Happy Monday, loves!
I hope you had a great weekend! My husband, brother and I took the trip down to The Flower Fields (near San Diego) yesterday. It’s a 3 1/2 hour drive from where I live so it was quite the day trip, but worth it! There were literally millions of flowers everywhere! Such a dream. The outlets were nearby so we went there for some lunch and a quick shopping trip and made our way up to Rodeo Dr since my brother and I had never seen it in person (so touristy, I know haha!). It was quite a fun day! Check out my IG stories for highlights 😉
Anyway, while we haven’t left for our trip quite yet, I’m using the day for necessary packing and obligatory errands which pretty much is a full time job in itself lol!) so I’ll be starting the guest posts a bit early. Today, Yasmin from Yasmin Ebrahimi is sharing the challenges of being a fashion influencer from her perspective. She shares some interesting points that I think a lot of of fashion influencers (and non-influencers) can relate with; myself included. Read her thoughts below!
Confessions | The Challenges of Being a Fashion Influencer
As we move towards the regeneration and renewal of nature, spring sets the perfect opportunity for us to take a moment and reflect on the past year and learn from our experiences. I started blogging and creating content as a fashion influencer last year right around this time, and as challenging, humbling and yet rewarding this past year has been, I would love to take this time to share my REAL experience with you!
To give you an overview, I got into the influencer marketing realm over three years ago as the Marketing Manager at Sidebuy, an influencer marketing platform connecting brands with relevant fashion influencers and enabling mutually-beneficial collaboration between the two. To find out more about my background in influencer marketing, you can tune in to my podcast interview with Brand it Girl. After a couple of years in the business, I decided to create and curate content around my interests: fashion, beauty, travel and fitness. Having been in the business for a while, I was aware of the challenges to a certain extent and although reluctant at first, I decided to take on the challenge. I bought my domain, created my website from scratch on WIX, bought a good camera and with the help of my boyfriend as my photographer embarked my journey as a content creator.
Throughout the past year, I have gained many experiences that I am highly grateful for, but today I want to share with you the side of fashion influencer marketing that not a lot of people talk about. The side that is not observable through our glossy and stunningly-filtered Instagram posts.
After a couple of months, when I saw exponential growth in my audience count and receiving requests for sponsored campaigns, things took a more serious turn. Taking photos on beautiful days during city strolls turned into extensive (sometimes up to 4-hour) photoshoots to capture the best shot. Some days, we couldn’t even get the perfect shot.
As a full-time employee, I have only a couple of hours a week to create content and I also have to allocate some time to pitch to clients, manage communications, prepare for campaigns and etc. The photo is the final product of all the hard work you put into the campaign and if it’s not in line with your initial expectation, it can frustrate you immensely. There were many days where I would lose my cool with my partner who kindly takes my photos, or feel insecure about how I look in a certain photo, or just get so overwhelmed with the whole process that I just wanted to quit. These are the realities of being an influencer where you always have to come up with engaging content for your audience who evolve with you in a highly competitive market. Sometimes, the whole process seemed so superficial that I felt I am losing myself in all the “likes” and “comments”.
Being a fashion influencer comes with its perks but what happens behind the scenes is far from pretty. From falling out with your boyfriend/photographer over less-than-perfect photos, feeling insecure over how you look like, constantly comparing yourself with other stunning influencers, not being able to actually enjoy your moments due to the pressure of creating content, not having sufficient time if you are a full-time employee, feeling too egotistical and conflicted due your incessant obsession over the number of likes and comments are just scratching the surface when it comes to the challenges of being an influencer. Next time you look at some pretty shots on Instagram, think twice. Think about all the hard work and sweat that went into creating and capturing that shot.
With all these challenges, knowing that I have a voice and that I can share my voice with 20,000 like-minded people in a matter of minutes is the number one factor that keeps me going on this journey. Getting to know other talented influencers, partnering up with world-class brands and utilizing my creativity to tell a story in authentically are the other rewards of being an influencer. This year, and to be precise today, marks the day when I set a new resolution. Not allowing the challenges of being an influencer impacting me personally and not losing focus why I started my blog in the first place! Let me know what you think here. If you are an influencer, please share your opinion and let us tell our REAL story!
What challenges have you faced as an fashion influencer (or non-influencer)?
xo
For more thoughts on this subject, make sure to read:
I hope you enjoyed this post! I have so many more amazing guest bloggers lined up over the next two weeks while I’m away, so come back Wednesday and Friday for additional posts and the link up. And don’t forget to follow along on Instagram and stories for behind the scenes of our Hawaiian vacation! Read more about how I met my husband here 😉
