Guide To Being An Influencer (Win!)

A past VITA featured influencer with 367K followers on Instagram and counting, Cara Jourdan certainly knows her stuff when it comes to making it work on social media. Now, Cara has created and is offering her top tips and advice on becoming a influencer in her new downloadable guide, the Business of Blogging ($29). We chatted with Cara to find out more, and are giving three of you a chance to win this invaluable resource for yourselves! —Vita Daily

Hi Cara! Congrats on releasing your Guide to Being an Influencer. What was the impetus for creating this guide, and who is it for?

Thank you so much! I wrote The Business of Blogging: A Guide to Being an Instagram Influencer and Succeeding in Social Media Marketing after working as a social media influencer for a decade and getting so many questions about how the business actually works, how I was able to work full-time as an influencer, how I connected with companies and organized trips, and so on. When I began as an influencer, Instagram wasn’t even around yet, and for me, it was about online blogs and connecting with others by commenting on other blogs and attending events. Today, it is a commonly known occupation and there are even classes being run about how to be an influencer at Harvard, so it has come such a long way! I have been lucky enough to have worked in the industry and gone through the changes of having it be something very uncommon to something people are now aspiring to grow up and do, and I wanted to write a guide outlining my experiences and the (sometimes tough!) lessons I learned along the way, giving those wanted to go into this industry the tools and insight needed to actually succeed. The Guide is for anyone and everyone who wants to be a creator/social media influencer; it covers everything you need to know about creating a business in this field, from how to choose your niche and create content to tips and tricks about getting ahead and standing out from the crowd, to establishing pricing for your content. It also includes several templates giving you examples of how to form an email to reach out to brands, for example, or how to create an invoice. This guide is the best tool you can have when it comes to building a social media following and turning your social media hobby into a business! If you want to do it for some extra income on the side or as a full time job, I give you the information you need to know about finding success online.

Describe the guide to us: what sort of info/advice/resources will we gain from it?

The guide covers everything from how to choose a niche, how to create content (do you need a photographer or just your phone), how often to post on social media, how to read your social media insights and understand when your audience is most engaged to how to set your pricing, how to find companies to work with that fit into your niche and how to reach out to them to how to invoice for your work and stay organized on the back end. It also includes some personal tips & tricks that I have learned along the way along with templates that I use that will make it a breeze to send out an email to a potential brand partner with my email reach out template, or give you an idea of where to start for invoicing with my invoice template.

In your early days as a blogger/influencer, what were some of the biggest challenges you faced, and how did you overcome them?

It was such a wild experience going from working a full-time job as a fashion buyer to running my own business as a blogger, especially because when I began, it was not a commonly understood industry. I began when brands were mostly gifting influencers with clothing or items, not paying for content, and when the idea of using a blogger for marketing wasn’t really something brands did at the time. My biggest challenge was breaking into an industry that was still very new and unknown. I saw the potential, however, and slowly but surely gained a following and connected with brands and people who were ahead of the curve and saw potential in using bloggers (now influencers) to market and create content for their companies.

As your following grew (and grew!), what sorts of realizations did you have regarding/about the business side of things?

As my growth and understanding of the industry was a slow growth, as it was such a new industry and there were no guides or many other bloggers at the time to reach out to and discuss the ins and outs of the business with, I made a lot of mistakes and learned a lot of lessons during my career! In turning my passion of creating content into a business, I read a lot of books and chatted with other business owners (my dad was a huge help for how to organize receipts, taxes, income versus expenses and so on as a business owner himself!) I learned on the go about how to actually take income that was coming in and organizing it for long term growth. The lessons I learned over 10 years are exactly what I am sharing in my guide, hoping that those starting now can skip over the difficult challenge and have the blueprints on how to actually create a business out of their social media content.

Without giving away too much, what are some of the best nuggets or tips included in your guide?

There are five chapters in this guide, each one covering essential knowledge on how to create a business with social media. From where to begin, which covers discovering your niche, building your content and growing your audience, to creating a brand and understanding your statistics to discovering and connecting with brands to business tools such as how to set your pricing, how to reach out to brands and how to create an invoice to industry tools that I have found useful and how to create your own products (for example, I created and sell a hair iron called the XO Styling Iron along with presets called Cara Jourdan Presets that bring in additional income), there is something for everyone who is wanting to make an income from social media. I also believe the templates are a huge help for those starting out. They give you a starting point for reaching out to brands and creating invoices, which are two huge parts of working in the industry!

If you could speak to young Cara, just starting out in the social media space, what advice would you give to her?

Ohhh young Cara! I would stay, organize your receipts and use spreadsheets to organize your income and expenses from the beginning! I had to play a lot of catch up when it came to keeping the ins and outs of this business organized, so I am hoping those who purchase this PDF will get a hand up on this part and not have any stress when it comes to knowing how to run the business side of being a content creator. I truly believe there is a place for everyone who wants to be an influencer and want them to know that you can do it from anywhere in the world; you don’t have to be from a big city or have tonnes of fancy clothes or go on lots of fancy trips to be successful! It IS a TONNE of work, and you do have to have discipline and drive, and this guide will give you a good idea of what exactly is involved as well before you jump into the industry, so it is an essential read for anyone starting up, dreaming or who have already begun down this road.

carajourdan.com

Win! 1 of 3 Business of Blogging Guides by Cara Jourdan!

Congrats Lana H. of Beausejour, MB, Emily G. of North Vancouver, BC, and Lorraine G. of Vancouver, BC, each of whom will receive a copy of Cara Jourdan’s new Business of Blogging Guide! Please note: if you are the winner, you will receive a DM (direct message) in Instagram directly from @vitadaily.ca. Please be wary of fake accounts, which often use similar handles with an extra or missing letter, number or symbol. We will never ask for a payment or for your credit card number, and we will never ask you to click through a link. If you are unsure whether you have been contacted, via Instagram, by us or a fake account, email us before responding.