ve found your Instagram collaboration partner, it’s time to structure the deal. It’s important to set out clear expectations about how the campaign is going to go down and draw up a formal agreement.
Make sure you’re both clear on things like:
- The products that need to be promoted
- What kind of promotional efforts your partner will be doing and how frequently?
- What the compensation will be (i.e. money, a shoutout, a free product, etc.)?
- Expected results
- How long the campaign will last
Plus any other details you think are relevant.
Step 4: Execute the campaign
Now comes the exciting part – executing the campaign.
Make sure you’ve made all the necessary preparations before you launch.
For example, if your partner is going to be helping you to drive sales through exclusive discounts, you’ll need to have set up unique trackable discount codes.
If you’re going to be posting photos of each other’s products to your feeds, you’ll need to have the photos edited beforehand.
It’s important to keep communicating throughout the campaign to make sure both parties are happy with the way things are progressing.
Step 5: Measure results and ROI
Finally, it’s time to measure your results. You should have set goals before launching your campaign and have an idea of what success looks like.
Look at your key performance indicators and work out whether you’ve met your targets. Has your follower count increased? Has your engagement gone up? How many clicks or conversions did your campaign generate?
If your results weren’t as good as you expected, try to figure out what went wrong and use this to inform your next campaign.
5 Instagram collaboration ideas and examples
Alright, now that you know how to land your first Instagram collaboration, let’s look at some different ways you might want to collaborate. Here are 5 awesome Instagram collaboration ideas that other brands have already used successfully.
Instagram takeovers
An Instagram takeover is when a different brand or influencer ‘takes over’ your Instagram feed for the day, much like a guest host on a radio station.
In exchange, you could take over theirs at the same time. That way, both of your brands get exposure to the other’s following and while doubling up your reach.
Popular Instagram channel @dogsofinstagram utilizes this powerful collaborative strategy to great effect. They frequently host ‘Story Takeovers’ in which a cute pup with a big following will take over their Instagram Stories feed for the day.
It must be working because they’ve already reached 4.5m followers.
Giveaways
Giveaways can be an awesome way to drive a ton of shares and boost engagement on your posts.
To make them even more effective, collaborate with a popular influencer or brand and get them to share it; your entries will go through the roof.
Here’s a great example from HudaBeauty, who teamed up with popular beauty YouTuber and Instagram star @prettypastelplease to promote their nude palette giveaway.
Referrals
Another simple way to team up with influencers on Instagram is by setting up an affiliate program (check out our guide to Instagram affiliate marketing here). Your partners can promote your products and earn a commission for each referral. You can set this up so that you pay per conversion. That way, you’re only paying for results, which ensures a good ROI.
Here’s an example from @Kadenceannn, who is promoting small tween fashion brand @paperflowerla in this photo. As you can see, she’s included her unique discount and referral code in the description.
Product shoutouts
A simple and easy way to collaborate on Instagram is through product shoutouts.
Your collaboration partner can shoutout your products through an Instagram post in exchange for either payment or a shoutout in return. It’s simple, it’s easy to set up, and it’s effective.
Here’s an example from actor and influencer @ianmharding, who is seen here giving a shoutout to @evianwater.
This post could be sponsored, but in a way, it’s beneficial to both parties even without payment. Evian gets a shoutout to Ian’s 4.9m followers, and Ian gets to develop his own ‘brand’ identity by aligning himself with a good cause.
Joint product releases
If you want to take things a little further, you could even consider working together to develop a joint product representative of both your brand identities and then promote that product on Instagram. This is a co-branding strategy that can really boost brand awareness if you choose the right partner.
Big brands like HP and Elle have already seen a lot of success with joint product releases. Here’s an example from HP’s Instagram feed featuring a printer designed with Elle’s branding.
How to use the collaboration feature on Instagram
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- Instagram is testing the collaboration feature: what it is for
- How to publish collaborative posts 90 questions?
- Hurry up to try collaborative posts on Instagram!
Instagram users recently got a reason to be happy! The new feature Collab ("collaboration") allows you to publish joint posts even faster and without unnecessary troubles. The function is available to both regular bloggers and business account holders.
Posting a collaborative post to your feed or Reels is now just a few clicks away. This will add the names of both authors of the publication in the title, which will provide content creators and business owners with even more attention from Instagram visitors.
So, read how to start a collaboration on Instagram!
Instagram is testing the collaboration feature: what it is for
Collab, a new feature from Instagram, will soon change the way we approach collaborative posts.
Previously, Reels posts, stories, texts, and videos mentioning your nickname could easily escape the attention of subscribers. How so? The thing is that users scroll through the feed and stories at the speed of a tsunami. On the other hand, these meek Instagram runs add up to more than 32 minutes a day. This is the average amount of time spent on the platform by people over the age of 25.
