With more than 1 billion active users per month and millions of photos uploaded to the app every day, Instagram has become an undeniable social media giant. That’s a lot of content. To ensure users see the most relevant content instead of just the newest content, the Instagram algorithm was put in place. The algorithm decides, based on computer learning, which content is relevant for which users, and tailors each individual feed with the most relevant content for that user. The way the algorithm ranks content has been particularly impactful for users who make a living through Instagram: the influencers. Content creators have seen their actual reach decline over the last couple of years.
Let’s take June 2017 as a reference point. At this point in time, it was very normal for an influencer to reach around 70% of their followers. Today, this percentage is more likely to be between 30% and 40%. This decline in organic reach, based on our internal data, is unfortunate, considering the true power influencers can have on their followers’ purchasing decisions.
The Power Of Influencer Marketing
In fact, 68% of Instagram users say they come to Instagram to interact with content creators. Despite influencers being such a driving force behind the platform, Instagram stands behind its algorithm. Why? Because advertising is where the company makes its money. More ads on Instagram means less space in the feed for organic content, which reduces the organic reach.
Luckily, despite the decline of organic reach on Instagram, there is still hope. It’s an undeniable fact that influencers still manage to sell, with 87% of shoppers taking inspiration from an influencer before making a purchase.
Increasing The Reach Of Your Influencer Marketing Campaigns
At IMA, we strategically utilize boosting to extend the reach of our influencer marketing campaigns. “Boosting” means putting paid media advertising behind the post(s) of an influencer. That way, you can ensure that the influencer content reaches a wider audience besides just followers of the influencer. Based on interest and demographic targeting, you can extend your audience and reach people to whom your content is relevant, thus increasing your return on investment.
Boosting 101: How To Get Started
Gaining permission from the influencer is the first step in the process. Once this permission has been gained, the influencer needs to give access to the brand or agency to allow them to start boosting their campaign posts. This can be done through Facebook Business Manager or Instagram’s Branded Content feature. These features give a brand access to boost an influencer’s posts from the channel of the influencer.
Brands can only access pre-approved content and cannot see private information related to the influencer or their channel. Everything related to boosting, from the brand’s perspective, happens through Facebook Business Manager, not the influencer’s Instagram channel.
The influencer remains in control of their channel at all times and can revoke a brand’s permission to boosting at any time. When this happens, the brand’s boosting automatically stops.
Five Tips For Boosting A Campaign
Influencers can be valuable because of the close connection they have with their audience. Extending the reach of your campaign shows the best results when it is done with respect to the influencer’s original audience. Boosting should only ever be used as an extension of organic reach, not as a standalone strategy.
1. Don’t make changes to the influencer content. The influencer post should be boosted in its original state. Don’t make changes to the caption, no matter how small. Again, you’re not advertising from your own channel here.
2. Think about your audience targeting. Make sure your target audience for boosting complements the organic audience of the influencer. Influencers are likely to gain new followers thanks to boosting, but if these new followers are not similar to their existing audience, their audience quality can go down. By ensuring that your target audience location, age range and interests match the influencer’s current audience, you’ll be able to strengthen their audience quality and not damage it.
3. Don’t boost your influencer content until it has been live for over 48 hours. Most post engagements and impressions on organic Instagram posts happen within the first 48 hours that the post is live. Boosting best practice asks that you wait 48 hours before you start your boosting. That way, any occasional overlap between the organic and boosting audiences happen on different days.
4. Don’t drag out your boosting unnecessarily. Try to boost your content for no longer than two weeks. Influencer content is often seasonal or related to a specific event. To make sure you boost your posts while they are still relevant, we recommend activating them within two weeks of the organic post going live.
5. Respect the influencer’s organic reach. If your influencer’s organic post achieved 200K impressions, as a rule of thumb you should limit your boosting to this as well. Boosting too much compared to an influencer’s organic reach will take you from an influencer marketing campaign to an advertising campaign. Why is this distinction important? The power of influencers lies in their credibility, in the connection that they have built with their followers. Enlarging the reach of their organic content too much can turn them into an advertising channel, and could harm their credibility with their existing followers. Do you want to reach a broad audience with your influencer’s content? Buying out their content and using it to advertise from your own brand channel might be a better move for you. It’s a delicate distinction between brand advertising and influencer boosting. These should take place on separate channels: the first from the brand’s social channels, the second from the influencer’s channels.
There you have it — you now know how and why you should boost your influencer content. Following these tips can have a positive impact on your influencer marketing campaign and elevate brand awareness, message recall, website traffic and sales. What’s not to love?
