Instagram Monetization Checklist”

Instagram Monetization Checklist

Each and every single month, more than 1 billion people log into Instagram,

interact with content, and post content to the platform.

Far and away one of the most frequently visited and often utilized social

media platforms, even more so than Facebook, Instagram has become the

“go to” platform for serious business owners, advertisers, and marketers

that are looking to build their business online.

And even though Instagram is 100% free to get started with – and you can

have a brand-new Instagram account up and running in less than five

minutes.

The truth of the matter is the overwhelming majority of business owners,

advertisers, and marketers out there aren’t using Instagram the right way to

build their business or create the kind of financial future they have always

dreamed of.

Honestly, the majority of the Instagram market is little more than “traditional

marketing” applied to the digital world – and that just isn’t going to cut the

mustard any longer.

No, if you are going to knock your Instagram marketing right out of the park

and really turn it into a powerful channel for marketing you have to know

exactly what you’re doing.

On top of that, because you’re going up against already stiff and established

competition, you also have to take advantage of as many shortcuts

checklists as possible to get you to the top as fast as you can.

Here are some critical tips and tricks in this quick checklist that will help you

do exactly that.

Let’s dive right in!

Start at the start – Get your Instagram

strategy down first

Most folks run their marketing right off the rails at the start, never even

realizing that their entire Instagram marketing and was built on a foundation

of sand and not concrete.

Most people just kind of throw different marketing approaches at the wall of

Instagram and hope that something sticks, rather than taking a real

systematic and focused approach to creating marketing that actually has an

opportunity of working.

But not you.

No, since you are reading this quick checklist and following along with all of

the tips and tricks we were able to share, you are going to have an almost

unfair advantage over the competition to create truly effective marketing

that actually works.

You’re going to be able to start at the start (where you need to create that

solid foundation) and build from there.

Identify your perfect prospect

The very first thing you have to do (even before you create a new Instagram

account) is come up with a crystal clear image of who your perfect prospect

is.

You have to know what they are most interested in getting out of you, what

they are most interested in seeing and interacting with on Instagram, and

the “hot buttons” that compel them to go from engaged Instagram follower

to paying customer as quickly as humanly possible.

Once you have this crystal clear image of who this perfect customer is you’re going

to want to craft each and every single piece of Instagram content you create (as

well as every other piece of marketing you manufacture) for them and them alone.

A lot of people make the mistake of trying to be everything to everyone with

their Instagram marketing, missing the mark completely and getting zero

followers instead of laser targeting in on their specific niche while ignoring

the overwhelming majority of people that wouldn’t have become customers

anyway.

Steal great ideas from your competitors

After really firmly establishing that image of your perfect prospect it’s time

to go and look at the top 15 or 20 Instagram accounts in your industry,

really trying to come up with an idea of what they are doing so effectively in

your market to already.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to try and reinvent the wheel when it

comes to online marketing, especially when your competitors (your successful

competitors, anyway) will not have only blazed that trail for you to follow but will

have left very easy to understand and copy clues for you as well.

Some people get a little bit squeamish about “stealing” content ideas from

competitors, but you are going to want to get past that as soon as humanly

possible.

We aren’t in any way suggesting that you actually rip off physical pieces of

content and pass them off as your own, but if you are in an outdoor

equipment niche in your best competitors are posting in sunup and sundown

images of camp life you had better believe you are doing a lot of the exact

same thing or you are going to be missing your mark with your ideal

prospects and losing ground to these competitors for no reason whatsoever.

This will help you speed up your content marketing on Instagram

significantly, but it will also help you slip right into the top tier of Instagram

accounts in your industry when you’re publishing the same content as the

“big dogs” are.

Create a content marketing calendar

The content marketing calendar is the number one differentiator between

amateur hour marketers on Instagram and serious and savvy social media

marketers, and you’re definitely going to want to find yourself in the latter

group.

Major companies all over the world have spent a tremendous amount of

time, energy, and effort really trying to streamline and systemize as much of

their customer acquisition process as possible.

And while these major multinational companies have budgets far bigger than

anything any of us could ever muster, the one weapon that we can copy and

use just effectively as they are is the content calendar.

