Influencer Marketing Trends To Elevate Your Instagram Brand

The top influencer marketing trends on Instagram can help you understand the best strategies to pursue. In this article, we’ll cover noteworthy trends that you should keep your eye on. Examples of these include the explosion of AI, long-term brand deals, and user-generated content. 

We’ll also cover some of the top trends to avoid. This ensures that you don’t fall for the latest gimmicks while growing your Instagram brand. Social media is a fast-paced game with new trends all the time. However, it’s vital to understand the trends to follow and the ones that will steer you down the wrong path. 

Also, take the time to read the article to the end for insight into how Plixi can help grow your brand. We specialize in growing Instagram accounts by boosting follower counts and engagement metrics.

Why Is Influencer Marketing Important on Instagram?

If you’re wondering why influencer marketing is important on Instagram, it’s a fair question. You need to understand the advantages yourself before pursuing the route. Here are some of the top advantages of Influencer marketing for Instagram profiles:

• Learn new things: When you become a social media influencer, you’ll want to choose a good niche to focus on for your brand. That’s because, as an influencer, you’ll be looking for new content ideas and collaborating with others in your chosen niche. 
• Earn money: You can make a career out of becoming an Instagram influencer. You’ll need to grow a large audience and receive sponsorship deals. Typically, the size of the deals varies based on the niche and size of your audience. 
• Grow brand: You can grow your brand on Instagram by becoming an influencer. This way, you can get recognized as an expert in your field. However, you don’t have to be an expert to get started. You can monetize your brand and grow the Instagram audience in several ways. You can share interesting reaction content, create memes, post funny content, or share news. Some of the most popular Instagram influencers tend to have a unique take on a niche. 

Influencer Marketing Trends To Consider

Now, let’s turn our attention to some influencer marketing that is worthwhile knowing. You can keep these in mind if you plan on becoming an influencer on Instagram or other social media platforms.

Influencers Are Becoming More Important To Affiliate Programs

One of the biggest trends for affiliate programs is that social media influencers are having a bigger impact. That’s because many users online pay attention to influencers more than regular marketing. After all, you’re more likely to trust an individual that you’ve been following for months or years. 

Here are some of the top ways that Inflecuners can promote affiliate programs:

• Product recommendations: Affiliate marketers on Instagram can create posts that are product recommendations. Influencer marketing uses this method via demonstrations or unboxing videos. Therefore, users can follow one influencer and receive updates on the most popular products. 
• Lifestyle photos: You can post lifestyle photos that show you use a specific product. For example, if you’re promoting yoga mats, you can show photos or videos with you on the yoga mat. This is a genuine way to market products since you’re actually using the product. 
• Promotional content: You can add segments to your videos that promote products. For example, the first 10 seconds of a video can promote a product, followed by regular content. It’s important to match the products you recommend with your audience. This increases conversion and reduces the chances of your content coming across as spam.

Audiences Follow Creators on Multiple Platforms

An increasing number of internet users will follow the same content creators on several platforms. Therefore, it can be easy for new Instagram content creators to bring over audiences from other platforms. This trend indicates that Instagram influencers should also consider using other platforms to grow their audience.

User-Generated Content Continues To Grow

User-generated content is any content that individual Instagram users create instead of brands. If you’re a brand, then encouraging UGC means that you can rapidly increase exposure to your products. The current Influencer marketing trends indicate the UGC will continue to grow. That’s because an increasing number of people want to become Instagram influencers. 

Here are some of the top ways that brands can encourage UGC content:

• Provide ideas: You can give your micro-influencers ideas for what kind of content to publish. Create a resource that your affiliate marketers can use to get started. This ensures the messaging stays on point, and you can somewhat control the content surrounding your brand. 
• Affiliate deal: One of the best ways to attract new affiliates to your brand is by offering an excellent affiliate deal. This means increasing the size of the percentage you giveaway as their cut. Also, you can give away free products to affiliates that do product reviews. 
• Highlights UGC creators: Your brand can mention and showcase successful influencer marketing. This may give other users ideas for how they can become part of the success story.

AI Will Have a Bigger Impact on Influencer Marketing

AI in online marketing, as with other parts of the internet, is growing at a rapid pace. This means that the technology will play an increasing role for Instagram influencers in the future. Here are some of the top ways that the growth of influencer marketing can be explored with AI:

• Messaging: For example, influencers can use advanced messaging features when interacting with their audience. This is similar to how chatbots work on e-commerce websites. This allows influencers to answer questions automatically if they get overwhelmed by many followers. 
• Content generation: AI-based images and videos are improving in quality on a daily basis. This allows Instagram influencers to use AI-generated content to promote products. The validity and quality of this type of content is still in question. That’s because the audience may prefer to consume human-made content instead. 
• Content ideas: Do you find yourself constantly getting stuck on what to post next? Then, you can take advantage of AI-based suggestions to receive content ideas. AI can be a great source of inspiration that you may have never thought of yourself. Also, the ideas could be popular topics that your audience searches for online. 
• Digital characters: You may see a further rise in digital characters on Instagram instead of real ones. This is a valid way for some users to promote on Instagram without revealing their identity. Also, you can be more creative with digital characters, allowing you to stand out in the niche.

