Minja Cvetković, a.k.a. @misspsychocat in the world of Instagram and other SoMe platforms, held an outstanding lecture in Represent Communications on Thursday, within the Summer get together project. She talked on the topic of “From Influencer to Digital Creator”, and covered several more relevant topics, opened numerous questions and answered the one everyone was asking: How to make money out of Instagram.

Minja also revealed how she became an influencer by accident and without planning to be one. She developed her specific style, had only a Facebook account and posted copies and photos with no plan or order, simply posting what she herself liked.

The first step is exceptionally important

When she had 1,200 followers on Facebook, she contacted a foreign brand and offered to cooperate with them. They immediately shipped several dresses she was to wear on future photos and tag the brand. The initial engagement went smoothly, the cooperation was launched and Minja has been with the brand ever since. The only difference is that she now gets a pay check instead of garments as compensation.

Switching from one SoMe platform to another

When Instagram became popular, Minja created a profile and the number of people following her grew constantly – according to her, those were mainly foreigners, from the USA and the UK, probably because of the colour of her hair (sky blue), a specific vintage style she maintained, her tattoos… Furthermore, her descriptions were in English, which was also a crucial factor in her case.

She continued being active on Facebook, while focusing her work on one more SoMe platform.

First engagement for money

In 2016, after five years of work, Minja finally received the following inquiry: How much does a post on her profile cost? She says that she was very surprised because she had no idea what to answer and how much such things were charged. That’s how she started to learn.

As she had previously done everything in accordance to her preferences, she could not believe how many important factors were included in the entire process.

Professional photos

2016 was also the year when Minja took the first series of professional photos. She started posting them and won 100,000 followers by the end of that year.

What is crucial for a large number of followers?

1. Tagging – The maximum number of hashtags used by Minja is 10, never more than that. Her experience has shown that everything else is just too much. In addition, hashtags should be added to a photo description, not to a comment. According to her searches, posts in hashtag-based search results do not appear in a feed at all when those hashtags are added to a comment. It doesn’t mean that nothing will change, because Instagram has been upgrading its services constantly, but it is definitely much safer to put everything in a description.
2. Type of posts – Personal posts, people like to “get to know” the person they follow, i.e. have a feeling of closeness through a personal story.
3. You have 10 minutes for changes – What happens in the first 10 minutes from the moment of posting is vital, says Minja. Post reach and engagement are built in that interval. If you have to edit the post, do in it in that period, since all changes after that decrease its reach.
4. Interaction – Communicate with followers; they are there because of the content you post. Reply to comments, messages… It’s a bit difficult for Minja to reply to everyone, because she has a huge number of comments, messages, etc., but interaction is very important for building a good profile and image.
5. First 60 minutes are crucial for a post – The first hour of a post is very important for building good reach and engagement. It is also important to get the highest rate of likes in the first hour. Minja replies to all comments, private messages, stories, etc. in the first hour. You will know whether your post has caught on or not within an hour.

Deleting posts

Although some experts say that deleting posts “kills” a profile, Minja does not think that it is actually the case. According to her, she once deleted nearly 300 photos from her profile. If you want to delete something, do it, it’s no big deal.

Minja also explained why she turned down clients, how she established cooperation, made deals… You can hear all this and much more from Minja Cvetković at our Content Academy, starting on October 05. She is one of the lecturers. For all the information, click HERE.