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Unlocking Instagram’s Potential: Top Tips for Influencers to Turn Their Profile into a Lucrative Machine for Their Services
Instagram is one of the most frequently visited social media platforms today, with over 1 billion users worldwide. Having a business profile there can boost your chances of success in the chosen business niche. With its powerful visual content and user-friendly platform, it’s no surprise that many freelancers promote their services on Instagram and look for new clients. From a social media dedicated to vacay pics, Instagram has become an instrument aligning creators and potential customers.
Keep in Mind the Power of Visual Content
People always prefer visualization to other ways of work presentation. Therefore, a good picture showing your achievement is worth thousands of words. The same works for video. When people can demonstrate their talents and skills in reels, regular videos, or Instagram stories, it dramatically increases the value of their services. Thus, Instagram pages become portfolios and platforms where creators can proudly show their work and attract potential clients. Visual content keeps dominating people’s minds. A good picture is worth a thousand words. Yet, a thousand good words play a crucial role for potential customers. Thus, an Instagram portfolio for freelancers shall attract users with a combination of high-quality images and text.
Any Business Profile Needs Strategizing
We all know that a successful Instagram page, like other social media channels, requires hard work, persistence, and commitment to keep up with regular content production and appealing visual design. To promote services on Instagram, one needs to do a day-to-day job requiring creativity and diligence. Although many people may think social media pages are only about random pictures and trendy dances, a successful business profile follows a thought-thought strategy. But how exactly do you turn your page into an ad for your activity? How do you make it popular enough to place sponsored content related to your services? Here’re some tips to get started with freelancing on Instagram:
Define your Best Offer
To turn their Instagram accounts into platforms for ads and sponsored content, freelancers must clearly define what spheres they are good at. Think about
- sharing your knowledge and expertise,
- showcasing your services,
- creating several rubrics followers may use to navigate through the account. Some of them may be specific and show your professionalism, while others can address more general inquiries.
Share Expertise with Potential Customers
For example, life hacks remain extremely popular and are vital to any social media marketing strategy for freelancers. They are a must for people who own technology-related blogs or platforms about graphic design. Don’t hesitate to share valuable pieces of advice that help users daily with their image-related tasks or the most common computer issues. People often need help with simple things, such as converting images on their Macbooks or other devices. Filetypes can be confusing. Companies have different requirements for images and often ask for specific formats. Take advantage of such inquiries! Offer users simple and time-savvy solutions on how to convert PNG to JPG, for example. Since the formats mentioned above are one of the most popular, people often search for tips on how to convert them properly.
Find the Target Audience
Before launching your campaign on Instagram, ensure you are targeting the right people. Instagram users get bombed by thousands of images and videos every day. Thus, you need to be precise with what and who you’re offering your work to. The initial move is to define your target audience so you can tailor messages and visuals in your business profile accordingly.
Ask yourself these Questions
Search your competitors in niches and explore their followers.
- What do these people like?
- What makes them follow a particular creator?
- How do they interact with each other?
- Where do these people live?
- Are they just following the visual content or buying physical products from the profile?
There are many freelancers’ pages or online shops whose profiles can serve as an inspiration for you. All these questions help you identify the right approaches. Some people prefer long and detailed product and service descriptions, while others only buy visuals. Instagram followers may be interested in your work, story, motivation, and life path. Creating an image of an Instagram buddy, a person whose adventures in social media posts are worth following will increase your chances of offering products and services more successfully. Many people buy not only the product as such but also the whole lifestyle. Try to figure out these things before launching ads. Alternatively, you can test several approaches to understand what works best for your business profile.
Observe your Competitors
Learn what your competitors do with their social media posts to avoid unnecessary expenditure and spare time. Studying their strategies is crucial to getting your target audience. You should also define what sets you apart from other freelancers in your niche so that you can showcase this in your posts and captions.
Be Persistent but not Intrusive
Potential clients value an individual approach based on statistics and research. To promote services on Instagram, you need to balance persistence and readiness when to stop showing your ads to some users. Becoming annoying is one of the biggest no-gos for such social media platforms. Focus on learning who may need your expertise. Knowing your audience well will ease freelancing on Instagram and boost your success.
