In today’s digital age, young entrepreneurs are using social media to promote their businesses. In this article, you’ll learn how platforms like Instagram and TikTok have become game changers, helping young entrepreneurs compete in the competitive business world.
We spoke with successful influencers from Brazil who have mastered the art of growing their businesses on these platforms. Their stories show how social media has helped them turn their hobbies into careers.
The phenomenon of social media is changing the ways to make a career. More and more young people are looking for ways to combine their skills with the world’s need for more information or entertainment. This has led to the birth of the influencer marketing industry, which turns over more than 15 billion a year.
When it comes to the social media platforms most used for influencer marketing, Facebook is the market leader with more than 2.9 billion registered users, but a significant number of young entrepreneurs choose to promote their business mainly on Instagram or TikTok due to its high engagement rate and visually appealing platform.
With an average engagement rate of 4.25%, TikTok is by far the most active social media platform. Instagram comes in second with an average engagement rate of just 0.60%. However, 90% of influencer campaigns end up on Instagram, where influencer marketing statistics show that reputable influencers on this platform charge an average of $10 per 1,000 followers or $250 to $750 per 1,000 engagements.
On TikTok, it is possible to make money even without a large following. Micro-influencers with about 10,000 followers earn about $88 per post, while professional accounts with more than 2 million followers can get almost $6,000 per post. The audience is spread all over the world. With 113 million users in the U.S., 110 million in Indonesia and 82 million in Brazil, social media offers new opportunities for young entrepreneurs who want to use their knowledge to create content.
The beginning of an influencer career
Rafael Miranda, 28, and Veronica Edelman, 22, started their careers this way. With 395,000 followers on Instagram and more than 780,000 on TikTok, their profile, Amantes de Estrada, is a huge success in the travel and accommodation niche. It all started as a hobby, traveling to vacation homes in Minas Gerais, the Brazilian state where they live. Then they started sharing on social media the different options they found for couples at a good price, attracting the attention of an audience interested in natural landscapes and cozy accommodation.
“In the beginning we had to use our own money for everything, we paid for accommodation, gas, food and sightseeing, but we could do a lot with a small budget, so we decided to share it with other couples to get them excited about travelling and enjoying the beautiful cities we got to know” — said Rafael.
“As the profile began to grow, we selected some accommodations we would like to visit and sent them messages showing the media package we had created with the engagement from the previous trips. The result was incredible: they were thrilled and agreed to trade fees with our work” — added Veronica.
From a corporate job to the influencer marketing industry
Thus, the profile grew even larger in a few months with its first 10,000 followers. The Amantes de Estrada brand was born and with it the opportunity to focus on the influencer marketing industry. Rafael quit his job as a real estate consultant to take care of all the partnerships and administrative tasks, while Veronica started her first job as a social media manager. They set a price for each promotion, joined an agency to help them get more clients, and focused on building their community on Instagram and TikTok.
“The community is amazing! When we need some recommendations, they always give us great suggestions. They watch everything about our trips and ask a lot of questions. I love to see when they are traveling to the places that we went and mentioning us, or the feedback of our clients after we leave an accommodation, and they start to receive more booking requests” — Veronica said.
“But, of course, this job has its challenges. For instance, there are just two of us to do everything. We need to record, edit, communicate with clients, drive the car or book other kinds of transportation, engage the community, and look for accommodations to go. That’s a lot and while we do all the tasks, sometimes it is hard to find some free time to chill. Even with this busy schedule, I would never change my routine to come back to a corporate job, I love what I do now” — Rafael explained
Finally, Amantes de Estrada are starting to see an income. Back in March 2021, the first post on TikTok had 18,000 views, today their posts can reach 9 million views with around 33,000 likes and 452 comments. Already this year, they have gained 200,000 followers on Instagram. It might seem like a lot of numbers to start getting a reasonable income, but they have done this in around 2 years.
Don’t wait to start
The Amantes de Estrada path is a dream for many young people who see social media as a potential career. It can be hard to create as strong a brand as they did, but it is not impossible. If you start now, using your skills and some free tools like Capcut and Canva to edit content, you will be one step closer to achieving great results.
If you need more inspiration, there are more tips to start using social media as an influencer:
- Find your audience: as Amantes de Estrada did this by talking about accommodation and trips for couples. You just need to select a topic that you really like.
- Define the platforms: start with one or maybe two, choose them based on your style, and what fits better with the type of content that you want to share.
- Create a content strategy and be consistent: What do you want to talk to your audience about? How many times per week do you want to talk with them? What is your USP for this audience? Bring your differential and always keep them updated!
With these three tips, you already have a path to start your personal brand! Now, let us know: Do you think that social media is useful to build your career plan? Let us know in comments below!
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminating the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
