3 Things You Didn’t Know About Social Media Influencers: Behind the Lens

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]It’s perhaps the never ending question of “What do you do?” “Is that even a real job?” “I didn’t know you could make money on Instagram!”

 

Why do people ask this?

 

My honest answer is maybe because they have never actually asked any of us what we do or seen us do it. Therefore, the question all the people should be asking is HOW! Yes, being a social media influencer is a real job, yes it takes a full day worth of work and yes it requires using your brain to accomplish. People think that because you may say, “I work from home” that you simply sit around in your pajamas all day watching the news. Um. No. There is actually a lot more work than what meets the eye, and in most cases it actually takes LONGER work hours than someone who gets to clock in and clock out of an office from 9-5.

 

I’ve now “worked from home” for almost 4 full years. I have to be honest and say that I actually work HARDER then I ever did when I had a boss in a corporate setting. Nothing to knock against them, but for me corporate America didn’t work. I felt stuck in the political hierarchy and it really got to me when my boss was a whopping 1 year older then me making 3 times what I was making with the same years of experience. How did that even make sense?

 

Berman Media PD was built in my house, sitting at my kitchen table with dogs running around, cats scattering about, and yup you guessed it a GIANT cup of coffee. The world of social media came pretty natural to me, but it has taken hundreds of hours (working towards the 10,000-hour rule right?” to get to where I am.

 

I’m going to let you in on a little secret about some of the work that us Influencers have to do on a daily basis, most of which I’m going to bet you probably didn’t think we did. Hold onto your pants because you might be surprised when I say that it didn’t involve sleeping in until 9 and wearing pajamas all day.

 

1) Our ‘Business Hours’ don’t exist

 

In my world there is no start time, and there is no end time. If anything there have been nights where I have to set multiple alarms throughout the night to wake up to delete posts, put posts up etc. So what do I mean? As an Influencer we deal with clients who are looking to promote something. Mainly we deal with people who want to promote their product (online store, clothing, jewelry, app’s etc.) or service.  Instagram is an app used worldwide and the statistics show that it is actually used by a larger percentage of Non-US users. Therefore, because a large portion of my clients are overseas, I have to be available to work at pretty much any hour of the day or night. I could choose to not be, but then I wouldn’t be making nearly as much money, and I would be missing out on a HUGE client base. If you are an influencer, or looking to become one, you should be aware of the fact that your work day just went from 8 hours to 24.

 

2) Our time management skills have to be off the charts

 

Maybe I’m lucky in this area since I graduated with 2 majors and was a full time division 1 swimmer all through college, but my time management skills are stellar. In almost any day of work as an influencer the amount of scheduling, content creating, client communicating and email management would blow your mind. I don’t have one thing to do, and in most cases an Influencer wont have someone to pass the work down too if there is ‘too much.’ Luckily I’m at the point where I now have an assistant but that only means I have even more work (palm to the face!). At my very busiest I will have 10 plus ads to manage for the day which involves ensuring I have enough time spaced between each, time to post page content in between, and time to make sure that I work on page growth so that my followers aren’t overwhelmed by ads. Trust me when I say you don’t want to see my google calendar on a day like that! To be able to manage selling, creating, growing and communicating all in one day is no small feat and for sure is not something you can do while taking a nap.

 

3) We might as well have a business degree

 

As an Influencer we have to play numerous different roles. We are the client communications expert, we are the customer service specialist, and we are the analyst. Not sure that I could name many jobs where you have to be ALL of those things to get a paycheck every week. My undergrad degree is in Journalism and Media Studies and my almost Masters is in Social Media Public Relations (that’s a different story). Nowhere in either of those degrees did the Business side of my brain get any exercise. Everything I have learned about it has been from being in the trenches of it. A very critical role in the world of an Influencer is being able to price our products based on statistics our pages are showing. This includes things like the ratio of likes to page size, comment engagement level, conversion rates and website clicks. It is almost a monthly practice to have to re-evaluate pricing. Cue the mini-violin, but it’s a really hard puzzle to figure out. Fast forward 4 years and I might have it officially figured out, but now I get to play the role of helping you all figure it out.

 

I hope for the sake of myself and many other Influencers out there that I can shed some light onto the work we do on a daily basis. We may get a bad rap sometimes and people may think that we couldn’t possibly be stressed, but let me tell you that we are. There are pro’s of course to our line of work that make the grind of it all worth it. I get to travel the world without having to put in vacation time all while still making my living. If I break my arm, my phone still works and therefore my day can go on without the stress of trying to figure out how I’m going to pay my bills. The best part? As long as there is Wifi and my phone is not dead, I get to be wherever, whenever I want to be there.

 

***Statistic: As of September 2017, the greatest share of desktop traffic to Instagram was from the United States, 16.91 percent of traffic, while traffic from the United Kingdom accounted for 4.03 percent of site visits.

(source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272933/distribution-of-instagram-traffic-by-country/)

 

 

Related article: Instagram Advertising: Selling Instagram Ads

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]