The Personal Side of Influencing

Being an influencer requires a rather unique and very specific middle ground between personal and impersonal. For starters, your social media presence is dedicated to the brand you're creating, which in turn should be treated as a business. However, your followers will feel much more connected to you if they feel as though they know you on a deeper level. Finding this middle ground can be tough, and, unfortunately, there isn't really a cookie cutter way to achieve it. For me, I've been able to acknowledge the more personal sides of my life throughout a few different posts, while keeping my focus on my style. That being said, I want to share my story with you, the same story that I have tried to convey over time to those who consistently follow my posts:

I have showed interest in clothes, jewelry, make-up, etc. for as long as I can remember. Just like any young girl, I loved playing dress-up in my mom's closet and doing my sister's hair (whenever she'd let me, that is). There is one experience in particular though that has not only made me into the woman that I am today, but that has also shaped the passion that I continue to have for fashion and beauty. When I was in kindergarten, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. At that point, my father had already tragically passed away, so I was living with my grandparents almost full time. My grandma stayed by my mom's side throughout her treatment, which left my grandpa as the one taking care of the kids. When he came to pick me up from school one day, he was expecting his "chatty Kathy," rambunctious, six year old granddaughter to run up and give him a big hug. To his surprise, I went straight into the car, silent as ever. He knew something was wrong and, once we got home, I finally cracked. I explained to him that all the girls at school had these long, beautiful braids, that their moms did for them every morning. Not only did I want to be a part of the trend at a young age, but I also wanted a healthy mother, who could do my hair for me every morning before I got dropped off on the playground. My grandpa did the only thing he could do: reassure me of how loved I was, tell me that my hair is beautiful just the way it is, and gave me an extra big hug and kiss before he put me to bed that night. The following morning, I walked downstairs to eat my breakfast, only to find that the dining table spread was filled with bobby pins and rubber bands, not my usual cereal and milk. My 75-year old grandfather had in fact called my aunt the night prior and had learned (or at least attempted to learn) how to braid hair, all so that he could make sure I never felt like I was missing out. I will never forget being dropped off that morning, with a paper-bag lunch in one hand and two semi-janky braids on my head, but feeling as beautiful and confident as ever.

This experience gave me two huge things that have led me down the influencer path that I am on today. The first is the ability to recognize my appreciation and love for beauty at a young age. I don't mean that in a shallow way, as I believe we are all beautiful in our own unique ways. Nevertheless, it showed me that my love for something can be manifested and put into a more long-term goal, specifically career wise. Secondly, and most importantly, my grandfather, who is my best friend to this day, helped me understand that anything is possible if you have patience and are willing to work for it. There are times where I get discouraged, whether that be on the influencer front or beyond, but his attitude is something that I try to implement into my own work everyday. There are plenty of times in our lives where something seems unattainable on the surface, but I guarantee you that, if there's a will, there's a way! I hope that by sharing more about my story, you have been able to get to know the person behind all these blog posts on a deeper level, while also gaining a better understanding of how to convey personal details about your own life through your influencer platform.

A Glimpse Into MY Influencer Feed

It's pretty easy to be all talk, especially on the other side of a screen, so I'm switching things up with this post by sharing my personal experiences while attempting to enter the influencer industry myself.

Note: Throughout this post, I'll be referring back to a couple of my previous posts, mainly the ones where I have given tips or "how-to's" regarding the process of entering the influencer industry. So, I'll be linking any previous posts that I feel could be helpful in understanding the reasoning or methods behind some of my decisions and actions during this process. Just click the titles that I'm referring to to learn more!

While I've spent a lot of time discussing the influencer world, I have yet to really explain where I stand in it. If you read the "About Me" section, you probably already know that I work under an influencer. For privacy reasons, I have chosen to keep her name private, but working under her has motivated me to dabble in the industry myself.

As I explained in one of my previous posts, "How to Become an Influencer," there are plenty of avid steps that you can take, steps that I myself have taken, to become an influencer. The very first things that I had to do were narrow my focus, choose my primary social channel, and create a visual style personal to me. My focus is mainly fashion, but since I grew up in a small beach town and now live in a major city, my fashion taste is unique enough to separate me from other common fashion and lifestyle influencers. After I identified Instagram as the most beneficial social channel for my purpose, it was important that my feed was cohesive and coincided with my style, as I explained in "Five Steps to a Better Feed." Although I've removed a lot of content in the process of cleaning up my profile, this is still a glimpse of what it looked like before:

There's nothing majorly wrong with this series of posts, but as you can see, the colors of the images are overall very different, as well as the edits. I also was not following a content cycle, which I explain the importance of in "Five Steps to a Better Feed" as well. The simplest way to describe my former feed is busy, which is something you want to, and frankly must, avoid in this industry. Now that a few months worth of content has been posted, this is a more recent idea of what my feed looks like:

I'll be honest, revamping my feed was harder than I initially thought it would be. However, following the same advice that I have given in past posts, I was able to conquer one of the biggest challenges: recreating my visual presence. Now, I use a content cycle and follow specific color schemes that are related to my own personal style, which includes the same (or at least editing tactics) for each post.

In this post, my main goal was to express the initial steps that I took to break into this industry, especially on the visual front. I plan to continue sharing my experiences with you guys in future posts as my knowledge and involvement grows, but there's something else I'd like to leave you with today.

Remember that being an influencer is technically a business. That being said, I no longer have the same privilege of posting whatever I want to post. This removes most of the personal aspects to my profile, which may not be a big deal to some people because it visibly comes with the territory of "influencing," but I'm pointing this out for a very important reason: things are not always as they seem! I had a deadline to post for a swimwear company in one of the images above and as far as my followers were concerned, I was simply frolicking along the beach that day. Little did people actually know, that photo was taken and edited days in advance and I spent the day of the actual posting visiting my grandmother in the hospital. Again, this may seem like a small price to pay or maybe even an overly personal anecdote to some, but it's important that I reiterate that others don't always get to see the big picture if you're in the influencer world.

Entering such a new and already overly-populated industry poses plenty of challenges, but I still am so happy that I took the leap! Leave me a comment with any questions you guys might have or with anything else you may want to hear about as I continue my journey!