Setting up your marketing six months (or even better, one year) in advance with a

plan for every single piece of content you are going to release a very specific day

and as part of a very specific marketing campaign gives you an almost unfair

advantage over the rest of your competition.

By setting out understanding that you are going to have to create content

for a three times a week release you’re not only able to create those posts in

advance and get them ready for “prime time”, you’re also able to find just

the right piece of content to publish at a particular point in time to dovetail

in with all of the other marketing approaches you are utilizing.

With a content marketing calendar, you can be working on a Valentine’s Day

campaign, for example in the middle of June, coming up with content that

will be released on Instagram that goes hand-in-hand with the Valentine’s

Day campaign you have been running from the end of January right up until

the middle of February the coming year.

On top of that, you can really start to automate your Instagram marketing

when you take this kind of approach.

Because you have all of your content created and ready to go, you can then

script programs or outsource the actual publishing work to someone else –

freeing up your time so that you can focus on other high leverage business

activities without having to worry about how you’re going to cobble together

an advertising approach that day.

This is game changing stuff, and you have to be 100% certain that you are doing

EVERYTHING in your power to systemize, automate, and delegate as much of your

Instagram marketing as possible

This checklist will go a long way towards helping you do exactly that, but the

bulk of the work is going to come from creating content focused on your

perfect prospect, content proven to work by your competitors, and content

that is released on a regular and systemized basis according to your content

calendar.

Growth, growth, growth – Grow as big and as

fast as you can

The next stage after laying your foundation and Instagram marketing is

focusing entirely on growing your following just as quickly as humanly

possible.

Instagram does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, helping to recommend your

Instagram account to other people automatically and even actively

promoting your account through Instagram posts of the day, hashtags, and

the like, but you really want to take ownership of your Instagram marketing

right out of the gate to grow your account as large as you’re able to as fast

as you’re able to.

After all, the greatest content in the world, matched perfectly to your ideal

customers, isn’t going to be worth ANYTHING unless you are getting eyeballs

and actively engaging people that have chosen to follow your Instagram

account.

Without followers, all of your efforts are wasted completely – so you have to

build that following up from the ground with lightning like speed.

Here are some quick tips to help you do exactly that!

Piggyback off of Instagram influencers

Instagram influencers – the most frequently followed, engaged with, and

active accounts in your market or industry – have the ability to lift any

account that they regularly interact with, as well as any account that

regularly interacts with them

You have to do everything in your power to either capture the attention of

these Instagram influencers in your industry or your market so that they

start to actively promote the content that you provide (and we will show you

one way to do that in just a second) OR you have to try and “steal their

thunder” as much as possible by mentioning them in your own content so

much so that their followers start to pay attention to you as well.

Instagram marketing is quickly becoming an arms race of sorts, with major

accounts releasing new posts on an hourly basis as opposed to a daily or even

weekly update.

Major accounts – we’re talking about accounts with hundreds of thousands

or even millions of followers – need to have a lot of activity to keep up with

their hungry followers, and that means that they need a tremendous amount

of original content that they have the chance to share.

That’s where you as a “smaller operator” come into play!

Because you don’t have to feed the same kind of beast (yet), you can

actually afford to not only create content for your own Instagram account

but content for these major Instagram account influencers as well.

By creating content that you then give to these influencers to share with

their followers 100% free of charge (though with attribution and tags going

back to your account), you are able to do them a favor while also serving

your own needs.

These kinds of accounts are super happy to enter into these kinds of

agreements.

They get a lot of free, high-quality content that they don’t have to work hard

to create, they keep their followers happy, and they get to partner with new

up and comers in the same industry.

You’ll also benefit from the extra exposure you get from these influencing

Instagram accounts – and before you know it you will have floods in floods

of followers diving headfirst into your account, turning you into an influencer

as well!

Contests worked wonders as well

Another great approach to growing your account quickly is to run regular

contests where you actually give away high-quality items or services on your

Instagram account in exchange for increased follower numbers.

This is a proven, tried and true, and amazingly effective marketing tactic and

technique that has been in use long before Instagram was even thought of.

