It’s no surprise people are taking a liking to having an online presence. Becoming an influencer is an extremely lucrative way of life, with a lot of potential too! And contrary to popular belief, becoming an influencer is something that anyone can do with the right amount of confidence and hard work thrown in. Notice how I didn’t say anything about your follower count.

We all have influence of some sort. Why do you think your best friends are your best friends, or your colleagues ask you where you got your desk set up from? Influence is the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself. I’ll say it again, we all have influence. You just have to tap into yours when you are looking to become an influencer.

There are some technical pieces to becoming an influencer though. If you are thinking about trying to become an influencer, you might be wondering what kind of things you need to do upfront to get started. I have you covered!

Before we begin though I want you to think of an influencer as an inspirer. By doing this you will attack this online presence with grace and kindness, not with views and follows. Do that you will rock it.

So, what do you really need to become an influencer?

Find Your Niche

As with any kind of freelancing or business, you first need to make sure that you have found a niche to operate in. This can be anything you like, but for it to work well for you, you should ensure that it is something you are personally interested in and which you can talk about at length. At the very least, it should be something that sustains your attention enough for you to learn more about it.

Having a niche will mean you can place yourself much more easily in the marketplace, and that is key to being a more successful influencer. Having a wide variety of interests is fine. You will learn how to incorporate those but people want to come to the expert on something. Think about what you are “the expert” on.

Define Your Audience

At the same time as figuring out what your niche might be, you are going to start to want to get a sense of your audience. Who are you talking to through your platform? Knowing as much about your audience as possible is important because it empowers you to place yourself better and to know how to engage with people. And engagement is the name of the game here. If you know that your audience are 20-something women, working on their career, building relationships through dating apps and looking to buy a home here in the next 2-3 years then that is different to having an audience of people over-40, with kids, a vacation home, and bake cookies as a hobby. You will change how you act and talk according to your defined audience. Spend a little time working this out, and you should find that you can figure it out soon enough.

Choose Your Platform

Next up you will need to decide which platform you are going to use. Although it is good to have some form of a presence on more than one platform, you’ll probably find that the bulk of your attention should go into one platform in particular – and ideally it will be a platform that you are able to get on well with and which makes sense to you intuitively. Most influencers use Instagram, and if you are going for this, then just make sure that you learn all there is to know about the platform.

There are a lot of things you might be keen on learning here from knowing how to use hashtags properly to figuring out your follower count and how to know if someone blocked your instagram. The more you know about the inner workings of the platform, the more that you can get out of it, so it’s worth spending a good amount of time on it before you even start posting for real.

Develop A Strategy

When it comes to putting your content up online, you need to make sure that you have some kind of strategy for doing so. Influencers without a content strategy are going to struggle to get much done, and you might be posting in a haphazard way which doesn’t really have any effect at all in the way you are trying to do. You need to define how you are going to share messages with your audience, at what interval, and in what manner. The more that you plan out there, the more likely it is that you are going to be able to make it all work for you. My biggest advice: consistency is key.

Focus On Trends

You have to keep up with the trends in this space. Whatever the newest features on the platform are, you have to take advantage of them. Think of Reels or TikTok. This market blew up during the pandemic. If it blows p for the platform, it will blow up for your influence.

The more unique and compelling your account is the more that you are going to get out of the whole experience, and the more that people will respond to you in the way that you want. The most important thing to remember is to be you. No one else can be you, that’s what makes social media so compelling and other influencers so inspiring.