There is a difference between being an INFLUENCER and HAVING INFLUENCE.
- An influencer may have a huge audience but have zero impact on their buying decisions.
- To have influence means your audience not only LISTENS but also TAKES ACTION because of your recommendations because you have developed a RELATIONSHIP with them over time.
In order to influence someone, they need to trust you.
Talking about trust, why am I qualified to teach you how to monetize your influence?
- I’ve worked on over 1000 influencer campaigns
- I’ve worked with BestBuy, Target, Sephora, Ulta Beauty, FujiFilm, Amazon, and Intel among other companies
- I speak at conferences all around the world about how to become an influential influencer
Here are the 6 basic steps to monetizing your influence broken down into 2 categories:
WHAT TO POST ON INSTAGRAM?
- Promote products and services you already use
- Help your audience by solving personal problems
- Promote products and services that are high quality and unique
HOW TO PITCH COMPANIES + GET PAID?
- Create a killer media kit to send to brands
- Actively DM and email the companies you’d like to work with
- Master affiliate marketing + the art of persuasive language
Trust is built over time when you consistently show up for someone, which is why it’s important to post every day.
But what are you supposed to post on Instagram every single day?!
1. Promote products and services you already use
Look at your credit or debit card history and see what products or services you’ve purchased within the past 6 months. See if you can find a common theme among your purchases and notice where you spend the bulk of your money – aside from bills.
- Do you buy a lot of presents for your pet? (THEME: PETS)
- Do you go to the gym every other day and purchase protein shakes? (THEME: FITNESS)
- Do you like to try out new restaurants in town? (THEME: FOOD)
- Do you use makeup every day? (THEME: BEAUTY)
If you buy a little bit of everything and don’t have an overall theme, think about your motivations behind WHY you purchase what you do. Perhaps healthy choices motivate you, in that case, your theme can be: HEALTHY LIFESTYLE.
When I first started, I had a couple thousand followers and decided to post a comparative review about the two straighteners I had, which helped me land a free trip to the salon, which led to me promoting more beauty products and partnering with more beauty brands.
2. Help your audience by solving personal problems
Everyone has problems, and if your page can help solve a problem, you have a very valuable page!
THINK: What kind of problems do you like helping people solve?
- Maybe you’re super fashionable and like to help people out with their outfits
- Maybe you have impeccable cooking skills and like helping people create healthy recipes around their lifestyle
- Maybe you’re an incredible makeup artist and like to help by inspiring people through body art
- Maybe you hit the gym every day and love helping others sculpt their bodies as well
When I was starting my online business, I read a TON of books and shared what I was learning to my audience to help them along their entrepreneurial journey (as I helped myself along my own path)!
It wasn’t too long afterward that I started getting featured in books and magazines myself because my business started booming.
3. Promote products and services that are high quality and unique
If you can easily find a cheap replica of the product you’re trying to promote on Amazon, look for something else! The fewer places the product is located the better because you want people to purchase it from you.
The same concept works for services and experiences, the more exclusive the opportunity, the more people will value and look forward to what you promote.
Of course, this isn’t always possible because there is so much competition with brands and sometimes jumping on trends can be extremely lucrative, so know that this rule can be broken sometimes!
4. Create a killer media kit to send to brands
Your media kit should contain a few crucial elements:
- Bio – describe who you are, what kind of content you produce, and how you can help
- Demographics – audience gender, location, age, ethnicity
- If you know their marital status, parental status, income, and religion, that is even better
- ROI stats – this is advanced, but if you have worked on previous campaigns and have either sold lots of product or brought in loads of brand awareness, make sure to display your stats
I go into depth on how to create the perfect media kit in my course on “How To Make Money As An Influencer“.
Below is an email that I got from the CEO of an influencer network where he said that my media kit was one of the most accomplished and creative portfolios he had ever seen!
5. Actively DM and email the companies you’d like to work with
Getting brand deals is a numbers game. The more pitches you send out, the more likely you’ll land a good gig!
I recommend in addition to sending a written pitch, send an example of the type of content you could create for the company. The best way to do this is to have created and posted an image on your feed that looks similar to the type of content you’d like to create for them.
For example, let’s say you want to go on a vacation with your friends and get free accommodations in exchange for an Instagram post. You need to provide lots of great examples of what type of content you can create for them.
The more examples you have, the more campaigns you’ll likely book!
There are a lot of ways to pitch correctly, and a TON of ways to pitch incorrectly. I teach how to get your pitch right the first time in my “How To Make Money As An Influencer” course.
My student, Colleen Cook went from having zero luck to getting 20 brand deals IN ONE WEEK after completing the course.
6. Master affiliate marketing + the art of persuasive language
If you don’t know what affiliate marketing is or want to get better at it, sign up for my free 5-Day Master Affiliate Marketing. This is a CRUCIAL element to becoming a successful influencer, especially if you want to start earning passive income.
In a nutshell, affiliate marketing is when you promote a company’s products or services and make a commission from the amount you sell for them. This is tracked through affiliate links and unique promo codes.
The only way to get really good at affiliate marketing is to also be really good with your WORDS.
This is where blogging skills come in handy, so if you want to learn how to blog well, sign up for my 7-Day Make Money Blogging or my 21-Day Build A Better Blog if you already have a blog.
Everything you do, know that it’s a learning process. When I first started on Instagram, I really didn’t post the best photos. After learning a few tips and tricks and investing in a phone with a better camera, I was able to create higher quality content and as a result, got hired for more AND better-paying campaigns.
The point is to start where you are with what you have and keep learning along the way!
I don’t know if you can tell, but there is a huge difference in photo quality in my most recent posts compared to what I used to post!
BONUS TIP:
There are LOADS of influencer platforms that you can join and sign up to get selected for influencer campaigns.
Here are a few places you can start where you can pitch brands:
There are also other platforms that you can sign up for where they will pitch the brands for you and you get “gigs” when brands want to work with you!
To continue learning with me, sign up for my free 3-day course on How To Become An Instagram Influencer!Â