The only thing you have to do is fulfill your end of the deal – actually giving

away whatever products or services you have promised to – and they cost

you a little bit upfront, but when you actively monetize your Instagram

account, you’ll find that the return on investment is well worth it.

The bigger the item, the more exciting the service, and the more valuable

the giveaway, the more action you are going to get and the more followers

you are going to accumulate.

If you are in the golf niche, for example, giving away a sleeve of balls is barely

going to move the needle. Giving away a trip to Pebble Beach, however, is going to

have you swimming in more followers than you will know what to do with.

Sure, that trip to Pebble Beach is going to cost a lot more than a sleeve of

balls, but as mentioned above the return on investment is going to be well

worth it.

Instead of picking up a handful of followers for $12 you might pick up

10,000 new followers or more for $2000. The trade-off should be obvious.

Create multiple channels of monetization with Instagram

At the end of the day, new followers aren’t cold hard cash in the bank unless

you actually begin to monetize your followers and your account on

Instagram.

The easiest way to monetize your Instagram account is to simply use your

account and your Instagram content as an entry-level to your marketing

funnel.

You’ll be able to push visitors and followers to your account deeper and

deeper into your marketing materials, converting at least some of them into

paying customers – and that’s got a pretty reasonable ROI.

Of course, there are other ways to monetize your Instagram account – and

even if you do decide to sell your own products and services, you’ll want to

pursue some of these avenues to maximize your leverage on social media

and create multiple income streams.

For starters, you can seek out other businesses in your industry –

competitors or those offering complementary services – and offer to provide

them with “sponsored content”.

You basically become an affiliate for their company and any of the sales you

drive through your Instagram account pay you get paid a commission.

This is how a lot of “Instagram models” make their money online, posting

pictures of themselves and workout gear or using workout supplements

provided by other companies and getting a cut of the affiliate sales they

drive.

These people are making a steady income off of this kind of affiliate

marketing alone, so it’s definitely worth investigating.

There are plenty of ways to monetize Instagram, and hopefully, this quick

checklist has shined a little bit of extra light on the subject for you going

forward!



Instagram Monetization Checklist

Each and every single month, more than 1 billion people log into Instagram,

interact with content, and post content to the platform.

Far and away one of the most frequently visited and often utilized social

media platforms, even more so than Facebook, Instagram has become the

“go to” platform for serious business owners, advertisers, and marketers

that are looking to build their business online.

And even though Instagram is 100% free to get started with – and you can

have a brand-new Instagram account up and running in less than five

minutes.

The truth of the matter is the overwhelming majority of business owners,

advertisers, and marketers out there aren’t using Instagram the right way to

build their business or create the kind of financial future they have always

dreamed of.

Honestly, the majority of the Instagram market is little more than “traditional

marketing” applied to the digital world – and that just isn’t going to cut the

mustard any longer.

No, if you are going to knock your Instagram marketing right out of the park

and really turn it into a powerful channel for marketing you have to know

exactly what you’re doing.

On top of that, because you’re going up against already stiff and established

competition, you also have to take advantage of as many shortcuts

checklists as possible to get you to the top as fast as you can.

Here are some critical tips and tricks in this quick checklist that will help you

do exactly that.

Let’s dive right in!

Start at the start – Get your Instagram

strategy down first

Most folks run their marketing right off the rails at the start, never even

realizing that their entire Instagram marketing and was built on a foundation

of sand and not concrete.

Most people just kind of throw different marketing approaches at the wall of

Instagram and hope that something sticks, rather than taking a real

systematic and focused approach to creating marketing that actually has an

opportunity of working.

But not you.

No, since you are reading this quick checklist and following along with all of

the tips and tricks we were able to share, you are going to have an almost

unfair advantage over the competition to create truly effective marketing

that actually works.

You’re going to be able to start at the start (where you need to create that

solid foundation) and build from there.

Identify your perfect prospect

The very first thing you have to do (even before you create a new Instagram

account) is come up with a crystal clear image of who your perfect prospect

is.

You have to know what they are most interested in getting out of you, what

they are most interested in seeing and interacting with on Instagram, and

the “hot buttons” that compel them to go from engaged Instagram follower

to paying customer as quickly as humanly possible.

