How to Start Your Influencer Business From Scratch

Welcome to The Spark Show! In this episode, I’ll be talking about how to start your influencer business from scratch. This is for those of you who are brand new and are just starting to get serious about creating your online business, growing your following and monetizing. 

I’ll be covering: 

• The 3 things you need to know before starting your influencer business
• The #1 mistake most new influencers make and how to avoid it
• My 3 biggest influencer lessons that you can learn from 

Let’s talk about the 3 things you need to know before starting your influencer business. I like to call this the ABCs of Influence because this is the foundation for everything. This is where all my students start because most influencers who don’t know their ABCs usually don’t grow or monetize. 

1. Audience

You need to know who your audience is. You need to know who you wanna help so you can communicate with them effectively. If you already have an audience, you can see who they are in your analytics (if you have a Creator or Business account), you can see things like gender, age and location. 

You’ll be able to see if who is following you is who you want to be following you and if it’s not, it means you have work to do on your branding and content.

2. Brand

As an influencer, you have a brand. Your business is a brand and you need to define who you are as a brand. Most influencers skip this step altogether and just start posting stuff and then they’re wondering why they’re not growing and monetizing. 

Think of all the brands you follow and buy. It’s usually because you align with their core values, you resonate with them on an emotional level. Sometimes it’s not even because they have the best product, but you agree with what they stand for. 

So, before you even start your influencer business, you have to define your brand identity and identify your brand’s core values, write your brand’s mission statement and your unique value proposition (yes, this is all marketing talk but necessary for a successful brand). 

I have trainings on this inside The Spark Society where my students are getting a lot of clarity on who they are as a brand. 

3. Content

As influencers, our content is our bread and butter. Without creating content, we won’t be able to attract followers, grow and monetize. So, you have to have a content strategy in place. Posting stuff and hoping people like it is not a strategy. Posting content, crossing your fingers and hoping a brand will reach out to you someday is not a strategy. 

You have to be strategic with your content and make sure it’s communicating the right message to your followers and to brands who wanna work with you. If you’re selling products and services, your content is supposed to create curiosity, desire and demand for what you are selling. 

Before you even start thinking about growth and monetizing, you have to make sure you know your ABCs of Influence. 

The #1 Mistake Most New Influencers Make 

A lot of influencers out there are worried about posting and putting themselves out there and about what people are gonna say. They get stuck in the details and trying to get things right and perfect and sometimes they don’t even end up posting it. 

They overcomplicate things by wanting to have a blog, a podcast, a YouTube, an Instagram, a Pinterest, a TikTok, and all of these things...and then nothing comes out of it. They get stuck in the overwhelm. 

And that’s the biggest mistake most new influencers make is getting stuck in the things that don’t matter - other people’s opinions and trying to do so many things at once. 

So, if you’re just starting out, just focus on ONE thing. For some of you, that could just mean one platform, like Instagram, and then once you’re doing that consistently then you can add another platform like a blog that you create content for once a week. 

If you’re stuck because you’re afraid of what people will say, you gotta make a choice. You can stay safe and small with no one judging you or you can put yourself out there and help people. No one who helped a lot of people did it without avoiding judgment. They are going to judge you anyway, that’s human nature. 

So with that, I want to share with you my biggest lessons as an influencer and entrepreneur for the last 5 years:

You have to have a strategy and monetization plan in place. 

If you’re just starting out, you probably don’t have a strategy and a monetization plan in place. But, if you wanna start a business, it means you need to know how you’re going to make money. If you’re not making money, it’s not a business - it’s a hobby. 

Most businesses don’t make money right away, but you at least have an idea of how and when it’s going to happen. Most influencers skip this step and just start posting content, cross their fingers and hope they start making money somehow. You gotta get familiar with all the potential revenue streams (because brand deals is just one of them) that can help your business make money. 

This is what I help my students with inside The Spark Society - having a success path so if they do wanna work for themselves full-time and be their own boss, they can do that. But, you have to have a plan in place! 

Done is better than perfect.

I’m a recovering perfectionist and I’ve realized that done is better than perfect. When you become aware that there’s no such thing as perfect, then you stop chasing that impossible reality. Listen to Episode 11 of The Spark Show where I talk about perfection being a scam. I know a lot of us struggle with this, but the moment you stop aiming for perfect, you are free. 

It’s not about me, it’s about them. 

This is a big one. Sometimes we get into our own heads of the way we want things to be. But, what we don’t realize is most of our followers don’t care that our hair is messed up or that the photo doesn’t show our good side. They follow us because of our personality, our values, our message. Because what we post is not about us and what we want, at the end of the day, it’s about helping people and making an impact. It’s about them. 

Listen to the full episode here: 

Watch the Masterclass

thespark.show/class

Listen to Previous Episodes: 

The Dos and Don'ts of Working for Free

Let Your Menstrual Cycle Guide You featuring Cassandra Wilder

How to Use Astrology in Business featuring Tarra Lee

How to Create Content at Home

Diversity in Influencer Marketing featuring Chris Han

                     Connect with Gwen Lane

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