Am I generating income from my social media platforms? Quite simply, No! What do I do? I do product and service reviews and create content on behalf of different brands and companies. I get free products in exchange for my opinion and sharing it with you my reader. How do you get given products to review or make content about? I’m part of a program called Social Soup. In this program and others like it such as Influenster I get given products to trial and post about on my social media accounts.
This month for example I’ve been selected to create content for Aldi supermarket. I will receive a $100 voucher to shop in store and in turn will create two TikTok’s for my viewers to be shared online. It’s similar to UGC work. However a UGC creator works for brands creating content for marketing purposes and gets paid for doing so. Whereas I get gifted products to create content about. These products are in line with my interests.
My business goal is to be influencing full time and be getting paid for it. Yes, it’s an oversaturated market but I have time on my hands and I love making content and writing about my experience. Writing about products and services is fun and exciting. However I also enjoy writing about real world topics. The fluffy feel good stuff is a draw card, but the heart of my writing is always in my blog. You want to know what makes me tick, what I’m passionate about or what I think? Follow this page! To be successful at this I must grow my audience. I want to do this organically without having paid followers. This is going to take work and time. Unless I decide to hire a social media marketing company to do that side of the influencing business for me. Most successful influencing bloggers now have a social media marketing agency working behind them to make them successful. This gives the influencer more time to create content and focus on content creation. The agency will write your posts, schedule your posts and make sure your photos, reels etc are in line with the businesses guidelines you’re promoting. The agency makes sure you are attracting your desired audience and producing high quality work that is aesthetically pleasing. Accounts that maintain this level of professionalism are generally successful. As I’m starting out I will be doing all the work of an agency myself. Once I’ve got more of a following I will employ an agency to help me grow. Not being paid to create content when starting out means each experience I have costs me. The only risk is my time and using the money for activities that support well-being and it perhaps not taking off as intended. No real loss is associated with this type of work for me as I benefit from it. That’s the only expense I have. Not all, but most of the content will cost me to make. I would not expect a business to pay me or give me free products or service unless they want to use my content on their own platforms. Or hire me as a UGC creator or marketer due to my following. So what can I do to grow my audience?
- Pay a monthly fee for a marketing manager
- Post consistently up to three times a day
- Use relevant hashtags
- Schedule posts for peek traffic
- Pay for advertising
- Use competitions to optimise growth
- Work with other influencers to grow my audience
- Research my target audience
- Network in person with businesses I want to work with
- Utilise my story, reels and live experience
Now that the business idea is in place I’m excited to execute it. I will document this journey as its one of great ambition. When I started my blog I would write about local businesses and experiences. I took a break from this type of content when I had Audrey, but now I’m back and more ready then ever to focus on creating content and writing about my journey, experiences and thoughts on life.
To follow along on my relaxation and reconnection page then click on →@herweeklyedit on Instagram. I promise there will be lots of eye-catching, click bait photography and sincerely honest reviews on how you can unwind or escape the everyday. For my personal page that shows my everyday life then follow along → @itsmorethansunshine
Until my next brain wave, peace!
Sarnia x
