It Pays to Post: Making Cents of Social Media
How to become a profitable social media influencer.
By Gregg Cagle
If you’ve got a serious social media following on any major platform like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, or Twitter, chances are it’s worth not just bragging rights. We’re talking cold hard cash!
In 2011, Rae Holliday lost his job working in insurance as an adjuster on Wall Street. But before he could find another gig, he received a surprising email from executives ay Interactive One who noticed his blog Stuff Fly People Like. With 35k followers, Holliday, 33, and other contributors write about everything from fashion to music and everything in between from an entertainment perspective.
“I couldn’t believe I was getting paid for just my thoughts,” says Holliday who formed a partnership with Interactive One and now has his own office and salary. He attends premieres and awards shows, mingles with celebrities and travels all over the country; last year he received the BET Next In Class award. “I had just been laid off and to do something I always wanted to do was a blessing. It came at the perfect time because I was behind with all my bills.”
Like Holliday, many of today’s top social media influencers rose from obscurity and are now in a unique position to collaborate with brands to make a living doing what they do best, creating and sharing content to their engaged audiences.
Nash Grier (10m), The Fat Jewish (9.6m), Joanna Gaines (4.2m), are some of the biggest influencers today along with Zach King who has a whopping seventeen million (17m) followers. All these influencers have deals with major brands for their own to shows. The beauty industry uses huge influencers as well to broaden their reach to consumers. This includes Ingrid Nilsen who collaborates with CoverGirl, and Michelle Phan who consults with multiple beauty companies. Both have a combined total of 11 million subscribers on YouTube.
Publishing content across social media channels can be a hobby for some, and a full/part-time career for others. Most influencers have discovered various ways to monetize their passion and turn it into a profession. The amount influencers get paid for influencer marketing in particular depends on several factors, including but not limited to the influencer’s going rate, scope of work, platform on which the influencer is publishing, the influencer’s niche, and one of the most important things is the influencer’s reach. Depending on the number of followers and relevance social media influencers can make anywhere from $175 to $5000.00 per post or image.
Andre Kendall, 29, works as a human resource manager in Detroit by day, but becomes KendallKyndall on evenings and weekends, giving his own brand of commentary on the VH1 franchises Love and Hip-Hop.
“I’m home on a Monday with nothing to do and watching Love and Hip-Hop,” says Kendall. “I saw something which was funny and posted about it on Instagram; the response was crazy. When I woke up in the morning I had literally thousands of new followers.” His following went from 57k in June to 675k just nine months later.
Each brand’s Instagram influencer marketing strategy depends on the company’s industry, and the relationship between the Instagrammer and their audience. Most of the decisions and what a social media influencer gets paid is based on analytics.
For marketers he fits in the “key demographic” which by definition is an audience segment that consist of 18-to-34 year olds in major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Houston, Chicago and Atlanta. Each brand’s Instagram influencer marketing strategy depends on the company’s industry, and the relationship between the Instagrammer and their audience. Most of the decisions and what a social media influencer gets paid is based on analytics.
Michelle James, Vice President of worldwide strategic branding for BET, is a huge fan of KendallKyndall. “He is something special and will do great things,” James says, “we are looking to work with him, but have to find the right project that will fit with us and him.”
Following the interview, KendallKyndall was then tapped to host the American Black Film Festival in Los Angeles. The show aired in February.
But when all is said and done, having a ton of followers does not make you an influencer and not all influencers successfully make money.
Keith Rawlins, 26, a father from Waterbury, Connecticut has over 100k followers on his Instagram. He hopes to become an influencer though he has not been contacted by any company or gotten paid. His content is just a bit “edgier,” and this may be too big a pill for larger companies to swallow.
“I know my content is explicit filled with smoking weed, me half-dressed and a lot of vulgarity,” says Rawlins. “I started out wanting to make money but now I am the point of no return and will just use the gram for entertainment and nothing more.”
So, what are the ingredients needed to be a profitable and effective social media influencer?
Here are a few basic tips to get you started!
- Be seen: From Twitter chats to Google Plus hangouts, Instagram post to in-person social media conferences, there is no better way to become a social media influencer, in addition to becoming a content creator and creating your own community, than by interacting with others, learning their needs, and helping them. (But remember, with great influence comes great responsibility!)
- Engage, interact and build relationships: Build a personal brand that is authentic and transparent…and above all else, be true to yourself, passion is a key.
- Have an active, focused and useful presence: The number of people publishing content on social networks is growing at a staggering rate. Standing out means not trying to be all things to all people. Stand for something specific and focus on going deep on that topic with your messaging, engagement, content and connections. Become the best answer for what you want to be influential about, and stand out by being unique.
- Persistence: Create great content that solves pain points and work on building as much earned attention on social media that is global and engaged.
- Publish quality content, consistently: If you want to establish yourself as an influencer and an authority, you simply must write more! Get your body of work out there in as many formats as possible: written (blog posts, email newsletter, social media posts), spoken (public speaking), audio (podcast, radio show), video (live and recorded), etc. Find the platforms that most relate with you and where you can reach most of your audience and be consistent.
Remember, at the end of the day, being a social media influencer is to be in a worldwide popularity contest conducted minute-by-minute and dollar-by-dollar.
