One post from a prominent social media personality can generate thousands of dollars in sales in just a few hours. This kind of influence – or as we like to call it, clout – not only makes your business money, it also gets your brand’s name on to the eager, scrolling fingers of potential customers. It’s the crème de la crème of marketing and profits for businesses these days, but getting that initial start will undoubtedly have some false starts and mishaps. We’ve been there. We know. We’ve also learned from these mistakes.

1. Gaining Enough Clout

Similar to the way that money works with capital and profits, the initial funding for influence doesn’t just appear. It takes work, networking, investing your time and energy, and patience. Even the biggest social media pages started with 0 followers and grew from there. Clout involves a beneficial partnership, but you’ll need to work on building yours first before you can expect other accounts to work with you.

After growing our own social media and many of our clients’ accounts, we’ve got a good idea of the work and time that goes into generating the capital of  “clout.” The initial follower base, interaction, and influence metrics that will open the doors to you working with other prominent people. The owner’s Jordan and Luke Lintz often joke about how they are creating brands that are “Forced Famous” with the businesses marketing and branding techniques.

Assuming you’ve already got your goals, vision, and core business model, your topic centered posts need to be consistent and relevant for about 12 – 18 months before you’ll start seeing some genuine traction.

It takes a while, but the long-term investment pays off and every single hour and dollar you spend on your brand will pay infinite returns in the future. The opportunity to diversify and expand your business can be enhanced by the tone and strength of your personal brand. Your business brand is focused on something specific and it’s important to maintain that focus, but your personal brand gives you the opportunity to play around with multiple interests to see what would or wouldn’t work.

2. Find a Way to Profit from the Giveaways

Obviously, not everyone can afford to run giveaways, without figuring a way to at least recoup their investment of the prizes. Some ways to arbitrage giveaways to make money is to incentivise product purchases, promoting a service, growing engagement for your clients and many other ways.

Figure out a way to arbitrage giveaways that makes sense for your brand and the industry that you are in.

3. Joining Forces with the Right People

Once you’ve got the ball rolling with your personal or business page and you’ve built up enough followers and interaction to establish a relationship with a reliable marketing partner, you can start searching for that person with the right amount of clout.

At HighKey Clout, partnering up with some of the biggest and well-known celebrities around the world was a dream come true. Some highlight celebrities being Kevin Hart, Bella Thorne, Dababy and Snoopdog were all massive successes.

Choosing a clout giveaway partner can be tricky, but some things to keep in mind include:

• Aim high: Go for a prominent account that has enough followers and interacts well with their support base. The amount of people who follow you doesn’t have to align with the account you’re partnering with.
• Look for someone whose vision aligns with yours: Working with people who also value dedication and success speaks volumes about your future goals. You want to attract genuine, interested followers, and the best way to do this is to partner up with people who use their platform in a way that you actually admire and appreciate.
• Look to network: Once you’ve found someone you’d like to work with, it’s time to get started with contacting them. Celebrities are notoriously hard to reach – and with good reason. However, these days, a simple DM can get you far further than you’d think. Make sure your DM is friendly, include important details, and give them the opportunity to ask questions. If that doesn’t work, reach out to friends, family, and business partners to see if they’d be able to get the contact for you. It’s a hustle, people, but it’s so worth it. Remember that the more Clout that you have on Instagram the more valuable your Instagram DM’s will be.
• Cross the I’s and Dot the T’s: When a big account includes your Instagram handle in one of their posts, especially if a giveaway is at stake, your account will start going wild almost immediately. Make sure you have extra hands on deck to respond, ensure that people are following the giveaway rules and that your next content drop is worthy of the new followers you’ve just acquired.