Choose a Fitting Platform For Promotion
Various social media channels are available for promotion, such as Facebook Ads Manager or Google Ads Manager. Depending on the budget you have set aside, choose which platform meets all your requirements without breaking the bank and start planning out each component of your ad campaign – target audience demographics, media types (photos or videos), etc. Ideal potential clients are not easy to find and quite challenging to retain. However, with a healthy, balanced, and persistent social media presence, you can reach out to the necessary people and convince them to prefer your products. Check this guide if you want to learn how to get more customers.
Since we’re focusing on the Instagram portfolio for freelancers in this article, let’s assume that it is a choice you made based on the first tip. Fun fact: if your target audience is not using this social media platform as a source for buying products or services, you don’t need to invest much time in promoting yourself there. However, it doesn’t mean abandoning some social media platforms completely is a good idea. Prioritize which ones are the most productive and successful for you. All social media channels matter because you never know when potential clients get interested in your activity there. However, some channels are dominating for a specific niche.
If judging by experience, your customers are more likely to buy some products or services using a laptop, make sure they will have access to a high-quality website with clear navigation and friendly UX design. Suppose your potential customers are 24/7 on their phones, then an effective mobile version of the shop or several social media profiles can be a must-have. Check out a postcards email builder if your target audience is more into formal conversations and letters. Use your email list (if you have one) to present your products and services to people in a way they got used to. Meet your customers where they spend the most time. Use their language in your social posts, work with a customer base, and do product photography (when needed) to become a natural choice number one when it comes to some products or services.
Create Quality Content
Consistent quality content will be key to effectively connecting with your target audience. It also helps you promote your services on Instagram. Make sure your posts reflect your brand identity by selecting vibrant images or videos that tell stories about who you are and what makes your services special. Planning will also help ensure that all your posts look cohesive–whether through the color palette, filter usage, or photo composition.
Finding a unique visual identity is a challenging task. However, tackling it will make your Instagram page more easily recognizable and catchy. You can’t elaborate any social media marketing strategy for freelancers without a high-quality visual identity. Focus on finding your trademark, which will make you stand out from the other businesses in the niche. If people find your choice exciting and worth following, your ability to pursue them and sell things will reach a new level. There are plenty of opportunities for various merch types, such as clothes, phone cases, eBooks, downloadable templates, and you name it. Think about what’s representative of your niche and community. Odds are your followers will be excited to support you.
Don’t Hesitate to Collaborate
Get in Touch with Followers
As experience shows that people highly appreciate a sense of belonging. It is the essence of freelancing on Instagram. You don’t just promote your services but also create a space where followers may exchange thoughts and feelings. People want to be a part of something bigger and solid. Therefore, many successful freelancers organize their communities and clubs to gather like-minded users. Despite popular belief, freelancing on Instagram is not just about getting tasks done. You can build a successful career and boost your personal brand by interacting with people. If you know how to accumulate followers around and help them develop networking, your merch will be as popular as your content.
Team up with Fellow Bloggers
Instagram business is not only about tough competition. Teaming up with other influencers and representatives in your sphere is a good instrument to leverage and engage prospective followers — it provides the perfect opportunity to make money and gain social approval. Take advantage of Instagram Collabs. This feature lets you co-author content with a fellow Instagram user. As a result, your post will appear on both of your business profiles. You’ll share feedback, such as likes, reactions, and comments. These tactics will let you merge each other’s communities. Nowadays, more bloggers are supporting the idea of collaborating to provide their followers with more exciting content. Thus, they show their readiness to surprise people and offer them new, unexpected solutions. An ability to catch trends and change is vital for a successful social media marketing strategy for freelancers.
Make Use Of Hashtags
One massive advantage of Instagram compared to other social media outlets is strategically placing hashtags into posts. Choose up to ten relevant hashtags per post. Combine and run experiments with them. Some hashtags are too popular and used, so their chances of being ranked by them are slim. However, not all the cool hashtags are taken. Find them to boost your business profile.
