Happy Blogger-Versary! Well, sort of...

One year!  9K Followers, 500+ posts, a website, a little bit of collabs and I still feel like... I could be much further.  First off, what am I?  A blogger, an influencer, a content creator, a fashionista, lifestyle influencer, etc… there are so many classifications in this industry that sometimes you don’t even know what to call yourself.  I started off as a Lifestyle Influencer, because I wanted to post about everything (food, home, beauty, fashion, travel, etc.), but after taking a step back and looking at my account, I realized most of my pictures are fashion focused so today I’m a fashion influencer (*subject to change).

What brought me into this industry?  My love for taking high quality photos and sharing via social media.  When used the right way, Instagram can be an amazing source of information, inspiration and a great way to network.  In the beginning my Instagram account was private and I only followed people I knew (from high school, college, work, etc.).  Then, I went PUBLIC and oh baby!  I started poking around and found so many great pages.  I fell in love and then became inspired. 

So... the decision to take my account to the next level wasn’t an easy one and it’s still not easy.  While I can talk about this all day, here are 5 quick/easy tips to get yourself started. 

(1)  Find your niche - what do you want your page to be about? There are so many options (food, babies, fashion; street, low budget, high-end, prints, etc, parenting, etc) ... find one (or two) that you love, have access to, and zero in on that! 

(2)  Clean Up Your Page!  This can be tough, but let me break it down:

(a) Change your name if you have to (you want something catchy and/or easy to remember).  I personally discourage using anything with an underscore. Think about how hard it is to find your friend whose profile name is @TuGshsgOo_sTsg and remember to never be that person. 

(b) Make your Instagram account public and switch it from personal to business to began receiving insight and stat information about your posts and your followers.  

(c) Update your bio to include a quick blurb about you, your email address (that should match your name) and website (if you have one). 

(3) Slowly begin to delete/archive old pictures that have nothing to do with your area of interest. 

(4) Take high quality photos.  I’m not saying hire a photographer right away, but you need good quality photos.  Cell phone pictures can be great, but they only go so far.  Most brands want high resolution pictures anyway... so you might as well start taking them if you want to attract new followers and collaborations/sponsorships.  Invest in a camera and have your friend take pictures for you if necessary. 

(5) Last, but certainly not least!  Stay consistent with posting!  This is a struggle for a lot of people (including me), but it’s important to post at least 3-5 times a week on your page and 3-5 times a day in your stories.  No one has the key to the algorithm, but we know that posting regularly keeps you visible to your followers.  When taking photos take enough to last you over the next week or few days.  You don’t have to post in real-time so take advantage of prepping your content in advance. 

Plenty of people reach out to me and say “ohhh I want to be an influencer”.   Before responding to them, I check out their page and in most cases they’re not set up for success.  Private accounts, blurry photos, quotes, memes, grammatical errors in their captions, their bio is something like… “living for me and mines”, ummm NO.   People do this for a living, they pay their rent and mortgages with the income they make from being an influencer.   They take their page, posts and content seriously and put a lot of effort into their brand... it’s not something you just easily jump into. 

Did you enjoy reading this? Was the information helpful?  Keep a look out for my next blog post sharing some books that helped me thus far!

Thanks for reading!