If you're trying to build a social media career or just dipping your toes into content creation, let media update's Joreke Kleynhans coach you towards influencer success. This article guides you all the way from setting up your accounts to keeping your audience happy.
Despite changes in the influencer marketing sphere, reports show that 2025 will be a fruitful year for influencers once again.
The influencer marketing industry is projected to grow by 13.7% this year, and almost 60% of brands plan to make more room in the budget for influencer marketing.
Not to mention that nano-influencers are in increasing demand, which is a great sign for influencers just starting out — like you! Follow this guide, and you'll be A-away.
Choose Your Niche
A niche is an overarching theme that your content will follow. It is not necessarily a hard-set rule but rather a general guideline to help you make more cohesive content.
Choosing a niche on social media is crucial because every other choice you make for your brand and social media career will depend on it. Lifestyle is the most popular niche for influencers, but there are many other options available, like:
- travel
- health
- fashion
- finance
- parenting
- beauty
- business
- food
- gaming
- design, or
- crafts.
At the end of the day, almost anything can be considered a niche. However, when you want to make social media your career by being an influencer, you have to choose a profitable niche.
A profitable niche will be a topic that is popular enough that people search for it and are interested in it but has low competition.
Prep Your Platforms
Based on your chosen niche, you can choose a few platforms where you will create and share content. Photos and other visual content do quite well on Instagram. Video, on the other hand, performs best on TikTok and YouTube. If your niche requires more written posting, LinkedIn and X might be the best platforms to start on.
It's never good to place all of your eggs in one basket, so posting on at least two platforms can help secure your career. Additionally, you can cross-post and promote yourself on multiple platforms to reach a wider audience!
Once your platforms are chosen, it's time to set them up for success. Ensure that your username on each platform is either your name or something that relates to your niche. "@lilypad1999" is not the way to go if your name is Sophie and you create car-related content.
To make it easier for followers and brands to find you on different platforms, your usernames should be the same across the board. If that's not possible, try to keep them as similar as possible.
Next, write a bio for each platform. Your bio should be informative and give potential followers and collaborators a clear idea of what they can expect from you online. Use this space to write about who you are and what content you create. If you have any relevant qualifications or titles that can contribute to your credibility online, this is where you'll want to include them.
Lastly, do a scrape and clean. Remove any posts you would not want your future audience or sponsors to see. Think about what brands see and consider when they want to work with an influencer. If your profile conveys a message that doesn't align with that of a brand's, it will most likely choose another influencer over you. This means, yes, that questionable 2012 clubbing photo should probably be confined to the archives from now on.
Don't remove all of your old posts, though. If they cannot negatively impact your influencing career, it's better to have them on your page to increase your online credibility.
Create Content In a Way that Grows Your Audience
What does that even mean?
Social media algorithms favour accounts that post consistently because such accounts can improve other users' experience of the platform.
Finding a rhythm for posting can be challenging at first. The key to consistent posting is not trying to be a hero. In other words, don't post seven times in your first week, exhaust your inspiration and leave your account out in the cold for three weeks to recover. Instead, choose a frequency that suits your capacity and stick to it, whether that's twice a week or twice a day.
Creating shareable content will also save you lots of time and effort in growing your audience. Shareable content can be anything, as long as it provides value to your audience. You should aim to create content that makes people think, "My sister could use this video for her new hobby," or "My friend is going to relate to this so much!"
Setting the goal of creating shareable content will not only help to grow your audience but also keep you accountable in creating high-quality content that serves your current audience.
Find and Choose Income Streams
Once your social media profiles are established (this does not have to mean that you have millions of followers), it's time to find and choose income streams.
There are a few different ways of making money on social media, with the two most prominent methods being sponsorships and affiliate marketing.
To learn about affiliate marketing, read How to Earn an Income Through Affiliate Marketing on Social Media.
As for sponsorships, there's not necessarily a single best way to gain these partnerships. Sometimes, brands will contact influencers and initiate sponsorship deals, so include your contact details in your bio to make it easier for possible sponsors to reach you.
Sitting around waiting for brands to discover you is not productive, though. Use your time to find and secure sponsorship deals with your favourite brands. Search for brands you like and already support, and contact them to let them know you are available to promote them. Follow up if you don't get a reply within two weeks.
Additionally, you can join an influencer agency. If you choose this path, your agency will be responsible for finding and negotiating sponsorship deals on your behalf. This does mean that you will have a bit less freedom to collaborate with just any brand, and the agency will take a commission for each deal it gets you. Depending on your schedule and the size of your audience, this could be a time-saving option.
Balance Sponsored and Organic Content
Once your influencing career takes off, you might get busy and have lots of sponsorship agreements to fulfill. However, for the long-term success of your social media accounts, it's important to maintain the correct balance of sponsored content to organic content.
Audiences get tired of having sponsored content fill up their feeds, so you need to ensure that your audience stays engaged with your content and that they maintain their trust in you. Do this by making at least four or five organic posts for each sponsored post that appears on your page.
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*Image courtesy of Canva