How to Contact Instagram Influencers in 2024

According to Hubspot, Instagram was the most used influencer marketing platform in the US in 2022. Not only that but a whopping 72% of marketers utilized Instagram for influencer campaigns last year, with this figure expected to surpass 75% this year!

As Instagram influencers continue to offer a great return on investment for brands around the world (60% of marketers believe influencer marketing offers a higher return on investment than conventional advertising), knowing how to secure partnerships with content creators on this hugely popular platform is more important than ever!

At Collabstr, we know the value that influencers can offer brands - after all, we match brands with high-quality content creators all the time.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at how you can best approach proposing a partnership with an Instagram influencer and explore the many types of influencers your brand may want to consider working with. Let’s begin!

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What Are Instagram Influencers?

Instagram influencers (a.k.a. Instagram content creators) refer to Instagram users with a high capacity to influence others through their online content. The three mainstays of an influencer are someone with a large following, high levels of engagement, and well-founded credibility.

An Instagram influencer can promote content, brands, products, life hacks, and more among their large audience. This position provides them with a vast amount of clout that can be incredibly appealing to businesses looking to form a partnership to promote their brand and products or services.

Collabstr is the perfect place to contact Instagram influencers. Our marketplace simplifies the process while also ensuring that brands get what they expect.

Using our service, you can instantly chat with influencers and keep in touch through the entire process. We also ensure your money is held safely until you’ve approved of the content creator’s work!

Types of Instagram Influencers

When thinking of working with Instagram influencers, you’ll want to consider what type(s) best suit your business. Of course, the ideal type of Instagram influencer to reach out to may vary depending on the specific marketing campaign in question. 

For example, if you’re a fashion brand trying to find fashion influencers, reaching out to micro-influencers may make the most sense if you want to promote a niché product that aligns well with their audience. Also, micro-influencer audiences tend to be more engaged. However, it’s best to focus on macro-influencers, brand ambassadors, and/or celebrities for higher brand and product reach. 

1. Celebrities

Celebrity influencers will have millions of followers, and many will have wide name recognition on and offline. 

Some of these content creators will only have high levels of popularity in the online world. However, many major Instagram personas (e.g., Kylie Jenner, Dwayne Johnson, Justin Bieber, Kevin Hart, etc.) have an eminent presence online while also being celebrities in the more traditional sense.

Not many businesses will find a way to secure a partnership with a major celebrity, but if you have the numbers, money, or even a great business idea with a unique selling point, don’t throw this idea to the wayside entirely.

2. Macro-influencers

A macro influencer is a content creator with at least 500,000 followers, although some may have up to a million. 

While macro-influencers tend to lack the name recognition level of celebrities, they still pride themselves on having a relatively wide reach, and many brands will have better chances of landing a deal with influencers of this caliber though you’ll still need a fairly large budget to secure these partnerships.

Not only that but macro-influencers tend to have a more targeted audience than celebrities. Clearly, this can prove a great asset when seeking influencers that can increase your brand’s awareness to a relevant audience.

3. Micro-influencers

Micro-influencers generally have somewhere in the region of 10,000 to 500,000 followers. As touched on, one of the key advantages of partnering with a micro-influencer is that they may prove more suitable for promoting a niché product or service or simply a specific aspect of your brand. And, of course, many smaller businesses will have a better chance of forming a relationship with micro-influencers than celebrities or even macro-influencers.

4. Nano-influencers

Next, we have nano-influencers. No, these aren’t popular science lovers with extensive knowledge of nanotechnology, but rather influencers who have around 1,000 to 10,000 followers. 

While nano-influencers have a relatively small reach, their followers will likely have a more intimate and authentic connection with them than you’d usually see with micro or macro-influencers. This can strengthen the chances of your brand (especially if you’re a smaller brand) converting a higher portion of an influencer’s audience to paying customers than may prove the case with larger influencers.

5. Brand Ambassadors

Being a brand ambassador means committing to a specific brand for an extended period of time. In most cases, a business will set up a 12-18 month contract with a brand ambassador with the possibility of extending. With that said, brand ambassador contracts can last anywhere from a single week to half a decade.