Ongoing Partnerships Instead of One-Time Arrangements

You’ll notice that many Instagram influencers have ongoing deals with the same brands. That’s because brands want to forge relationships with trusted influencers they can depend on. Likewise, Instagram influencers want a steady stream of income. 

Therefore, you can expect more deals to be based on long-term arrangements instead of one-time offers. This should increase the viability of becoming an Instagram influencer in the future.

Shorter Videos Will Get More Traction

You may have noticed over the last few years that short videos are among the most popular. All the metrics point to these videos increasing in popularity moving forward. Here are some of the reasons why short videos are becoming more popular:

• Quicker to watch: The most obvious reason why short videos are more popular is the quicker time to watch them. This means they are more practical in a wider range of situations. For example, you might be waiting in line at the grocery store and can watch a few videos. 
• Shorter attention spans: The nature of the internet has somewhat shortened the attention span of the average user. Therefore, our brains have adapted to consume short-form content instead of long-form. It means that it’s becoming increasingly harder to engage users for long periods. 
• Creativity: The short-form content strategy allows you to pursue different creative audiences. These wouldn’t work with long-form content. Hence, you can express yourself creatively in just a few seconds instead of taking dozens of minutes. 
• Create more content: Shorter form content is cheaper to create and takes less time, especially when you use templates. Therefore, you can create more short videos than longer ones. This means you can cover more topics and target additional keywords. 
• Higher engagement: The engagement metrics of short-form content might be higher than those of long-form counterparts. This includes Instagram likes, shares, follows, and comments. Higher engagement metrics lead to more visibility in search algorithms.

Niche Marketing Isn’t Required

You may have seen Instagram influencers promoting products unrelated to their content. This includes services or products related to supplements, virtual private networks, smaller wallets, random products, and more. Therefore, you can get away with not using niche marketing that’s specifically related to your main topics. 

That’s because you can work with brands that have broad products the majority of the population requires. This is a good strategy if you have a wide audience and can’t find a suitable niche. Also, some niches don’t have good-quality affiliate programs. You can continue to produce content in that niche by choosing these broad products. 

The downside of marketing products not directly related to your audience is the lower conversion rate. Also, some audience members may view the promotional content as spam if they feel it’s irrelevant.

Top Instagram Influencer Trends To Avoid

Instagram influencers should also avoid following some trends that might lead them down the wrong path. After all, social media platforms have new trends constantly emerging and some are best to avoid.

• Questionable viral trends: Instagram sometimes has trends that encourage users to take part in questionable acts. This might be to perform an act that is bordering on self-harm or harassing the public. You should avoid these viral trends since they are bad for social media and your brand. Discouraging these viral trends is the best course of action to ensure they don’t flourish. 
• Scam products: You might be tempted to promote the next hot product that is making other influencers successful. However, it might be a scam that is yet to be exposed. For example, cryptocurrency exchanges and coins get a lot of exposure. Some of these end up being scams and can taint your social media brand. The true power of influencer marketing is promoting products that will stay around for the long term. 
• Instagram community guidelines: Don’t follow marketing strategies that break Instagram community guidelines. For example, don’t spam the comments section of other posts. This is against ToS and can restrict you or cause you to receive an Instagram Shadowban. 
• Avoid Too much AI: You might be tempted to take advantage of the AI tools at your disposal. However, that can lead to alienating your audience and causing them to unfollow. That’s because users come to social media platforms to follow real people. When using too much AI, users may begin to notice and decide to avoid your content.

How To Follow Instagram Influencer Marketing Trends

Are you interested in following the latest trends in the Instagram influencer marketing world? You can start by looking at some of the top influencers in your niche. You may notice trends relating to the products they promote and content strategies. 

You can also use data analytics to figure out what kind of content users want to consume. For example, you get Instagram Insight with a business account. This provides added data analytics where you can research the most popular hashtags. This gives you an idea of the hot topics of the day, week, or month. 

Finally, you need to keep an eye on news related to your niche. This will give you an idea of the current trends. For example, when you notice a particular news topic several times a week, this indicates that it’s popular.

Keep an Eye on Instagram Influencer Marketing Trends

To conclude, it’s a good idea to monitor the top influencer trends to adapt your strategies. This ensures you can make the most money possible as an influencer. This is especially important for technological changes and can cause previous strategies to be obsolete. 

Now that you know some of the top Instagram influencer marketing trends, apply them to your strategies. For example, consider using AI to create content ideas or use more short-from videos in your content calendar. 

Are you looking for strategies to grow your Instagram account? Then, take advantage of the services provided here at Plixi. We provide a combination of an in-house algorithm and Instagram influencers to target specific audiences. So what are you waiting for? Start growing and gaining Instagram followers today.