The ultimate guide to Affiliate Marketing on Instagram

With over 1 billion active monthly users and more than 500 million daily users, Instagram is the perfect place for leveraging your affiliate marketing efforts.

However, being an extremely populated platform, standing out on Instagram requires commitment and strategy.

This guide cuts to the chase, giving you practical advice and tips to improve your Instagram presence and boost your affiliate earnings.

Engagement matters, not numbers.

If you scroll through Instagram celebrities' profiles, you may be led to believe that in order to be successful you need hundreds of thousands of followers. While this might be true for some industries, the same requirement does not apply for creators in the financial markets industry.

In fact, “micro-influencers” can raise significant earnings out of their audience.

Micro-influencers are profiles with as few as 2k followers that, despite their small audience, have high levels of engagement with users. Contrary to celebrities, micro-influencers develop a closer personal relationship with their audience.

Thus, your starting point is building a small following with whom you have a close relationship. Additionally, thanks to the Multi-Tier affiliate scheme available with EagleFX, your earnings may really surprise you.

In the next section, you will find actionable tips for creating a following as fast as possible while promoting your affiliate links.

The Cornerstones of your Instagram Strategy

Choose a niche. Pick a field where you are good enough to provide unique insights. That can be a market (the stock market) as well as an industry (cryptocurrencies).

Make quality content. Whether you post a video, a chart or an infographic, your content has to provide value to your audience.

Don’t overstress. Being good with content might take a while. Keep working until you find your true voice and garner a larger audience.

The Algorithm is your friend. As Algorithms improve daily, you will have a hard time trying to cheat them and get “viral” growth. On the contrary, if you produce valuable content for your audience (what the algorithm wants) you will get massive exposure.

Craft good captions. The purpose of captions is to engage with your readers. You can tell a story, elaborate on your content or encourage interaction from readers. Remember to use CTA frequently and break up the paragraph.

Be active within your niche. Social Media is supposed to be “social”. If you want to grow an audience even quicker, interact with other profiles in your niche and answer comments and private messages.

Use hashtags mindfully. Hashtags are made to tag your content with a theme. Pick a mix between small and large hashtags.

Stay authentic. With most profiles showing a glamorous, idealistic life, showing your true side will make you trustworthy and let you stand out.

Posts, Stories, Reels. Do it right.

On Instagram, content creators have multiple tools to showcase their expertise. However, each format has its own rules. Here’s a practical breakdown on how to use them right.

Posts: Posts are your main piece of content and are where you demonstrate your expertise. They can educate, inspire or entertain your audience. Think of your reader when you create them.

Stories: Stories are supposed to show your daily life and thoughts. Use them to share your most authentic side. Moreover, stories disappear after 24hrs so don’t overthink them.

Reels: With reels you can showcase your most creative side. Use them to create engaging videos with multiple effects.

Optimizing your profile for growth

While the quality of your content and your consistency are by far the real elements that will define your success, it is worth optimizing your profile in order to maximize its effectiveness.

Picture: Use a picture that shows your authority and makes you recognizable.

Profile description: This is a simple yet effective formula. Tell your audience “Who you are, what you do and why they should follow you.”

Highlights: These are past stories that you make visible on your profile. Use them strategically. Let viewers see what’s in it for them when they follow you and what subjects you talk about. You can also use the Highlights to place your affiliate links, making it convenient for your audience to locate them later on.

Profile Feed: This is the homepage of your profile. New users will land here and establish if what you have to say is worth their attention. Curate your profile feed to give it an identity and a recognizable general theme.

Where to place your affiliate links.

Unfortunately, Instagram limits the possibility for creators to promote links that bring users outside of the platform. However, you have some methods for pushing your affiliate links and capitalizing on your audience.

The first location for placing your affiliate link is your Bio. You can either use a direct link to the broker or your website (if you have one). If you need to place more links, you can use a link aggregator that will open a page with all the hyperlinks you are interested in promoting.

Alternatively, you can place your affiliate link at the end of your caption and, as stated earlier, in the Highlights section of your profile. Although it can’t be clicked, it might be memorized or copy-pasted in the browser’s search bar.

Finally, you can use the swipe up function. This is the most convenient way for moving users outside of Instagram. However, this feature is only available for accounts with 10k+ followers.

Conclusion

Instagram is a fantastic platform for growing an audience. As we learned, affiliates in the trading niche do not need hundreds of thousands of followers to get high returns.

Additionally, with the EagleFX Commission scheme, even a few hundred followers can be a strong foundation for earning through promoting your affiliate business.

Contact your Affiliate Manager today to learn more!

GET IN TOUCH