“Oh, so you just take a picture and post it to Instagram and call yourself an influencer?”
hahahahaha….NO. First off, I cringe at the word influencer. I will never call myself that and I will never be at that level. Do I hope to influence people? Well sure. I hope that every once in a while someone sees something positive about what I am doing on here. But let me let you in on a little secret…it is not what it seems.
There is the creative side that is sometimes exhausting. Outfits are put together in hopes that you get approval from a bunch of people by relying on them to double tap. Then there is the location. The perfect spot to take this little pic with the prettiest background but the reality is, the pretty backgrounds have tons of people all watching you and it is so incredibly awkward. You take fifty hoping to at least get one good one just to come home, edit it and make it all the things that it wasn’t. Then you spend hours trying to create something interesting to caption it with while searching the perfect hashtags to include so it can take off. Finally, you link it all, create the post, press share and either watch all of your hard work climb to the top or struggle to get seen.
All of that listed above and we haven’t even talked about the engagement or follower part of it all. Engagement takes up roughly 2-3 hours of my day everyday. That is the minimum that I should be doing. I have heard that if you really want the growth, you need to commit to 3-4. That last sentence makes me sound like I don’t want the growth. Do I want the growth? I sure do! It is just not possible for me to be successful in my career and engage for that many hours a day. Trying to grow followers is another monster in itself. Instagram has over 1 billion users and you are just trying to get .01% of them to find you. So adding to the 2-3 hours of engagement, you spend another hour just trying to find new people that are similar to you.
I would like to think that all of my hard work this past year and a half has paid off but I know that I still have miles to go. SEOs, statistics, brand partnerships, and many others are still on my to-do list. I have been very fortunate in my journey and I have created business relationships and friendships that would have never been possible without taking this leap of faith. I get joy when people take time out of their day to send me a DM about being a coach’s wife, asking for their opinion on an outfit, recommending the best item, or just commenting on a silly video I recorded. I get to connect with so many other individuals on a daily basis. I may never actually meet them in real life but it is pretty cool to have some virtual cheerleaders.
So yes, it may just look like I take a picture and post it but there is more to it and honestly, it’s what makes me keep coming back for more.
