With over 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has transformed from a simple social media platform for sharing photos and videos into an incredibly powerful marketing tool. It’s evolved into an economic powerhouse where ordinary content creators can build massive personal brands and become global social media influencers.
These elite Instagram influencers have harnessed the platform’s immense popularity to cultivate loyal followings in the millions. Through authentic influence and brand partnerships, they shape trends, drive consumer behavior, and earn staggering income from lucrative brand deals.
In this blog post, we’ll introduce you to the top 10 biggest influencers leading the charge on Instagram – redefining the world of social media marketing.
The Top 10 Instagram Influencers Shaping Brand Marketing
1. Kylie Jenner – 400 Million Followers
Reality TV star Kylie Jenner sits atop Instagram’s most followed influencers. Her massive audience stems from her family’s shows and her success in founding Kylie Cosmetics.
With such incredible influence, Jenner commands an estimated $986,000 per sponsored post, showcasing the power of social influencers for brands through her Instagram account.
2. Lionel Messi – 499 Million Followers
Soccer superstar Lionel Messi boasts over 402 million followers on Instagram. His global popularity transcends sports, making him a recognizable face to mainstream audiences worldwide. This universal appeal has transformed Messi into an invaluable social media influencer for big brands seeking engagement on a larger scale.
3. Selena Gomez – 429 Million Followers
A singer, actress, and influencer, Selena Gomez evolved from her Disney Channel days into a global celebrity and one of Instagram’s top influencers. Her lifestyle, beauty, and music content have earned her hundreds of millions of passionate fans, making her Instagram presence indispensable to brands.
4. Cristiano Ronaldo – 622 Million Followers
As the individual with the most followers on Instagram at over 500 million, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo earns the crown of top influencer. His athletic fame extends far beyond sports into mainstream celebrity territory. Brands fight for lucrative partnerships with him to drive incredible reach and engagement.
5. Cameron Dallas – 26.9 Million Followers
Californian Cameron Dallas emerged as one of the original social media influencers, cultivating a huge following almost exclusively through platforms like Instagram, Vine, and YouTube. Beginning with modeling selfies in 2013, he is now a major content creator sought after by brands like Calvin Klein and Dolce & Gabbana.
6. Zach King – 29.5 Million Followers
Visual artist Zach King, aka FinalCutKing, redefines visual effects and editing on Instagram through whimsical videos blurring reality and imagination. His creative content has captivated millions, earning him influencer fame and brand partnership opportunities.
7. Sommer Ray – 26.4 Million Followers
Fitness influencer Sommer Ray is an Instagram phenomenon with over 26 million passionate followers. Her stunning physique, beauty, and inspirational workouts have made her a professional influencer and model earning up to an estimated $500,000 per sponsored post.
8. Jen Selter – 14 Million Followers
Known as the “Belfie Queen,” Jen Selter pioneered the modern “belfie” (butt selfie) trend on Instagram. Her motivational fitness content amassed a huge following, attracting major brands like Nike and Reebok to partner with her.
9. Aimee Song – 7.3 Million Followers
Aimee Song made the transition from fashion blogger to Instagram influencer. Beginning by building her following on her blog SongOfStyle.com in 2008, she fully embraced Instagram and became an iconic fashion influencer partnering with luxury brands like Dior and Alexander Wang.
10. Gianluca Vacchi – 22.3 Million Followers
Italian businessman and DJ Gianluca Vacchi carved a unique path to influencer fame after joining Instagram in 2013. His high-energy dance videos, lavish lifestyle content, and comedic persona quickly propelled him to popularity, now earning him lucrative deals promoting luxury brands.
Powerful Lessons in Social Media Influence
The meteoric rise of these global Instagram powerhouses illustrates the profound transformation the platform has undergone. Instagram evolved from a social network into an influencer marketing hub connecting brands with massive digital audiences through the trusted influence of real people. Using the right tools and knowing the audience size, potential influencers can make a significant impact through content creation and content marketing. This is an easy way and serves as an effective influencer marketing strategy.
While some influencers leveraged mainstream fame, others cultivated influence organically solely through Instagram and other social media channels. However, all demonstrate a keen understanding of how to cultivate genuine connections with millions of loyal fans.
This trusted influencer-audience relationship allows content creators like these to shape culture and consumer buying decisions on a scale unimaginable a decade ago. Their success provides lessons for marketers, brands and aspiring influencers:
- The immense potential of social media to build personal influence and large engaged audiences.
- The importance of authenticity, consistency and true audience connection.
- How unique style and perspectives can resonate with fans worldwide.
The Future of Social Influencer Marketing
As these top influencers continuously grow their reach, brands will vie for partnerships that can deliver the greatest marketing impact. But Instagram’s doors remain open for talented new creators to emerge and join the ranks of elite social influencers. Digital marketing through influencer posts and Instagram stories is an easy to create brand awareness among a large audience.
While it’s unlikely everyone can attain ultra-celebrity levels of influence, the stories of these individuals prove that with talent, dedication and the right strategies, social platforms offer opportunities for passionate people to cultivate significant influence and success.
The future of influencer marketing is unpredictable, but certain to become even more impactful. Brands will increasingly need to leverage the targeting abilities of social media influencers to reach niche target audiences at scale.
Monitoring the best influencers, evolving marketing strategies, and adopting the right influencer marketing platforms and tools will be crucial for effective influencer campaigns moving forward. Smart brands will stay ahead of the curve on social media marketing trends and leading creators to craft winning influencer strategies in our digital world.
Both Brands and influencers can skip all this hassle and get the best result by Joining an influencer marketplace like Reach365.
At Reach365, We have built an intelligent system where we connect various size Influencers to brands, and help them in creating and executing Influencer Marketing Campaigns.