The introduction of collaboration will allow authors to be in the field of view of users more often and more effectively than traditional publications and stories.
The co-author's nickname will go right into the title, so you don't have to worry that someone forgot to tag someone in the text under the publication. The post itself or the Reels video will appear in the feeds of both authors and will be accompanied by general comments and a single counter of views and likes.
How to post collaborative posts on Instagram
If you already have access to the Collab feature, this guide will help you create a collaborative post on Instagram.
Step 1. Open Instagram and click on the icon +
First, launch the Instagram app. Click on the + icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
Step 2. Select an image or video
Click on one of the options - publication, story, Reel or broadcast . Select the image or video you want to post to Instagram and press "Next" . The editing options will appear on the screen. Correct the material before publication or, if you do not want to change anything, click "Next" .
Step 3. Tag other users
Click "Tag people" and select the option "Invite collaborator" .
Step 4. Invite a collaborator
Find the person you want on the tag screen. By accepting your co-post invitation, the collaborator will be able to post to their own Instagram followers. After that, he will be marked as one of the authors of the publication.
The list of collaborators is displayed under the tabs Add Label and Edit Collaborators .
The co-author tag will automatically appear in the publishing center. To save your changes, press Done .
After the publication of the post, all users marked in it will receive an invitation to become its co-authors. The invitation can be accepted or declined.
Have questions?
Question 1. Does the collaboration give a summary counter of likes and comments?
Yes. The collaborator can post your video or image on their Instagram for their own followers. Both authors will receive the same comments, and the summary of the number of likes and submissions will also be the same.
Q2: Why doesn't the collaboration feature work?
The first step is to check if Collab is running in your country. If so, try updating the Instagram app from the App Store or Google Play. The collaboration is only available to those who have the latest version of Instagram installed.
Question 3. Am I correct in understanding that the collaboration feature covers both photo and video publications?
Yes.
The new feature works with both images and videos. By the way, you can create a spectacular video for Instagram in just a few clicks in Clipchamp's free online video editor, and then publish it directly on your Instagram.
Hurry up to try collaborative posts on Instagram!
The Collab feature is a very handy gadget that will save you time in various situations, for example, if you want to promote a fashion tandem or a collab video on YouTube, or just confess your feelings to your favorite brand. If collaborating with brands isn't for you yet, try mixing Instagram Reels videos.
And don't forget: great videos for any Instagram projects can always be created with Clipchamp's free editor!
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Collaboration on Instagram - what it means and how it works
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Combining popularity can bring commercial success to famous people and big brands. Collaborations are often used among manufacturers and bloggers, artists, artists, scientists.
On Instagram and other social networks, collaborations have become one of the successful marketing techniques that make it possible to increase the reach of the target audience and increase the company's profits.
What does collaboration mean?
Collaboration is a collaboration that allows you to increase the efficiency of doing business. Used to refer to the process of bringing people or companies together to achieve a common or similar goal.
Such cooperation has a number of benefits, and each party benefits. By combining information, personnel, financial resources, success can be achieved much faster and more economically.
Collaboration is used in many areas. In commercial activities, in science, art, music. For science, the association provides an opportunity to expand the scope of study and exchange discoveries, for musicians - to attract a new audience, to record new tracks. For brands and companies, collaboration provides an opportunity to increase brand and company loyalty, increase the number of new customers, and enter new markets.
Collaboration on Instagram
In the social network Instagram, you can see collaborations between famous bloggers and influencers, popular brands. This trend has become a new type of promotion in social networks for individuals, companies, groups and associations.
For example, a clothing or footwear company contracts with a well-known model or actress who has a large following on a social network. After that, the influencer posts photos of himself wearing clothes or shoes of this brand in his account, and all subscribers see this advertisement. In an effort to be like their idol, they begin to buy the advertised brand and sales of the brand grow.
The popularity of such alliances is due to the fact that loyalty to a popular person is transferred to the goods that she advertises. And at the same time, the brand of the promoted product is not always named, subscribers follow what their idol wears and consumes. The phenomenon of social proof works - when people see that someone uses the product and speaks well of it, their loyalty subconsciously increases.
The same mechanism works with negative reactions.
Important!
To get a high effect from the association, the advertiser needs to choose a person whose audience will perceive their product. That is, it is better to entrust the promotion of natural juices or sportswear on Instagram to a fitness blogger, and jewelry to a well-known model.
A good example is the collaboration between the Adidas brand and rapper Kanye West. Kanye is at the height of his popularity and his casual style matches perfectly with the company's product.
