This means that you need influencers to step in and show off your company and its products. Their thousands (or millions) of followers will see and be 'influenced' by the influencer's posts and support your company.

But how do you make sure that influencers want to work with you in the first place? Well, here are six easy steps that you can take to make your content stand out and be 'influencer-friendly':

1. Do your research

If you have a couple of specific influencers in mind, research is key to understanding what they usually post. Go take a look at their profiles — they'll have a large catalogue for you to look through on their Instagram profiles.

Although you don't exactly need to copy them, it would be good to make your content similar to theirs so that they will be more comfortable working with you. The influencers will already have ideas on how their profiles should look and what sort of content they want to put out there. If your ideas are completely different, you won't be able to work with them properly.

2. Post content that is of high quality

If your content is of poor quality (for example, if you have out of focus and non-HD photos, terribly shot videos or even captions littered with typos), then influencers will doubt whether you are a legitimate company. This doubt on their part will make them unlikely to trust you enough to work with you.

Almost all influencers make a living from posting high-quality content, which their viewers know and trust, so make sure that you have high standards for your marketing strategy if you want to work with them.

To ensure high marketing standards, you can hire professional photographers and video editors, or even just make sure that your captions are edited and checked for errors. Additionally, make sure that the quality of your content is near perfection, or you won't be seen as valid or 'good enough' for the majority of influencers.

3. Be fair

An influencer has agreed to work with you — great! It is good to understand that this will not be a one-sided deal and that you'll be expected to work on your side of the bargain as well.

Your profile might not have as many followers, but they could be a different set of followers from those who subscribe to the influencer. Giving them a quick 'shout-out' and increasing their following will do a world of good for your relationship with the influencer; it ensures that you can work together in the future because they will have positive connotations with working with you and your brand.

4. Encourage participation

"Everyone knows that participation is one of the easiest and hardest ways to market — a true paradox!" says Sarah Little, a business writer at Boom Essays and UK Top Writers.

"If you can get enough people behind your 'campaign', then competitions and challenges can erupt like social volcanoes, and soon you'll be plastered all over the Internet. People love taking part! However, without the help of influencers, your unique challenge could just fade into obscurity, so it’s fifty-fifty really," Little adds.

"Make sure that you interact with your audience — especially influencers — if they take part in whatever you're trying to market. [You can do this] with 'shout-outs' and screenshots of their efforts, however successful they may be!" says Little.

5. Use hashtags

Although you might link hashtags more with sites like Twitter, Instagram does have a large hashtag culture as influencers will often fill the ends of their captions with relevant hashtags.

If you do the same, you will not only be matching influencers and making yourself and your company look more relevant and official, but you will also gain followers in the process. That is how hashtags work.

Users can scroll through hashtagged posts if they choose to, and posts that appear in the 'Explore' page are often put there by the Instagram algorithm. The algorithm works out which hashtags a user has been viewing recently.

All in all, hashtags are a brilliant way to get noticed by influencers and make your marketing account seem more valid to influencers and followers alike.

6. Include stock photos / videos

"If you don't want to pay too much for professional photographers and the like, then stock photos can be the way to go," says Austin Grasby, a marketing blogger at Revieweal and Big Assignments.

"There are plenty of websites out there that offer free stock-photos at amazing resolutions and HD quality — once you find them, they're a marketer's heaven. Need pictures of coffee? They've got you covered. Need pictures of wind turbines? Covered. Need pictures of beds? Done and done," Grasby adds.

"Once you go searching on these websites, which can easily be found by just searching for 'free stock photos', you'll never go back to messing around with the settings on Google Images or hiring professionals ever again!" he says.

Pexels and Pixabay are common solutions to the free stock photo problem. They offer free, high-quality photos to everyone, for use in advertising and anything else you might need them for.

For stock videos, both sites also offer a side to them that specialise in videos, so you can be sure of the same great content. Using these large libraries of content, you can be sure that your Instagram profile will look very professional and appeal to influencers, who will then want to work with your brand and elevate your Instagram profile to new levels of popularity — increasing your reach and audience.

For more information, visit www.academized.com or www.paperfellows.com. 

*Image courtesy of Freepik