Some popular brand ambassadors include:

• George Clooney with Nespresso

• David Beckham with Adidas

• Béyonce with Pepsi

A good brand ambassador will have a vested commitment to your business. Brand ambassadors generally receive handsome compensation packages for their work. Naturally, this limits the number of businesses that can consider this approach.

6. Customers/Followers

One type of Instagram influencer you don’t want to overlook is your very own customers/followers. Hiring or inspiring real customers/followers to provide authentic content (e.g., reviews of your products/services) is a fantastic way of building trust with your audience. 

User-generated content (UGC) can make your brand feel more authentic. It won’t surprise you to know that, according to Stackla, 6 in 10 consumers see UGC ads as more authentic marketing content.

You can, in fact, gain UGC for free by asking your followers to record a video that surrounds a specific theme (e.g. dancing). You might then post some of your favorite videos and/or combine them into a single video of the best UGC clips from your followers. 

While you’re getting content for free in this case, of course, users can still benefit enormously from the fun and excitement of taking part in something bigger than themselves.

All in all, whatever type(s) of influencers best match your brand, you’ll want to ensure you know the steps for identifying the best Instagram influencers in your industry.

Why Should You Work With Influencers?

1. Influencers Know Their Audience

Influencers spend their time connecting with an often unique consumer base. This gives them plenty of knowledge and instinctually driven wisdom when it comes to their audience. 

And obviously, when your target audience largely matches their audience, it only makes sense to partner with them, as they can effectively and authentically market your brand to potential customers. 

2. High Engagement Rate

Another key consideration is the high engagement rate enjoyed by a vast number of influencers on Instagram. While reach matters, it’s important to seek Instagram influencers to partner with who also have a solid engagement rate. 

According to Oberlo, the average Instagram influencer has an engagement rate of between 1% and 5%. To use an example (to emphasize the value of a high engagement rate), an influencer with 50,000 followers and 4% engagement rate will likely prove a better investment than an influencer with 150,000 followers but an engagement rate of just 1%. It’s also worth considering whether their engagement rate is on the rise and to what extent.

Ultimately, influencer marketing can lead to higher brand engagement, whether directly if you post their content on your account or in the form of higher engagement with your website/store.

3. Flexible Marketing Budget

Traditional marketing (e.g., billboards and TV ads) does not come cheap. Influencer marketing, on the other hand, can open your brand up to a more versatile strategy of self-promotion. You can do this by finding the right influencers for your brand and keeping to a reasonable budget at the same time.

For example, you may find that hiring micro-influencers or even nano-influencers pays off in meaningful ways, even if you don’t have to spend a ton of money. 

Ultimately, along with being relatively affordable, influencer marketing is a great way of promoting your brand’s authority in a more targeted and cost-effective manner while increasing your brand’s awareness among those who it might appeal to the most.

How to Contact Instagram Influencers

Collabstr is the perfect marketplace to find and hire Instagram influencers in seconds. In this section, we’ll discuss how to contact Instagram influencers in a way that makes a great first impression. As social media use continues to rise, it’s more important than ever to integrate influencer marketing into your brand promotion strategy.

While you can use Collabstr to find Instagram influencers, you may want to contact influencers directly that are not available on our service. Therefore, we’ll touch on both approaches in this five-step guide to contacting Instagram influencers!

Step 1: Research and Follow 

For directly contacting influencers, we recommend taking your time to follow and research a wide range of influencers. At this stage of the process, you’ll also want to narrow down your options and figure out what type(s) of influencers best match your brand or at least the specific marketing campaign you have in mind.

By the time you know what influencers you’d like to contact directly, continue to follow their content and show interest (e.g., like and comment) while getting a clear idea of what they’re all about.

During this stage, you’ll want to become familiar with their past work, previous brand collaborations, exactly what sort of audience they have, and their tone, style, and even sense of humor. It’s best to follow and engage with an Instagram influencer for two to three weeks before contacting them about a potential partnership (if you’re planning to contact them directly).

Step 2: Reach Out to Instagram Influencers

Once you’re ready to engage directly with Instagram influencers, it’s best to contact them via another social media channel, as this shows you’ve carefully researched their online presence across the board. However, an Instagram DM is certainly fine if you’d prefer.

Alternatively, you may want to reach out by email, in which we recommend that you write more formally.

