So after reading a comment encouraging posts like these I tried thinking about what I could offer that hasn’t been talked about in such detail in level one so far (as per to my knowledge). I don’t have any monster accounts but the ones I do have, have high levels of engagement. I tried for a long time sending out messages offering my services to businesses and people with barely any success until I changed things up. So these are some tips that might be helpful to people who would like to be paid to manage instagram accounts and are having a hard time going about it. First:
Do not offer your services
This is counter-intuitive and only based on my experience having only slightly large accounts (4k, 10k, 13k) but with high engagement an interesting content. I don’t focus much on increasing amount of followers but instead making those followers be more engaged. But needless to say, if a person with a 100k account offered to manage my account I would take him more seriously than I did myself. But i still managed to find work at the level i’m at.
I sent countless direct messages offering services, most of which were ignored and some that were either polite no’s or “i’ll think about it” which never led to anywhere. I put myself in these people’s shoes. Even though i’m confident I could improve their instagram game to them i’m just one of a crapload of people offering things. So I decided to stop asking for work and instead focus on…
Be a creator
I turned my attention to making my accounts the most interesting possible. I have some gallery accounts but I also decided to start dedicating myself to taking high quality pictures without going down the super competitive photography account road. So I bought a camera, a sony a5100, nothing too fancy but really decent image quality for the price, and started focusing on a humans of new york type account for my city. There were already some people who tried doing the same thing and got nowhere but I knew that focusing on the quality of the images and captions together with all the instagram tactics we learn online would make a difference. My account is now the only proper feed of its kind in my city and is starting to get a lot of attention organically. For this to happen one thing was necessary…
Get out there
Leaving the house was necessary for me to find work. Meet people, make friends, establish contacts. Don’t just DM a local business and offer your services. Walk to local businesses and see how they can inspire you to create content.
Provide a service before they even offer to pay you for it
Or even before they realize they need or want it. Let’s say you check a local businesses instagram and can see it’s account needs a lot of work. Low-res images, lots of unattractive text in the image, etc. Really low engagement, posting too often… Think about what you would do differently and do it (without pissing them off). Here’s a list of ideas in this vein for the example of a restaurant/bakery/etc.
- Create a food blog account / gallery of beautiful food.
- Put all your instagram wisdom in practice making high quality content, getting proportionally high engagement and a decent amount of active followers.
- Go to a local business who is failing at the instagram game or doesn’t even have any game.
- Order something (you’re probably going to spend money on food anyway, right?) and photograph it. Some basic photography principles will be enough to get a decent image.
- Post your best image (edit it with snapseed or vsco) with an interesting or informative caption and get good engagement and tag the profile of the place you took it in.
- Be kind of sneaky and have friends go the same establishment and comment that they went there because the food looked so good on your account.
- Go back to the place and strike a conversation with manager/owners. Soon enough your instagram account will come up and if they’re smart they’ll realize you actually did quite a bit of work for them “just for fun”, because you’re good at it and you enjoy doing it. (These last three things should at least be partly true) Casually stimulate the conversation of social media and how important having a social presence online is and if they don’t bite at this moment and ask if you can help out with their profiles then offer to help them out for free. If they accept and see good results then my bet is that you’ll be hired. If they don’t volunteer the idea themselves tell them “i’d love to keep helping out but i need to focus on some paying clients”.
- Do this simulteanously for several potential clients. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Don’t feel that you’re doing all this work potentially in vain because as you do this you’re constantly learning and upping your game, in instagram strategy and in content creation.
Keep studying, always
Social media platforms are constantly changing (which most of you know i’m sure). Keeping yourself updated on the algorithm changes and what’s working or not is a constant need.
So I don’t know if it’s obvious but it’s late and i’m a bit too sleepy to continue hehe, sorry if there are some tangents in there. I’ll edit this post later if anything else comes to mind. This is all semi recent and i’m constantly learning at this so any suggestions or ideas in improving this tiny guide/personal story
are definitely welcome.