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Believe it or not, an Instagram shoutout is one of the most effective and cheapest strategies to promote your dropshipping business online. When done right, it can help boost your store’s visibility on the Gram, win you more customers, and uplift your sales.
But what exactly are Instagram shoutouts?
Instagram shoutouts are no different from the shoutouts you make to loved ones over the radio. They happen when someone – could be a customer, a raving fan, an influencer, or even another brand – mentions your brand on Instagram.
Think of shoutouts as reviews of some sort.
Shoutouts are so effective that you can build your entire marketing campaign on them without spending a single cent.
Be it as it may, building awareness for your business on Instagram using shoutouts isn’t a walk in the park; it might take a while to get a hang of it. But the juice is always worth the squeeze.
In this post, you will see some inspiring Instagram shoutout examples you can use as a blueprint to create yours.
In addition, we will show you how to get a shoutout without spending much.
Let’s get into it already!
Looking for inspiration for your Instagram shoutout campaign? Here are shoutouts of some popular brands you can take a cue from:
And we kick things off with this shoutout by a customer for Crockpot, a pressure cooker retailer based in Australia. Did you notice how genuine and personalized this shoutout is?
You would think it’s a sponsored post, but it isn’t. The cool part is that the person giving the shoutout isn’t even a celebrity but a satisfied customer. This proves that selling quality products can get you a lot of shoutouts on Instagram, and you don’t even need to ask for them.
Naut and Chain is another classic example of Instagram Shoutout done right. The Jewelry brand took an unorthodox approach by enlisting Tyler Crispen, the company’s co-founder, for a shoutout.
Not only is this approach efficient, but also cost-effective.
Tyler Crispen, with over 400k followers on Instagram, is an influencer, so you can bet the shoutout post he made will get a lot of eyeballs.
This proves you don’t have to hire a celebrity to make a shoutout for your brand; you can do so yourself if you have a substantial following on Instagram.
Doing a shoutout for your brand by yourself doesn’t always work. Sometimes, it’s best to leave it to those with more influence on Instagram. And that’s exactly what All Birds, a footwear brand, chose to do by getting Andre Hamann to do a shoutout.
Andre Hamann, a popular digital marketer, has a lot of influence on Instagram, with almost a million followers on Instagram.
For best results, Andre had to show himself working out with the shoe. What better way to show people how to use a product than using it yourself?
Jawzrsize is another eCommerce brand that is taking the shoutout thingy very seriously. Although the brand sells a jaw-shaping device which is quite unusual, it still leveraged the power of Instagram shoutouts to connect with potential customers.
They did this by enlisting Sam Schneider to give a shoutout. The post garnered 68 likes and 8 comments, proving it worked out nicely and got the attention Jawzrsize was looking for.
Who said you need to pay thousands of dollars to a famous celebrity just to get words about your product out on Instagram? You could just ask loyal fans with substantial followership on Instagram to make a shoutout.
In return, you could just send them some of your products for free. This is exactly what Electrolit USA, a food and drink brand, did. You can do the same, too.
Huel is another food brand making a killing with shoutouts on Instagram. Over the years, Huel has enlisted popular food lovers on Instagram to help grow its following using a mix of sponsored and organic posts.
Recently, Huel collaborated with Mattyofit to create a sponsored post. In the post, Matt shared his workout routine and explained how Huel has always been part of it.
Unsurprisingly, this post garnered over 5,000 likes and 140 comments at the time of this writing.
Sometimes, you don’t have to look for a grand shoutout to promote your brand. Simply asking customers to mention you in a post will work.
Take PSD Underwear, for example; they just reached out to a customer wearing their product and asked for a mention. She excitedly obliged.
You can also do the same. Better still, you can ask them to tag you. The more mentions and tags you get on Instagram, the more visible your brand will be.
Wouldn’t it be nice if your customers made a shoutout each time they received their orders? It sure will, and Kawaii Pen can attest to that.
Not too long ago, the books and stationery brand got a shoutout from an enthusiastic customer after she received her package.
The cool part is that this shout-out post cost Kawaii pen $0 in ad but was able to pull in 332 likes. That’s a feat!
Print-on-demand niche meshes snugly well with Instagram shoutouts. In plain English, Instagram is an excellent platform to promote your print-on-demand products using shoutouts and tags.
Bluecrate, a hugely popular print-on-demand brand that produces personalized personal gifts, is a testament to this. The brand has leveraged shoutouts and tags to grow its Instagram audience, as shown in the screenshot above.
Do you have an upcoming promotional campaign you would like the whole wide world to know about? Get your fans and customers to make a shoutout on their Instagram page, just like Ivory Ella did.
If possible, ask them to take a picture together with your product and make a post about it. You can take inspiration from the post above.
Notebook Therapy is another example of shoutout done well. They prove that satisfied customers can become your brand evangelist. All you have to do is sell quality products, and every other thing will fall into place.
This explains why you will find countless shoutouts on Notebook Therapy’s Instagram page, including the one above.
We wrap things up with SunGod. Keep it short, sweet, and straight to the point. If possible, ask customers to take a picture with your product when giving a shoutout.
