How to get Sponsored on Instagram

Getting sponsored by brands on Instagram is an excellent career move for influencers. You will benefit from being associated with notable brands within your niche. The money you can earn from sponsorships is nothing to scoff at either.

To get sponsored on Instagram, you need to take your social media game to the next level. This involves gathering followers at an increased rate, and keeping them engaged with quality content. And once you hit a certain threshold, you can start reaching out to brands with a sponsorship deal pitch.

If you need additional guidance on how to get sponsored on Instagram, keep scrolling and check out the rest of our guide.

Why Do Brands Sponsor Influencers?

This might seem like an obvious question, but it is crucial for understanding the reasoning behind Instagram sponsorships.

So why do brands sponsor influencers? To gain direct access to a specific user demographic on Instagram, usually for marketing purposes. This is in contrast to running ads on the platform, where you’re at the mercy of Instagram’s fickle ad algorithms. In other words, Instagram influencers are there to provide a ready-made audience niches to brands. And brands are usually willing to pay a good price for such services.

Part 1: Becoming an Influencer

The first step towards becoming a sponsored influencer is acquiring a sufficiently large audience. We’ve distilled everything you need to know into 3 practical tips.

Understand Your Niche

To gain followers at a consistent rate, you need to understand your niche. To do this, ask yourself the following questions:

• Who are my existing followers?
• What do they like about me and my content?

These questions will help you find your place within the wider influencer ecosystem on Instagram.

Next, look at the channels of your top competitors. Watch for overlaps in content and audience, and note what’s missing. Be especially vigilant for signs of existing sponsorship deals – this will later help you find potential sponsors for your own content.

Finally, you can directly ask your audience how they feel about your channel. This will provide valuable insight into what motivates your followers. Any information you can gather will prove extremely useful during negotiation with potential sponsors.

Be Engaging

Engagement is the basic currency on Instagram. Without engagement, there is no point in having a large audience (apart from vanity that is).

Passive followers are not likely to post comments, follow links, share content, or buy products. As a result, they have little value for brands seeking to exert influence on Instagram. This in turn reduces your own value as an audience provider and curator.

Instead of chasing after numbers, what you should do instead is maximize engagement with your existing followers. Give your audience multiple ways to interact with you, and encourage them to do so by:

• Adding CTAs to your content where appropriate.
• Providing contact information on your bio page.
• Asking questions, holding polls, and running contests.
• Sharing content from your followers.

Be Consistent

Consistency is essential for long-term growth on Instagram. The platform is designed in such a way to encourage constant content production, especially in the case of ephemeral content such as Stories. If your channel starts lagging behind, it will quickly get overwhelmed by competitors with a more consistent content schedule.

Consistency is also important in terms of style and tone. If your content is usually whimsical and upbeat, posting a somber story about real-world politics will create mood whiplash, which is jarring to most people. Use your wits, and always keep in mind what your audience expects from your content.

Part 2: Getting Sponsored

Once you’ve established yourself as an Instagram influencer, you can start leveraging your clout to get sponsored by brands. Here is everything you need to know about getting sponsored on Instagram.

Instagram Branded Content Tools

Instagram uses a system called Branded Content Tools (also known as Instagram Paid Partnerships) to facilitate sponsorship deals between brands and influencers. With Branded Content Tools you can specify if your content includes branding elements belonging to specific brands. Branded Content Tools are only available on Instagram Professional accounts, including Business acounts and Creative accounts. Let’s illustrate how the system works.

For example, you’ve just bought a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, and you want to show them off in your main feed. With Branded Content Tools, you have the option to add a Paid Partnership Label to your post. If Ray-Ban approves, the partnership will be disclosed through the addition of a sponsorship label above your post. Once your post has been published, the brand partner will receive a notification. They’ll also have access to the post’s insights.

Negotiating a Sponsorship Deal

Once you’ve established contact with a brand, you‘ll have to negotiate a branded content deal. When negotiating, it’s always a good idea to provide the brand with data, including your follower count, average likes, views, shares, and comments per post, as well as any past branded content deals you’ve received.

The most important thing to negotiate is compensation. There are no set rules here – you can get as much as the brand you’re working with is willing to pay. Sometimes brand will offer other form of compensation, including free goods, discounts, or promotion opportunities. Be careful of accepting such deals, since they can make it harder to negotiate a more lucrative deal later.

Disclosing Sponsorship Deals

In the interest of transparency, you should disclose all sponsorship deals with your followers. This essential for building trust with your audience. Be upfront about your support for sponsors, and explain why you’ve accepted the deal. It helps if you’ve mentioned the brand previously in a non-promotional context.

Additionally, Instagram’s branded content policy mandates that sponsored posts should be tagged with #ad or #spon. The policy is not strictly enforced, but if it ever comes to light that you’ve been posting sponsored content without notifying users, your channel could face penalties, including demonetization.

Conclusion

That wraps up our guide on how to get sponsored on Instagram. The process is not complicated on a technical level, but you have to fulfill certain criteria to be eligible, and follow certain rules to get the most out of each sponsorship deal you enter. Good luck with your efforts, and we hope you can take your career as an influencer to the next level.