Alex the Ryerson Commuter Student/Instagram Influencer
Social media for me, is a job, specifically within the Instagram platform, but its not my life. I know its weird to say, but I am what you call an “influencer” or a “blogger”. I personally don’t see myself as those titles, as I simply just love photography and expressing myself visually. But in turn, Instagram has become a job and a source of income for myself. With it becoming a job, metrics of my posts, and my followers have become important to me as they are important to the brands I work with. But they do not effect me or my sense of self.
Little background of Instagram on my end: A brand reaches out to me, regarding a paid, or non-paid collaboration. They give me some details and then ask if I would like to move forward. By moving forward, I usually sign an agreement, and then am sent the product to be posted on my Instagram. After the terms of the collaboration have been fulfilled on my end to the companies or brands needs/wants, I am paid, or asked if I would like to do another collaboration — if they were happy with my posts, of course.
Brands and companies are very picky regarding who they chose to collaborate with, therefore I am usually asked the metrics of where my followers are predominately from, the percentage of my followers from each country that brand ships to, my average reach, and engagement, etc. As these questions are vital to me getting the collaboration or not, they are valuable to me in the sense of my career. As these metrics are valuable to me in that spectrum, that does not mean that they influence my understanding of value as a whole — and they most definitely don’t. Instagram is just one tiny piece of my life, and its a way that I have been able to express myself, by also making some money in the process.
This in any way has not affected my sense of self.
Many people ask me, friends, family, or even strangers, if I feel different since working as an “influencer” or whatever I do. And I can honestly say, I don’t. There are for sure some perks, but I still live in the middle of nowhere, happily, with my family, working another part time job at a tennis bubble — simply because tennis is another passion of mine, am a full-time student, and commute 2.5 hours every day to get to school, and back home. I don’t live differently, and I have not changed as a person simply because I post photos on Instagram. If Instagram had the ability to affect my sense of self, there is no way I would ever post on it again. I promise you I’m not saying this for the purpose of this blog, but because I actually mean it. My followers don’t make me a better person, neither does the brands I work with. What makes me a better and more fufilled person is me being around my real friends, travelling and experiencing life with my family, passing a psychology class I had a 36% in going in to the final exam, etc. Those things affect my sense of self. While making me a happier, and more fulfilled me, not my metrics, and not social media.
:)