Getting Instagram shoutouts isn’t rocket science. You just need to put on your creative cap and get to work.
That said, here are some foolproof strategies to get shoutouts on Instagram without breaking a sweat.
Although Instagram is a great place to promote your dropshipping business, it’s not ideal for all dropshipping niches. If your niche doesn’t fit Instagram’s demographics, you will likely have difficulty selling on the platform.
So how do you know if your dropshipping niche is suitable for Instagram?
The truth is that there are no rules to help you know for sure. Doing intensive research to understand your target audience might help, but it’s not practical.
Here’s the thing: if you sell fast-moving consumer products like clothes, beauty products, pet supplies, etc. Instagram can hit the spot for you.
However, if you deal in heavy products like upholstery, gym equipment, etc., you are better off looking elsewhere because shoutouts won’t help much, no matter how many of them you get.
Attempting to promote all your products at one go won’t cut it. Instead, it’s best to pick a product and promote the hell out of it.
That said, before launching an aggressive shoutout campaign to get eyeballs to your dropshipping store, first select the product you would like to promote.
Only ensure that the product you select is viable and will make you sizeable profits at the end of the day. Also, ensure the product is in demand; no need to promote a product people are not interested in.
After determining that your niche is suitable for Instagram and selecting the right product, the next thing to do is find influencers and bloggers with a sizeable following on Instagram.
But how exactly can you go about that?
Here are some helpful tidbits:
Let’s say you are looking to promote your beauty products on Instagram by hiring an influencer. Then you decide to hire, say, a footballer – it could even be Messi or Ronaldo.
Though these guys are very popular and have a massive following on social media, you won’t get much sales if they give a shoutout to you.
You know why, don’t you? Their field doesn’t align with yours. It will only make sense if you sell football/soccer wear and gear.
For this reason, you are better off working with an influencer who is at least a beauty product enthusiast. Such an influencer will also have followers interested in beauty products.
So before settling for an influencer, be sure they are interested in the product you want to enlist their help to promote.
You can use online influencer marketing software like Grin if you have difficulty finding the right influencer for your product.
Checking the number of promotional posts a prospective influencer has. If they are too many, that can only mean one thing: the person is only interested in money.
An influencer who cares only about money will scarcely care about quality and will only get limited engagement, regardless of the number of followers s/he has. Such an influencer must be avoided by all means.
However, if the influencer has a healthy mix of promotional and organic posts, s/he will likely enjoy better engagement.
As a rule of thumb, go for influencers with more organic, engaging posts than promotional posts.
How well do Instagram users engage with the posts of the prospective Influencer? The more engaged users are, the more influential that influencer is. No pun intended.
But how do you measure the engagement rate of a potential influencer? Simple. Check the number of likes and comments their posts get. And ensure those likes and comments are real and not generated by robots.
Another metric to check is the percentage of users that engage with the posts. An influencer with, say, 100,000 followers but only gets 100 likes on average per post is a clear no-no.
As we earlier hinted, there are two ways to measure a post’s engagement: the number of likes and comments.
Which should top your priority when deciding if a post is engaging or not? We will say comments, and the reason is simple. Likes are not always genuine. You can get thousands of likes on a post by using robots.
Comments, on the other hand, are usually more genuine, though they can also be faked.
So don’t rely on likes only; check comments too.
After picking the right influencer, the next thing you will want to do to gather relevant info and create visuals you will use to pitch the influencer.
To do that, you first need to take a crisp picture of the product you want to promote. You don’t have to hire a professional photographer for this task; your smartphone is enough to do the job.
For better visuals, you can use photo editing software like Canva or Photoshop to polish things up and make your visual graphic pop.
If possible, include the product’s details, such as pricing, size, and weight, in the visual. This is optional, though.
After getting your visual graphics ready, the next thing you will want to do now is to pitch to the potential influencers you have in mind. We recommend pitching to as many as possible, as doing so will increase your chances of getting the shoutout you want.
But how do you even get the contact detail of the influencer you want to pitch to? There are a couple of ways to go about it.
One is to send them a direct message (DM) on Instagram. But we are willing to bet that their DMs will already be full, and your message will be lost.
This brings us to the second best option: email.
Often, most influencers on Instagram leave their email contact on their bio. Take, for example, Saltbae. His email contact is clearly displayed on his bio.
Once you get the email, the next thing to do is to create your pitch.
In your pitch, describe who you are and the product you want to pitch. Also, explain how your product will help the influencer’s Instagram followers and why they will love it.
Finally, let the influencer know what they stand to benefit by giving you a shoutout. It could be a shoutout on your page, a free product, or cash. It’s totally up to you to decide.
Stuck on ideas and can’t figure out what to write in your pitch? You can follow the template below – just tweak it a little.
Hello [Influencer Name]
I am [Your Name], and I am a huge fan. I have been following your page on Instagram for a while now, and I must say I love your content.
I am reaching out to know if you would be interested in giving a shoutout for my product. I noticed you also use similar products and make posts about them on your page.
In return, I will offer you some products to use for free and also give you a shoutout on my page.
Thanks for your time as I await your reply
Did you notice how short this pitch template is? The shorter, the better.
