The Influencer Lifestyle

What do you think people misunderstand about the influencer lifestyle? I know you mentioned that it’s hard work and it’s not as glamorous as it seems. But is there anything, specifically, that people really misunderstand?

I think that’s the main thing. I think, potentially, they might misunderstand how much of our time actually goes into what we do. I get a lot of people asking, don’t you just run a blog. Don’t they know how much time goes into that. But I think it’s also the idea that people don’t understand that, even for a blog post, I have to write it, I have to edit it, I have to set it all up in WordPress, I have to tag it and categorize it and do my SEO homework for it. I have to edit the images; I have to upload them. I have to then put them into the post; I have to ALT tag them. Just for the one blog post that you might see and think, oh, she threw this together, it actually takes a lot more time.

Let’s say you were advising young people who want to move into that role, is there anything that you would suggest to them?

When I came into this, even though I stumbled into from having a hobby that turned into a career, I used to be a banker and I was very grateful for some financial background, just because it helps me understand the business side of blogging, much better and much faster than I otherwise would have. I think that was a very valuable skillset to have. One of the things that I wish I’d had, that I didn’t, and I had to learn as I went, was the marketing side. If you understand marketing really well, being an influencer becomes a lot more of a success story than if you don’t really understand marketing; if you don’t even understand about choosing a demographic to write for, if you’re a blogger, or to aim for, if you’re an influencer of another kind.

What did struggle with most, in understanding that marketing side?

For me, it was partly the being all things to all people. I just wanted my blog to be read by anyone and, at first, I didn’t really understand the power of choosing a demographic and really going for that. I wish that I’d done that much earlier. I think, partly, I wish that I’d been a bit more focused on SEO, when I first started. I knew a lot about SEO, but for the blog, I thought it was a hobby, it’s fine. Now, I look back on old blog posts and I think, if I’d just written it that way or used these keywords instead of those, it would have probably ranked in Google still and I would have had a lot more traffic from that.

So it’s really just segmenting the customer base effectively?

Exactly.