Maddie Morrison
With more than 500 million blog sites worldwide it is not surprising that up to 88% of businesses that do outsourcing pay for content, this is according to Findstack. Up to 38% of bloggers publish content once a week. Maddie Morrison, a 29 year old New Zealand native, is a travel, beauty, fashion and lifestyle blogger and social media influencer. Maddie has used her love and passion for travelling to build a large following on social media, and seeing that she has reached this success, Maddie has shared the top 10 tips every blogger should know.
Maddie’s journey to social media success
Maddie, who has a social media following of over 20 000 followers, is a graduate of The Wellington Institute of Technology, and obtained a Bachelor of Creative technologies majoring in Photography and Graphic Design. Being inspired by the work ethic and branding by social media influencers, such as Tammy Hembrow, Shani Grimmond, Sharon Alexie and Mishti Rahman, Maddie has created her success. From Maddie’s extensive travels, collaborations with other brands, and exposure on social media, she has learned a thing or two about what it takes to reach a level of success when it comes to marketing and branding.
Top 10 Tips
Be Yourself
Although bloggers and influencers create content for an audience, it’s important to always stay true to yourself and create content that makes you happy. Having the ability to stay original and genuine allows the audience to create a more personal connection and allows them to relate to the content.
Be as Organized as You Can Be
Once the audience and followings grow, it is likely that brands will want to collaborate. Once this happens, it is extremely important to prioritize content and admin items to stay on top of things. This will save bloggers and influencers a lot of time and energy.
Think of the Outside Perception of You
Bloggers and influencers need to be mindful of what they say, what they write, what kind of images they take and what general message they put forward, whether it be intentional or not.
Having the self-awareness to ask yourself “Would your page interest you if you saw it on Instagram?” and “Would you engage with what you aim to sell or do?” helps to facilitate brand clarity.
Find your niche
The blogger and influencer industry is extremely competitive and diverse. Starting out today means there will be competition coming from every direction. By finding your nice means to find a hyper-specific topic and focusing on creating content around that topic. Once the platform has gained traction and a loyal following, expanding into broader topics would be the next step.
Find a gap in the market
For bloggers and influencers to be successful, they would need to cater to topics that people are searching for. Finding highly searched topics may seem like a challenge, but bloggers and influencers can easily use a keyword research tool to generate ideas. To do so, enter a keyword/topic into AnswerThePublic, which is a free tool, and it will generate related questions that people are typing into Google.
Try to create content that can be referenced
At this point, it seems like everything has been said about everything. To create unique content, bloggers and influencers need to question whether they have created content with an opinion or point of view that hasn’t been discussed before. They also need to consider whether the audience will share and talk about the content. If they are not confident in their content’s uniqueness, it has to be reworked some more.
Pick Your Preferred Platform
When starting out on social media, bloggers and influencers need to focus on one platform to grow on. Maddie is currently only on Instagram and this has paid off for her. Being on two or more different channels is possible, but only for activity purposes. The content produced should be aimed at one singular platform. Focus and grow.
Create A Social Media Strategy
By planning out content and curating a feed/timeline, the audience will likely have their attention grabbed. If bloggers and influencers are consistent in their posting and content production, they will definitely grow on their platform.
Avoid Burning Out
The life of a blogger and influencer may tend to be overwhelming or mundane, especially if they are based from home. To prevent burnout, and creative burnout, bloggers and influencers should try to get a change of scenery when possible, they should set working hours and try to remind themselves of what inspires them.
Spend Time With Loved Ones
Whether it’s your family, your friends or even your pets, make time to spend time with the people closest to you. Quality over quantity, always.
The Takeaway
Hard work pays off. No matter what area of social media a blogger or influencer wants to explore, the content they produce is able to be unique as long as they have a passion for it and the proper effort is put into it.
