When we started to work with Marie and Jake, most people didn’t understand why we would want to team up with our direct competition. We are both travel couples, have the same values, and share a similar audience. What were we thinking when we decided to not only travel together and take pictures of one another but to actually team up and create a whole company together? 🤔
Instead of seeing Marie and Jake as our competition, we realized that if we joined forces we can achieve way more than we could have ever achieved on our own - in the past year we have learned and gained so much from each other!
Instagram is a great place to interact and meet like-minded people, after all, it’s a media platform. And it gives you the perfect opportunity to join forces and collaborate with other brands and influencers. Collaborating with influencers and brands from your niche can do you a world of good. When it comes to spreading awareness about your account and increasing your engagement, the most effective means to achieve this is by working with like-minded people.
Now, before I continue with why it’s so important to collaborate with other people on Instagram, let me just explain to you the different options that you have when it comes to collaborations. If you are an influencer (or aspire to be one) you can either collaborate with another influencer or of course with a brand. And if you are a brand you can do the same - collaborate with influencers or with another brand. So we have Influencer x Influencer collaborations, Influencer x Brand collaborations, and Brand x Brand collaborations.
No matter what type of collaboration you decide to go for, it should benefit both sides. It’s so important who you partner with, so make sure that you have the same values, goals, and target audience.
There are also different types of collaborations, such as giveaways, shoutouts, story takeovers, etc. but for today I want to talk about the benefits of working with other people. If you want to learn more about collaborations in general, you can check out our Instagram Masterclass, where we teach you everything you need to know about collaborations and so much more.
Back to the benefits of collaborations. Why should you work with other creators and brands out there? There are many reasons to explore collaborations on Instagram but the top 5 in my eyes are the following:
Top 5 reasons to collaborate
LEARN FROM EACH OTHER
My number one reason to collaborate with other people is definitely because you will learn so much from each other. New tips and tricks on how to take pictures and videos, different ways to edit your content, or maybe it’s not even related to Instagram but you learn about new languages, cultures, hobbies, etc. If you see everyone as a competitor you will miss out on so many opportunities to meet new amazing people and gain more knowledge. And needless to say, you will also be able to create amazing friendships - just look at the four of us!
GET NEW CONTENT
Every new collaboration is an excellent opportunity to discover new content for yourself! Not only can you benefit from the ideas and experience of the other creators but you will most likely get new ideas yourself! I don’t know about you, but it’s always easier for me to brainstorm and come up with new ideas when I am surrounded by other people. They inspire me or something that they say actually sparks a new thought in me.
REACH A NEW AUDIENCE
Reason number three is that you will be able to reach many new pairs of eyes who might be interested in your content and ideally start to follow your account. For you to get an idea, we both gained around 10,000 new followers through an Instagram feed post that we did together.
But as I mentioned before - it’s so important who you partner up. If you have similar content and values, chances are much higher that their followers will be interested in your account and follow you back. The closer their interests are to yours the better. Imagine if we would team up with a creator that usually only talks and posts about cars. Even if they have a lot of followers, amazing content, and a great engagement it wouldn’t be very beneficial to us, as their followers wouldn’t care about our content.
BOOST YOUR ENGAGEMENT
Next on the list is reason number four! Since you will most likely tag each other in your pictures, videos, and stories, a lot of people will click on your account if they are intrigued. And even if they might now follow you, chances are that they will still engage with your content, even if it's just a like or comment. So, working with other creators is a great way to boost your engagement!
Many collaborations also involve engaging activities such as a contest or giveaway; however, we don’t suggest you do too many of those as they often attract “ghost accounts” or followers that will unfollow you as soon as the winner has been announced. Even if your engagement might go up for that one post it’s not worth it in the long run (that doesn’t mean that you cannot participate in any giveaways at all, just choose them wisely).
SAVE MONEY
The last benefit, one that you may not have considered yet, is that you can even save some money when you collaborate with others! You can split the production just and it can help you reach objectives you would usually achieve through paid campaigns. Obviously, not every post has a cost, so this might not apply to every collaboration but if you are a brand you will definitely benefit from it at some point.
As you can see, collaborating with other influencers, creators and brands can be so important and beneficial to you and your growth! Don’t underestimate the power of collaborating and networking. As John Wooden said, “working with others makes us more than we could ever be alone”.