Once you have this crystal clear image of who this perfect customer is you’re going

to want to craft each and every single piece of Instagram content you create (as

well as every other piece of marketing you manufacture) for them and them alone.

A lot of people make the mistake of trying to be everything to everyone with

their Instagram marketing, missing the mark completely and getting zero

followers instead of laser targeting in on their specific niche while ignoring

the overwhelming majority of people that wouldn’t have become customers

anyway.

Steal great ideas from your competitors

After really firmly establishing that image of your perfect prospect it’s time

to go and look at the top 15 or 20 Instagram accounts in your industry,

really trying to come up with an idea of what they are doing so effectively in

your market to already.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to try and reinvent the wheel when it

comes to online marketing, especially when your competitors (your successful

competitors, anyway) will not have only blazed that trail for you to follow but will

have left very easy to understand and copy clues for you as well.

Some people get a little bit squeamish about “stealing” content ideas from

competitors, but you are going to want to get past that as soon as humanly

possible.

We aren’t in any way suggesting that you actually rip off physical pieces of

content and pass them off as your own, but if you are in an outdoor

equipment niche in your best competitors are posting in sunup and sundown

images of camp life you had better believe you are doing a lot of the exact

same thing or you are going to be missing your mark with your ideal

prospects and losing ground to these competitors for no reason whatsoever.

This will help you speed up your content marketing on Instagram

significantly, but it will also help you slip right into the top tier of Instagram

accounts in your industry when you’re publishing the same content as the

“big dogs” are.

Create a content marketing calendar

The content marketing calendar is the number one differentiator between

amateur hour marketers on Instagram and serious and savvy social media

marketers, and you’re definitely going to want to find yourself in the latter

group.

Major companies all over the world have spent a tremendous amount of

time, energy, and effort really trying to streamline and systemize as much of

their customer acquisition process as possible.

And while these major multinational companies have budgets far bigger than

anything any of us could ever muster, the one weapon that we can copy and

use just effectively as they are is the content calendar.

Setting up your marketing six months (or even better, one year) in advance with a

plan for every single piece of content you are going to release a very specific day

and as part of a very specific marketing campaign gives you an almost unfair

advantage over the rest of your competition.

By setting out understanding that you are going to have to create content

for a three times a week release you’re not only able to create those posts in

advance and get them ready for “prime time”, you’re also able to find just

the right piece of content to publish at a particular point in time to dovetail

in with all of the other marketing approaches you are utilizing.

With a content marketing calendar, you can be working on a Valentine’s Day

campaign, for example in the middle of June, coming up with content that

will be released on Instagram that goes hand-in-hand with the Valentine’s

Day campaign you have been running from the end of January right up until

the middle of February the coming year.

On top of that, you can really start to automate your Instagram marketing

when you take this kind of approach.

Because you have all of your content created and ready to go, you can then

script programs or outsource the actual publishing work to someone else –

freeing up your time so that you can focus on other high leverage business

activities without having to worry about how you’re going to cobble together

an advertising approach that day.

This is game changing stuff, and you have to be 100% certain that you are doing

EVERYTHING in your power to systemize, automate, and delegate as much of your

Instagram marketing as possible

This checklist will go a long way towards helping you do exactly that, but the

bulk of the work is going to come from creating content focused on your

perfect prospect, content proven to work by your competitors, and content

that is released on a regular and systemized basis according to your content

calendar.

Growth, growth, growth – Grow as big and as

fast as you can

The next stage after laying your foundation and Instagram marketing is

focusing entirely on growing your following just as quickly as humanly

possible.

Instagram does a lot of the heavy lifting for you, helping to recommend your

Instagram account to other people automatically and even actively

promoting your account through Instagram posts of the day, hashtags, and

the like, but you really want to take ownership of your Instagram marketing

right out of the gate to grow your account as large as you’re able to as fast

as you’re able to.

After all, the greatest content in the world, matched perfectly to your ideal

customers, isn’t going to be worth ANYTHING unless you are getting eyeballs

and actively engaging people that have chosen to follow your Instagram

account.

