Understanding Instagram Influencer Marketing In 2024

Social media trends can feel like they turn on a dime. One morning you can wake up and suddenly your feed is filled with content that features some new challenge or meme format that forces you to scroll and catch up.

When it comes to influencer marketing, there’s a similar dynamic at play. As trends change, marketers need to constantly adjust their campaign strategies to stay on top of platform changes and what audiences expect out of their creators.

Falling behind in this area can result in campaigns that lack engagement and can even come off as stale or out of touch.

Instagram influencer marketing is a perfect example of this and the content that performs well on the platform has changed over the last several years.

Beyond just trends, understanding the algorithms that power the platform can also feel like you’re chasing a moving target.

Combining on-trend campaigns with satisfying the Instagram algorithm is key to successful Instagram influencer marketing in 2024.

To help you get up to speed, we’ll go over the latest techniques influencer marketers are using on Instagram as well as outline how to best leverage the algorithm to increase the reach of every post.

Benefits Of Instagram Influencer Marketing

Different social media platforms each have their own unique benefits when it comes to marketing.

With Instagram, understanding these benefits will help you create campaigns that cater to Instagram’s strengths.

Influencer Loyalty & Trust

Successful influencers on Instagram have a strong relationship with their audiences and that can immediately help put your brand in the right light.

Even previously unknown brands can immediately start to build authority within a market with a single Instagram influencer campaign. 

Leveraging this loyalty & trust makes Instagram one of the most powerful platforms for increasing your brand’s authority.

Creativity

While social media is heavily influenced by copying trends, creativity allows you to quickly stand out from the crowd with your campaign.

Instagram campaigns allow for a high level of creativity which gives marketers with fresh ideas a chance to rise above the noise and stand out.

Visual Storytelling

The visual nature of Instagram allows you to convey a lot of information about your brand in a very short period of time. Whether you’re promoting the luxury of your product, the ease of use, or the benefits, all of this can be conveyed within seconds with the right campaign video.

Target Niche Audiences

Instagram has a wide range of influencers in both size and audience niches. There are also many regional influencers that are critical for promoting local businesses and service providers.

Being able to target just the right audience helps to make Instagram one of the more cost-effective platforms for influencer marketing.

Robust Metrics

The Instagram (Meta) API allows for deep insights into influencer content performance and other platform metrics. These metrics are readily available from a variety of online social media tools. Some influencer agencies also have their own proprietary method of using the Instagram API.

Understanding Instagram Reels For Influencer Marketing

Instagram Reels are now the content of choice for influencer campaigns. This video format offers many benefits and audiences tend to engage with Reels more than other content on the platform.

Below are some of the reasons that Reels perform so well for marketers.

Content Flexibility

The recent move to allow videos of up to three minutes has really opened up the creativity and the type of content that marketers can produce.

Instead of just shorter clips with a highly engaging intro, more in-depth content is possible including product reviews and commentary. This allows for more varied influencer campaigns to address different objectives for your marketing efforts.

Algorithmic Preference

Reels are heavily favored over other content when it comes to the Instagram algorithm. One of the key drivers of successful influencer campaigns is how they create engagement which then causes the algorithm to promote the content even more.

Using Reels gives you a head-start when you’re looking for the algorithm to increase the reach of your content.

Higher Engagement

Reels have a higher engagement on average than other forms of Instagram content. Reels can also perform better than some other short video platforms, such as TikTok.

The longer videos tend to increase engagement due to the audience investing more time in each piece of content. After investing anywhere between 15 seconds to 3 minutes, the chance of a user wanting to express themselves through the comment section increases.

The slightly different mobile interface of Instagram also tends to create more engagement as slightly more effort is required for the users to move to the next piece of content compared to TikTok or other platforms.

How The Instagram Algorithm Works With Influencer Content

One of the keys to virtually any type of digital marketing is understanding the algorithms involved. Algorithms are what push certain pieces of content to decide who sees what.

Savvy influence marketers actually rely on these algorithms instead of trying to fight them. The more you understand the Instagram algorithms, the better you can tailor your campaigns so they have the most reach possible.

Below are the main elements that the Instagram algorithm considers when deciding which content to promote.

View Count

This one may seem obvious, but there is a little nuance to it that is important to understand.

The Instagram algorithm looks at view counts, but it also looks at the velocity of those views. That means how fast the content is getting new views relative to other similar content.

The higher the velocity, or rate of new views, the more the algorithm will push it to new audiences.

The reason this is important is because it plays into the timing of the content and when it’s published. On Instagram, there is generally a day and time when new content performs better than others.

Friday is generally a peak time for most content on Instagram. Usually in the early afternoon or right after lunchtime. There is another peak time early in the evening.

Sunday is another popular posting time with a large number of viewers.

