I will never forget the first time I heard that someone in the US could make a living by blogging. That was 8 years ago. 5 years later I found out not only does this work in Europe, but it was actually possible it in my own life. After 5 years of running my blog, my blog got huge, I published 6 books, and I was able to make a living off blogging. But there's always a next step and a motivating factor for every successful blogger. For me it was seeing stories about bloggers from Europe who were experiencing high levels of success like Kristina Bazan, Chiara Ferragni or the handsome Mariano Di Vaio who when I saw him at LAX last October, I could only stand dumbfounded instead of saying hello. That's what social media does. You pick your heroes and you start building them into your daily life. They become part of your story, as familiar as best friends, but you forget how to talk when you see them in person.
But what happens when these bloggers achieve such high levels of success? They all start out working alone in a kind of one-boy-band structure, but suddenly they have a manager by their side who manages their travel itinerary and brings in big deals with sponsors. Daniel Saynt, futurist, startup advisor, founder of influencer casting agency Sociallyte was sharing insights about all of this over a breakfast in Soho, Manhattan.
1.Exclusivity
While I was in Manhattan I met with several influencer agencies. Most of them don't require exclusivity, and there are several who only work with Instagrammers who have a smaller following. But when I ask Daniel about this, he says, Sociallyte asks for exclusivity."We represent 70 talents exclusively. We have a couple big ones signed, for example, Adam Galla and Jessica Wang. We have a really good net identifying talents early. We look at their content, we have interviews with them. If we feel like someone can actually grow, we start working with them. Now we are becoming more selective, we get a lot of applications."
2.Education
When most bloggers start out, they may not plan on making a living off of blogging, or building a brand. They're just doing what they love, and one day they realize the business potential in it. Of course, there are also bloggers who are completely clear about the next steps and the goals from the beginning. In both cases when an agency provides the necessary tools and education, it can change the game and help the blogger's brand grow faster.
"We teach them how to use an editorial calendar, we teach them about apps, we make sure they care about the trending topics, we connect them with photographers and videographers, we make sure we provide great products for their content, we have a whole travel program, so when they fly around the world they don't pay at all, plus they get paid for travelling. We have a division just dedicated to brand opportunities, we develop all these deals."
3. Management = Growth
Just imagine when a blogger is handling everything on her own--all the press releases, events, sponsor deals, finding the perfect photographer, booking the next trip and talking about prices with sponsors. At some point in a blogger's career, it may become too much for one person to handle. That's when a manager comes into the picture.
"Our talents work 80 hours a week. They're constantly on their phone, they lose relationships because of it."
says Daniel. Can you imagine how they manage to balance their private life while there's so much to do? I guess that's the reason why most influencers have their boyfriends as a photographer or team member- we see a couple of examples where it worked out, and far more more when it didn't (just see Kristina Bazan and James Chardon's story).
"Every talent who works with us gets 3 people. There is someone who is dedicated to the talent, managing their deals, dedicated to sales, brand outreach, and manages all income, and someone who manages execution, who makes sure they know when they have to post, helps with copywriting, manages their calendars."
It's doable, when you have a team supporting you.
4.Fake it till you make it
This is the most important mindset behind building a personal brand. Even Scooter Braun says the same about his beginnings to Lewis Howes in his interview :
"I would spend all the money I made on Thursday night parties, on Tuesday night parties where I was the only white boy. They let me in for free because they were so amused that who is this white boy? They saw me poppin' the bottles, hanging out with these girls, and I wasn't drinking anything. I sent them bottles. And they said: "What are you doing? I wanna come to your party!"
Blogging is the same in the very beginning. You can have 10,000 followers and this can be enough to have coach clients, but what you do is you fake it till you make it.
5. Fake likes - Fake bags - Fake lives
You don't have to be professional to see whether a blogger's followers are fake or not. But there are more and more influencers who have millions of followers, and not all of them people are buying likes. It's still possible to grow your followers organically.
"Of course, a lot of people buy fake likes and followers. It's doable that way, it's not as authentic, but sometimes you can catch up with that and finally numbers will make sense, but it's hard. It's so easy to do and it's so much money to make. And I think that's the biggest problem we face right now. "
6.Authencity
But what happens when all the success goes to a blogger's head? When they are finally living the life they imagined for themselves, but somewhere along the way they forget the most important thing: to stay humble. Some of them forget about authenticity and how important it is to maintaining an audience and a brand.
"Sometimes what happens is that you give attention to people, in the beginning they are really grateful but later as they see how they grow, they lose the authenticity that the audience really appreciates. We've seen a lot of talent with a bad reputation, there are influencers we no longer work with no matter how big they are."
7.Handle criticism
The blogging world is not for everyone. Part of blogging and connecting with an audience is sharing aspects of your private life, which can lead to becoming the target of trolls and online bullies. It happens to all high profile bloggers. I remember one blogger who got hate was Chiara Ferragni just for breaking up with her boyfriend and dating someone new. The first time she posted about it, the amount of hate she got was insane.
"Everyone was so upset with her. You kind of just deal with it. She was one of the first bloggers who had a hate site about her. When she started growing in Italy, she was on MTV, and people were like her bags are fake, what is true a lot of times in the beginning. But that's how you do it. You fake it till you make it. That's how stuff happens.
You don't have 10 000 dollars for a Louis Vuitton bag, but you just start out with a fake bag. It works very very quickly. It looks good, luxury, and you post it more often, the brands will pay attention."
With this kind of reaction to a simple breakup, it's best to take everything with a gain of salt. Blogger Mariano Di Vaio has the right idea. He once said in an interview that since he doesn't understand most of the languages his followers speak, he doesn't understand the comments too, so he doesn't care about negative criticism.
8. Transition from blogger to a multi-million business
The thing that all the agencies try to avoid is losing talent when they simply get too big and break off to start their own team. Of course, in the beginning the agency plays an important role in connecting the blogger to big brands and opening doors to marketing opportunities, but eventually the blogger can probably do a lot of this on her own. "I can go to medium, like Adam Galla, or Chiara Ferragni, and a lot of marketing directors don't care about the influencers, all they care about are the results. That's just started that influencers need managers more. But later the influencers realize, 'I can just hire a team.' We work on ways to prevent that, because we want to work with them, but sometimes it's hard."