Lifestyle Influencer marketing is quickly becoming a top marketing option for those wanting to stand out from their competition. Both individuals and businesses are looking to utilize the best online marketing tactics and today that involves connecting with an influencer who knows how to sell brands. Social media influencers are proving to be very beneficial when it comes promoting brands and expanding audiences, making many people are wonder if they should try their hand at becoming a professional influencer.
Today’s competitive world of business is one that warrants any brand, whether it’s a new startup or established, to focus on their online presence to help ensure longevity. Whether a brand chooses a micro-influencer, macro-influencer, mega-influencer, or another type altogether, establishing a relationship with someone who has the power to influence the buying decisions of millions of people has proven to be very beneficial in recent years.
According to IZEA Worldwide, many social media consumers actually see the benefits of influencers with 56% of respondents saying they made a purchase based on a sponsored/paid social media post from an influencer. Moreover, 63% said they find the content created by such influencers to be more compelling than scripted advertising.
An increase in demand for social media influencers has some considering if they should choose social media influencing as a part-time or even a full-time career. Before deciding they must understand all that’s involved. While the perks are many, including the possibility of earning millions, becoming a professional influencer requires one to have certain skills and characteristics due to their position of authority.
Influencers must present themselves in a certain way, behave in a certain way when influencing, and professionally engage with their audience.
They must be personable, relatable, creative, and tech-savvy. They must easily adopt an attitude of any brand they’re chosen to represent, as well as any brands they’re interested in representing.
Social media influencers who are most likely to succeed are often planning, preparing, and learning. They understand the importance of knowing their target market, they’ll only use the most effective marketing techniques, and their focus is always on using best practices. Top social media platforms for today’s promotional influencers include Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
Since lifestyle influencers touch on many different life-related topics and tend to have large audience followings, they’re one of the more sought-after types of social media influencers brands are looking for in 2021 and 2022.
Lifestyle influencers have a goal of inspiring their audience by posting on their chosen lifestyle topics. Popular lifestyle niche topics include health, leisure, home, nutrition, personal finances, travel, fitness, green living, eco-living, weight loss, cosmetics, life hacks, culture, parenting, interior design, hobbies, gardening, and work-life balance.
Choosing one or more similar topics allows an influencer to be seen as an expert within that particular lifestyle niche. Or they can offer information and advice on a wide combination of lifestyle topics to be seen as a general lifestyle influencing specialist.
Steps To Become A Social Media Lifestyle Influencer:
- Choose One Or More Social Media Platforms. Lifestyle influencers who want to reach top status must decide which social media platforms are right for them. They must consider the audience as well as the reach of each platform when making this determination. Instagram tends to be a top-performing platform for lifestyle influencers who post images often, while Twitter tends to be best for influencers who offer simple yet informative content. YouTube is the optimal social media platform for lifestyle vloggers.
- Build, Optimize Social Media Profile(s). Potential lifestyle influencers must build a profile that efficiently represents who they are as an influencer. They also must fully optimize it to properly create their personal lifestyle brand. Listing all lifestyle topics addressed allows those who visit to immediately know what this lifestyle influencer is all about. The overall goal of course is to create and cultivate an engaged audience. Profile information ultimately determines who wants to connect and potentially form a partnership.
- Build A Website. To be successful, lifestyle influencers must build their online presence. In addition to creating social media profiles on one or more platforms, building a website allows potential partners to learn even more about an influencer. Influencer websites are essentially one-stop shops where they can let everyone know who they are and what they’re all about. Lifestyle niches often receive their own landing page.
- Plan All Content. Consistency is essential to keeping an audience engaged. Creating a content strategy requires preplanning but is well worth the time spent. While using contests, giveaways, hashtags, keywords, etc. to engage others works well, this type of promotional content should only consist of a small percentage of all content. Planning lifestyle content requires a lot of researching and organizing on the part of the influencer. Many influencers will benefit from using one of the free social media content tools that allow them to plan out and even schedule their lifestyle content.
- Listen To The Audience. One of the most important qualities a lifestyle influencer must have is the ability to listen to their audience. The reason people follow a particular lifestyle influencer is because they want to engage with them. They want to learn everything there is to know about what they’re selling, and in detail. Every follower wants to be seen and made to feel important, making listening a large area of focus for influencers who plan on building an audience of millions.
- Respond In A Timely Manner. Lifestyle influencers must respond to messages received quickly, making social media response time of great importance. When influencers don’t respond in a timely manner it makes the person who sent the message feel ignored. So just how quickly does an influencer need to respond to audience messages? The average amount of time it takes social media influencers to make and send a reply is about five hours. Since today’s social media audiences expect a reply within one hour this can lead to potential response problems. One way to solve this is for influencers to list on their profile how soon someone can expect to receive a response to their message.
Steps To Becoming the Best Lifestyle Influencer:
- Write With Authenticity. Lifestyle influencers who have a goal of being the absolute best must always be authentic when posting lifestyle content. Authenticity is what consumers are looking for nowadays, as well as transparency. All content written should thus be unique, as authentically unique content is what entices people to become permanent audience members. Influencers can even start authentic conversations themselves for enticement reasons.
- Establish Trust. For a lifestyle influencer to be seen as a top influencer they must establish trust with their audience. Trust is one of the more important factors for becoming a dependable, honest and reliable influencer so without it, an influencer is likely not to experience a large following.
- Build, Manage A Community. Successful lifestyle influencers know how to build, grow, and manage a community. The fact that the majority of today’s social media marketing platforms offer tools that help with an influencer’s ability to manage makes managing a straight-forward process. Even though community management is time-consuming, the best lifestyle influencers understand the importance of proper relationship management.
- Post Fresh Content. Researching new lifestyle topics daily is recommended to offer an audience the freshest lifestyle content. Setting a Google alert helps notify influencers of anything new happening within their chosen lifestyle niches. This instant notification by Google benefits those who use it as they’ll soon enough be seen as a leader when it comes to posting the freshest lifestyle-related content.
- Be Passionate. The best influencers are passionate about the lifestyle niches they chose to focus on and share with the world. They have a great deal of enthusiasm when it comes to connecting with their audience, as well as working with businesses that chose them to represent their brand. Passionate lifestyle influencers are always excited to know what’s happening within a lifestyle niche, as well as what’s going to happen. They fully understand the topic of lifestyle and choose to always be on top of the latest lifestyle trends.
The list below includes the top lifestyle influencers for 2021. Many of today’s top influencers have built an audience of millions, some within a year. This makes it possible for any influencer to reach top lifestyle influencer status for 2022.
Instagram:
- Zoe Sugg
- Lauren Conrad
- Sincerely Jules
- DoYouTravel
- Aspyn Ovard
Twitter:
- Sitta Karina
- Helena-Reet Ennet
- Jessa Hinton
- William V. Sweeney
- Shirley
YouTube:
- Casey Neistat
- Nicole Guerriero
- Tess Christine
- Dulce Candy
- Aspyn and Parker
Many people would like to establish a career as a social media influencer, but the job of influencing isn’t for everyone. While the lure of becoming an online influencer and all that comes with it is a goal for many, it’s important for potential influencers to not only see the perks and instead understand there’s a lot of hard work involved. New influencers can choose to partner up with established influencers, helping them establish their online presence.