However, different influencers may have their own posting schedules that the audience expects. Understanding both of these variables helps you publish at the right time to increase the view count velocity and helps with the algorithm.

Engagement

Every social media algorithm prioritizes engagement and Instagram is no different.

You want to take advantage of this by first having content that is useful, relevant, or entertaining. That much is obvious, but in addition, in some circumstances, you want to push users to create that engagement.

There’s nothing wrong with asking an audience to comment, like, or share the content. Certain giveaways and promotions can take advantage of this by asking the audience to comment in order to be entered into the giveaway or contest.

You should always try to make your campaigns more engaging as this is highly rewarded by the Instagram algorithm.

When working with a brand influencer, investigate past content of theirs that created high engagement and try to use a similar strategy when creating the brief for your own campaign content.

Hashtags

Due to recent changes with Instagram, hashtags are not as relevant in 2024 as they once were, but they do play an important role if the content is already successful and has high engagement.

Users still search via hashtags, but only popular content is shown in the search results. So your content needs to have good metrics before the hashtags become a benefit.

Hashtags are still important, but the algorithms mostly ignore them over other optimization criteria. Once your content becomes popular via view counts and engagement, then the hashtags will rank highly the searches.

Captions

Captions are important so users can enjoy your content in different settings, but they also play a part in the algorithm. The Instagram algorithm reads the captions to help determine what information is in the content.

Like most things about the Instagram algorithm, how it categorizes content is top secret. But the categories go extremely deep with many nested levels, so the right captions can play a big part in how Instagram interprets your content and who it promotes it to.

Because of this, you want to think of captions as similar to search engine optimization (SEO) used for written content.

The easier you make it for the algorithms to know what your content is about, the more effective the targeting will be. 

Just remember, you want to find a balance between this type of caption optimization while still maintaining the user experience.

Tips For Instagram Influencer Marketing Success

Starting an Instagram influencer marketing campaign from scratch can seem daunting at first. But if you follow these 5 tips, you can greatly increase your chances of success the first time out.

Determine Your Campaign Goals

With the extended content formats available on Instagram, you can achieve just about any marketing objective. The key is to determine your objective first and then start building your campaign around that objective.

Common Instagram influencer marketing objectives can be:

• Brand awareness
• Sales, conversions, or lead generation
• Authority building
• Build brand loyalty

Find The Right Influencers

With your campaign objective set, you can move on to finding the right influencers to partner with. Depending on your campaign, you may only need one influencer or you may need several over the course of the campaign.

Carefully analyze each influencer to ensure their audience overlaps significantly with your own target customers. Depending on your niche, this may require the use of smaller influencers such as micro or nano brand influencers with follower counts of around 10k or even less.

Optimize Content For Reels

Use the steps we outlined earlier to optimize your campaign content to perform well with the Instagram algorithm. Work closely with the influencer and study their metrics to help decide on the right type of content that is both authentic but also gets your campaign messaging across.

Call To Action

The call to action (CTA) is a critical piece of any content and with shorter-form videos, it’s even more important. The CTA instructs the user what to do next and helps to achieve the campaign’s objective.

The exact CTA will depend on your campaign goals and the key to consider is that it flows smoothly with the rest of the content. 

Often, brands make the mistake of either leaving out a CTA altogether because they don’t want to seem too “pushy”, or they use a CTA that doesn’t fit the content, format, or audience.

Remember, if your content is engaging, the CTA is welcomed, even if it’s very direct. Think of it like a trailer for a new TV show you might see that grabs your attention. Afterward, you want a CTA to tell you exactly where to learn more, such as when it’s streaming and on what platform.

Don’t be afraid to use a strong CTA when it’s appropriate, your audience will appreciate it and your campaign will perform better.

Track Results

The final component of any influencer campaign is to carefully track the results and whether or not you met your campaign objectives. This is done through metrics and KPIs that relate to your stated goals for the campaign.

The more information you can gather, the more informed you’ll be when creating your next campaign, so pay close attention to this step as it often separates the professional influence marketers from the amateurs.

Deciding When To Hire An Influencer Marketing Agency

There are some brands that create their influencer campaigns in-house and deal with influencers directly or through the influencer’s management.

However, this approach isn’t for everyone. An influencer marketing agency can use its campaign creation experience, proprietary metrics, and influencer connections to deliver consistent results without any trial & error.

If you’re a smaller brand looking to create your own campaigns, just remember to start small and then scale up as you find success.

One mistake newer digital marketers make is they burn through their budget and resources before they find a successful strategy to scale. This is a common mistake brands make with paid ads as well as influencer marketing.

Take your time and find the strategy that meets your objectives first. If you want to bypass that learning curve, seeking out an experienced influencer marketing agency can help you deliver immediate results that start growing your business immediately.