Focus on something related to either industry keywords or targeted campaigns. Translate the keywords into several most frequently used languages and see what Instagram offers for these hashtags. Sometimes even the words or collocations with the wrong spelling can be a good fit. Think of hashtags as trackers helping you navigate through your Instagram feed. By using them, people get access to more personalized content. It is something your freelance profile on Instagram needs. On top, they can drive traffic toward specific pages or products depending on the type of service people seek. Hashtags help users promote services on Instagram dramatically. Categorize your profile and diversify it with several subtopics.
Mark your Work and Let People Review it
Placing logos in important places throughout each post may also attract more eyes to your freelance profile on Instagram. It depends on the type of clientele you want to connect with – such as associating yourself with high-end brands if they don’t have any prohibition against such collaborations.
As a freelancer whose main personal brand resource is an Instagram page, make the most of your previous collaboration. Honest and personalized reviews are the best ads to help people build trust and connection with you. Previous experience is what makes freelancing on Instagram lucrative. Allow followers to write feedback on your work. It is one of the biggest favor they can do for you.
- First, any review makes you research the pros and cons of your work and improve the quality of your services.
- Second, with feedback, more people will see you’re a real person providing clients with real solutions. The Internet is full of scams and dubious people who may steal somebody’s money and time.
Showing your previous collaboration and content clients is the best way to promote yourself. Any Instagram portfolio for freelancers needs a review chapter if its owner wants to be taken seriously.
Work on Your Page all the Time
Instagram, one of the most influential and powerful social media platforms available nowadays, keeps breaking records of followers. It means that more and more businesses are trying to catch people’s attention on this platform. To stay afloat and become a perfect match with your audience, you need to review your page, a social media marketing strategy, and update them accordingly regularly. Trends on social media channels constantly change, as do the demands on businesses and their representation in social media.
Update the Content
You can’t set your page once and for good. Even the most effective visual and business solutions will get old-fashioned and require fresh air. Remember that while working on an Instagram portfolio for freelancers. Everyone has a tiny attention span on the Internet. Therefore, your page must always remind users about your products and services.
Let Users Know you Change
However, as a creator, you will need to strike a delicate balance between the stability of your brand and its readiness to change. If you are about to make significant developments in your freelance profile on Instagram (such as changing a pic or a background style), let people know so they don’t lose you. Your loyal audience will keep following your news. However, the new followers may need clarification on dramatic changes in your profile. It’s better to conduct changes gradually and access the followers’ reactions.
Remind of your Activity
Data shows that after seeing a product or service on Instagram, 79% of global users will search for more information about it. For instance, more than 50% of Americans will visit the brand’s website or app, with roughly 46% making a purchase (either online or offline).
While Instagram has traditionally been the go-to platform for eCommerce businesses looking to showcase their goods through high-quality product shots, nowadays, many freelancers are using this social media channel as an ad for their work. Taking into account that the average Instagram user spends around half an hour in the app every day, this is one marketing tool you’d better not miss.
Conclusion
Some may think that freelancing on Instagram exists in a vacuum. Nothing could be further from the truth. Whether creating email postcards for clients or promoting your own services through Instagram business profiles, becoming a successful freelancer means working as the most effective marketer on behalf of your own skills.
This work demands determining the right social media marketing strategy for your freelance services and finding the best social media platform to promote them. Nailing these tasks will help you promote your talents and attract potential customers easier. Choosing Instagram for these purposes means you prefer a visual approach to present your freelance activity. To turn your page into an Instagram portfolio for freelancers, you must decide which messages you want to spread among the audience and what feedback to get.
The steps discussed above serve as a general how-to list for freelancers trying to turn their Instagram page into an ad of their work and sponsored content. Persistency, readiness to follow the trends and a unique style will help promote services on Instagram more effectively.
Potential clients may want to get to know your skills and past work, especially if your portfolio is not impressive so far. It would help if you regarded your online portfolio as a requirement for obtaining new business, as this is the first place many potential clients will meet you. It depends on your work type, as a portfolio may only sometimes apply to your skill set.
As mentioned, your personal blogging and guest posting can help you flesh out your professional portfolio. Make sure that your freelance portfolio is an accurate, honest, and diverse representation of your achievements.