However, if you’d rather simplify the process, you can find and hire influencers today using Collabstr. On our main page, simply select Instagram as your preferred platform. Upon searching, you’ll be able to find a variety of influencers from nano to macro influencers across almost every niche you could imagine.

With that said, you can, of course, massively narrow your search. You can do this by selecting a category. Here you can enter keywords, categories, or niches to find influencers best suited to your brand. 

You can research and follow Collabstr influencers, too, by checking out their various social media channels. That said, it won’t be necessary to engage with them on social media before reaching out on Collabstr as our influencers often have a clear drive to work with brands than the average influencer (after all, that’s part of why they’ve signed up to our service).

Also, whether or not you narrow your search at this stage, upon hitting search for Instagram influencers, you can further tailor your search based on content type, number of followers, location, price, and gender.

Once you’ve found the influencers that best fit your brand, go ahead and contact them in order to hire them for your brand.

Whether it be through direct contact or via Collabstr, when reaching out to an Instagram influencer, you’ll want to consider the following points when making first contact:

• Keep it short and sweet

• Be friendly but semi-formal

• Briefly explain your idea for a partnership by highlighting the key details

• Explain why you’d like to work with them specifically

• Ensure your message is original (i.e., tailor them to each influencer)

• In some cases, it’s worth suggesting a video call in the first message if they’re interested in your proposal

Step 3: Pitch Your Brand

Whether for making initial contact or in a follow-up message, be sure to pitch your brand effectively. This is especially important if you’re contacting an Instagram influencer directly (i.e., outside Collabstr). 

In order to pitch your brand, draft and redraft a sentence or two that summarizes what your business is about and, ideally, its unique selling point. Also, don’t forget to link your brand to the influencer’s content. 

To illustrate, here’s one way you might go about selling your brand in a first or follow-up message to an influencer:

Hey Jess,

My name is Bill, social media manager of Sea Halo Beauty!

I’ve been following your Instagram for a few weeks, and I just love your focus on sustainable and vegan-friendly makeup. I noticed that you’ve promoted waterproof makeup before, which is our area of expertise.

At Sea Halo Beauty, our goal is to make eco-friendly and plant-based waterproof makeup more widely available while playing our part in the fight against climate change. Considering that we have similar interests and values, I think you’d be a fantastic fit to partner with our company!

We’d love to hear back from you regarding the idea of an engaging, influential, and eco-friendly partnership. Would you be available for a video call this week?

Kind Regards,

Bill

Step 4: Follow Up

Influencers can receive dozens or even hundreds of messages daily, so don’t worry if you haven’t heard back right away. However, as an extension of the previous two steps, you may want to follow-up if you haven’t heard back within two or three days. We’re talking specifically about cases where you reach out to influencers directly here as opposed to using Collabstr.

If you’ve heard nothing back, no need to panic. Just move on to another influencer on your list and keep trotting along.

Step 5: Continue the Relationship 

Once you’ve established a relationship with an influencer, you’ll want to consider whether or not to continue it into the future. 

If you’ve had a great experience and have received high-quality content (something you can always expect when using Collabstr), you’ll want to keep the relationship alive and mention potentially working on future projects. On the other hand, you may want to jump right into the next project shortly after the first or even hire them as a brand ambassador.

Conclusion

In today’s guide, we’ve explained the key steps involved in contacting Instagram influencers, from doing the right research to making first contact to continuing a blossoming and lucrative relationship.

We also discussed the various types of influencers (and the importance of choosing the right ones for you), as well as the best reasons to work with an Instagram influencer. To reiterate those points:

• Influencers will know a ton about their target audience (which will likely mirror yours to a large extent).

• The right influencers will offer a higher engagement rate that can increase your brand's sales and authority.

• Influencer marketing enables you to use a flexible marketing budget.

Collabstr is available in three paid packages including Collabstr PRO. This edition allows 30 influencers to apply to your business monthly and allows you to post unlimited campaigns, among other benefits.

If you’re ready to contact Instagram influencers soon, sign up to Collabstr by joining as a brand. By doing so, you’ll gain access to our marketplace with thousands of Instagram influencers available to hire!

Collabstr vets all influencers who join our site to ensure brands signing up always receive professional, high-quality content!