Excellent results can be achieved through non-standard, seemingly incompatible alliances. For example, Lucasfilm's CoverGirl and Star Wars cosmetics are a good opportunity to reach a large audience and set themselves apart from their main competitor, Maybelline. Another interesting collaboration is the union of designer Virgil Abloh (streetwear brand Off White) and Markus Engman from IKEA. They created a series of original carpets.
Both brands received an influx of new audiences.
What is the principle of uniting for commercial success
The main motive for collaboration is to expand the scope and market for goods or services. Therefore, when choosing a partner for association, you need to understand what benefits can be obtained from this. That is, whether the subscribers of this blogger or another influencer can become your target audience (whether they are suitable in terms of age, income level, interests and other factors for segmenting the target audience). In addition, you need to estimate the approximate number of subscribers who can become customers. You can study the parameters of the target audience selectively by their accounts.
For association, you can choose your own topic or related industries. For example, a building materials company may collaborate with a furniture factory or design studio. The target audience of a beauty studio may have something in common with the target audience of fitness centers, etc.
Types of collaboration on Instagram
The Instagram social network offers different types of advertising tools that are selected taking into account the strategic goals and budget of the advertiser company.
What forms of cooperation can be used to promote on Instagram?
- Mutual PR of people who work in the same area or related activities. This option is often used by musicians or artists. They can do a joint project or promote each other's non-competitive projects. This is effective because the interests of their target audiences coincide.
- Trademark connection. For example, an illustrator creates paintings that depict a popular brand. This is often done so that representatives of this brand contact them and offer cooperation. Some of them get famous this way. For example, Yigit Özçakmak drew celebrity sketches, tagging their profiles. In response, many of the popular personalities reposted to their multi-million audience.
- Promotion through a blogger with a large number of followers.
The company negotiates with the blogger for a certain amount, and can also offer big discounts on goods, mutual advertising, certificates for various services, and much more. As part of such a promotional campaign, a blogger can also give gift coupons, discounts and other preferences to his subscribers for the active dissemination of advertising information. - Auxiliary tools to improve the effectiveness of advertising. On Instagram, be sure to use hashtags, photo tags, mentions in Stories, free mailings.
Collaboration as a mutual PR
Combining to increase popularity and attract a new target audience is also called cross-promotion.
What tools can be used to do this on Instagram?
SFS
Sharing posts in stories or SFS (shoutout for shoutout - mention for mention). Using the story feature is very effective. These are short stories lasting 10 seconds, in the form of a small video or photo with a caption. Such a post is deleted after 24 hours and does not clog the feed.
You can use it this way: by agreement with a blogger or media personality, publish a screenshot of his account or some post in your story. Add a caption like: “Great content from (nickname of the person you are collaborating with)! Subscribe! Your partner will do the same in return.
To find partners for collaboration, you need to select a person or company whose account has approximately the same number of subscribers, similar topics of activity, the presence of real (not cheated) subscribers and likes. It is also necessary to speak in more detail with what inscriptions the posts will be published - so that later there will be no conflict situations and misunderstandings. When a link to a profile is placed, it must be in the clickable zone, otherwise the effectiveness of such an exchange will be very low.
Shared creativity
Another example of successful collaboration is the creation of shared creative products. For example, two artists or illustrators team up and draw one picture, which they then publish on their own account.
The audience of each of them sees mutual creativity and, with a high probability, also begins to be interested in the work of a co-author. Musicians use the same techniques when recording joint tracks and posting them on their social media accounts. Commercial companies for association are looking for popular partners whose target audience may be interested in their product, and join forces to create a joint product.
Attracting big brands
Most often, collaboration occurs between people or companies that are different in terms of popularity and audience of subscribers. And how to attract a multi-million audience of a popular blogger, artist or brand, while not having the same fame?
Many people are starting to use references to big brands in their creative work or other promotional activities. For example, artists or designers draw portraits, sketches of famous actors, posting them in their account with a mention of the page. If the work is done successfully and has a response from the audience, famous people can publish it in their stories or in the feed.
For commercial companies that do not work in the field of creativity, another option can be offered. For example, choose a large company, a leader in its industry, and publish useful interesting articles and news that casually mention a well-known brand as a positive example, etc. There is a difference with the previous tool, because not in every case it is possible to agree on mutual reference to each other. You have to act blindly and this does not always give a positive result. But it can help aspiring entrepreneurs and bloggers.
Creative content
Start-up entrepreneurs, companies or individuals need to constantly work on creating original useful content in order to attract attention. It can be interesting news from your field, useful articles, instructions, photos, videos, life hacks and much more. Most importantly, it should not be boring, useful and presented without complicated terminology. Bright non-standard solutions and "chips" become viral, subscribers begin to repost them on their pages, thus expanding the reach of the target audience.
