I have really been meaning to start documenting my journey in my blogging/influencing adventure. Heck, I even took celebratory 1K followers photos, complete with gold mylar 1K balloons. One thousand Instagram followers may not sound like an accomplishment by any means but from where I was coming from (a shy, private, major introvert), it was no small feat. Today, I am at 1559.
I feel like I am skipping over a lot of valuable information by just starting today. Perhaps I will go back and share some of the major initial set-up struggles someday. It’s easy for my brain to freeze up at the thought of playing catch up and just not start. So, I will begin from today for now.
This week, a fellow ‘influencer’ friend and I were laughing over the common discovery that almost immediately after posting a reel, our follower count would go down. It might make you think we are making crap content. But, believe me when I say, we put so much time and effort into our content creations. Probably way more than we should or it deserves. But of course, you see the big-time, successful accounts posting videos with perfect hair, makeup, and impeccable lighting. Of course we strive to match that, or even exceed it. I’m sure I am making major mistakes though. And through this blogging/influencer adventure, I have learned to have a fond respect and appreciation for the learning process.
There is so much ‘do this’, ‘don’t do that’, ‘post this kind of content’ and talk of what the algorithm likes to grow your following. Right now, I am trying to be open and try out different things to see both what I like as well as what might work well. As a result, I don’t like my current page aesthetic but sometimes, when you are just starting, being willing to do and try different things might be helpful. I definitely am not one of the ones that came out of the gate posting super consistent, gorgeous content from day 1. I am an old dog trying to learn new tricks here! 😉
What worked really well for me this week was video I took from my weekend trip to the mall. My trip was to return a couple things and I ended up trying on some cute things I saw. (And made some purchases.) While trying on, I took video in the dressing room showing the pieces which I was able to get content from all week. Splicing the videos together, I made one long video that I posted on my YouTube channel, which I reposted here in my coordinating blog post. Still frames from the video, I made into picture posts. I posted the short, individual try-ons on my TikTok; one per piece. I have posted both videos and still frames over on my LTK where I linked the pieces.
If I could do the same each week, I think churning out consistent content would be so much easier. Of course the time commitment makes my head spin sometimes but I just turn to my Motivate app and listen to a few audios and suck it up that this is what it takes to grow!