Without followers, all of your efforts are wasted completely – so you have to

build that following up from the ground with lightning like speed.

Here are some quick tips to help you do exactly that!

Piggyback off of Instagram influencers

Instagram influencers – the most frequently followed, engaged with, and

active accounts in your market or industry – have the ability to lift any

account that they regularly interact with, as well as any account that

regularly interacts with them

You have to do everything in your power to either capture the attention of

these Instagram influencers in your industry or your market so that they

start to actively promote the content that you provide (and we will show you

one way to do that in just a second) OR you have to try and “steal their

thunder” as much as possible by mentioning them in your own content so

much so that their followers start to pay attention to you as well.

Instagram marketing is quickly becoming an arms race of sorts, with major

accounts releasing new posts on an hourly basis as opposed to a daily or even

weekly update.

Major accounts – we’re talking about accounts with hundreds of thousands

or even millions of followers – need to have a lot of activity to keep up with

their hungry followers, and that means that they need a tremendous amount

of original content that they have the chance to share.

That’s where you as a “smaller operator” come into play!

Because you don’t have to feed the same kind of beast (yet), you can

actually afford to not only create content for your own Instagram account

but content for these major Instagram account influencers as well.

By creating content that you then give to these influencers to share with

their followers 100% free of charge (though with attribution and tags going

back to your account), you are able to do them a favor while also serving

your own needs.

These kinds of accounts are super happy to enter into these kinds of

agreements.

They get a lot of free, high-quality content that they don’t have to work hard

to create, they keep their followers happy, and they get to partner with new

up and comers in the same industry.

You’ll also benefit from the extra exposure you get from these influencing

Instagram accounts – and before you know it you will have floods in floods

of followers diving headfirst into your account, turning you into an influencer

as well!

Contests worked wonders as well

Another great approach to growing your account quickly is to run regular

contests where you actually give away high-quality items or services on your

Instagram account in exchange for increased follower numbers.

This is a proven, tried and true, and amazingly effective marketing tactic and

technique that has been in use long before Instagram was even thought of.

The only thing you have to do is fulfill your end of the deal – actually giving

away whatever products or services you have promised to – and they cost

you a little bit upfront, but when you actively monetize your Instagram

account, you’ll find that the return on investment is well worth it.

The bigger the item, the more exciting the service, and the more valuable

the giveaway, the more action you are going to get and the more followers

you are going to accumulate.

If you are in the golf niche, for example, giving away a sleeve of balls is barely

going to move the needle. Giving away a trip to Pebble Beach, however, is going to

have you swimming in more followers than you will know what to do with.

Sure, that trip to Pebble Beach is going to cost a lot more than a sleeve of

balls, but as mentioned above the return on investment is going to be well

worth it.

Instead of picking up a handful of followers for $12 you might pick up

10,000 new followers or more for $2000. The trade-off should be obvious.

Create multiple channels of monetization with Instagram

At the end of the day, new followers aren’t cold hard cash in the bank unless

you actually begin to monetize your followers and your account on

Instagram.

The easiest way to monetize your Instagram account is to simply use your

account and your Instagram content as an entry-level to your marketing

funnel.

You’ll be able to push visitors and followers to your account deeper and

deeper into your marketing materials, converting at least some of them into

paying customers – and that’s got a pretty reasonable ROI.

Of course, there are other ways to monetize your Instagram account – and

even if you do decide to sell your own products and services, you’ll want to

pursue some of these avenues to maximize your leverage on social media

and create multiple income streams.

For starters, you can seek out other businesses in your industry –

competitors or those offering complementary services – and offer to provide

them with “sponsored content”.

You basically become an affiliate for their company and any of the sales you

drive through your Instagram account pay you get paid a commission.

This is how a lot of “Instagram models” make their money online, posting

pictures of themselves and workout gear or using workout supplements

provided by other companies and getting a cut of the affiliate sales they

drive.

These people are making a steady income off of this kind of affiliate

marketing alone, so it’s definitely worth investigating.

There are plenty of ways to monetize Instagram, and hopefully, this quick

checklist has shined a little bit of extra light on the subject for you going

forward!