My experiment of being a Wellness Influencer
Anyone who has lived in today’s day and age knows about being an influencer! There 3 key types of people generating content on Instagram — People in career of fame and popularity, Content Creators, Business owners and rest are consumers. It is said that there are no free lunches in life and that is true in social media. You are paying the most valuable, most rare and limited asset in the whole wide world — your time!
I saw a lot of people having a good time on social media and did not know much about being an influencer, a term absent in my vocabulary. I was enamoured by how men / women alike were so vulnerable and shared their lives and thoughts openly on a public platform, a concept which is alien to me. I am quite a private person. But to live a life so freely without judgement seemed like an open door to a new path. Slowly and steadily while I shared my thoughts openly, I understood that others posted well curated images and thoughts which helped with brand creation and increased their PR. While I peddled honesty, I slowly realised that this was a different world, wherein one starts with building an audience and when you build a large enough following, bam! you monetise it via collaborations! I wanted to be open and honest about and hence created a public profile and worked towards building a following. The problem with living a public life is what part of you becomes public and what part of you remains private is an unknown question! Are you posting to create a certain brand image or are you posting to share a moment which captures pure joy. It’s quite a dilemma!
In this world, dreams and ambitions which are away from 9–5 jobs are celebrated. It was a barbie world wherein everything had to be perfect with some vulnerability added! You had to have a perfect job, perfect family life, perfect romance, travels included with the love of good food added but without gaining weight with a dash of spirituality added. It’s a modern world and suddenly, the world which offered honesty was curated and the grid was monitored and collaborations were done with brands which resonated the page!!
I love folks who are honest about it on the platform from the get go and appreciate folks who are honest about monetizations from the start. And that’s exactly what I attempted to do! Last year I changed the platform again only for sharing my experiences and stopped accepting any collaboration requests that came from brands. This was only because I evaluated the role of social media in my life and this is exactly what you should do as well. Don’t think too much, dive in, experience the world and then decide for yourself, if you would like to be a part of this industry.
But this experience helped me with quite a few things and these are my learnings:
- Creating a personal brand — Having a personal brand and knowing what you do and stand for is so important in the world where we are constantly trying to differentiate ourselves.
- Believe in yourself — Hundreds of people are doing the same thing! Remember what you bring to the table
- Have a creative outlet — This activity helped me with a creative outlet for myself. I was experimenting, ideating, however, toward the end — the collab part which is a huge hit for many people, didn’t quite resonate with me. Freebees didn’t excite me as I am a very selective person and I am quite love my day job to have looked at influencer platform for money or a first choice of work. Maybe freebees would have been exciting if I was a luxury travel influencer and had many choices.
- Always create a personal and business profile separately. Your friends and family should never feel like they are a part of an image you are creating.
- It helps you take on different identities. It’s quite fun that way.
- Decide the role of social media in your life actively.
I say never say never. maybe tomorrow I may change my mind on topic and instead of sharing my views in general, I may want to monetize it.
All in all, dive in and experiment!
Share your experiments with social media! Looking forward to hearing them!
