By putting audiences of millions within reach, social media and the internet have given individuals the power to turn their personal passions into stunning commercial successes. So how can you make the digital revolution work to your financial advantage?
Five years ago, Instagram didn’t exist. The iPhone had not been long in this world. And Brisbanite Lauren Bath was slaving away as a chef, having long forgotten her childhood hobby of photography.
Zip forward to 2015 and the landscape is unrecognisable. Instagram is a global phenomenon with more than 300 million users, the iPhone is already six generations old and Lauren is both a professional photographer and Australia’s first full-time Instagrammer.
Technology, innovation and the existence of a vast yet closely connected global village have enabled her to eschew her chef’s accoutrements and make a living instead using just a camera, a mobile phone and Wi-Fi.
Lauren’s story captures the dynamism of social media, the extent to which luck and timing determine success and the multitude of money-making opportunities waiting to be grasped by those who are alert to them.
After downloading the Instagram app in 2011, Lauren spent three months learning to shoot on her iPhone. Her talent for producing creative, evocative photographs was self-evident and her Instagram following swelled to 5,000.
About to go on holiday, she decided to buy a camera – a Nikon D7000 , “cheap enough to afford, but good enough to take me from a beginner almost to a professional level”.
Then something critical happened: the app was released to Android, resulting in a flood of new followers on Lauren’s Instagram account (instagram.com/laurenepbath).
“I was well established and able to maximise this growth,” she recalls. “I didn’t know then what these numbers, these followers, would enable me to do. I was still the enthusiastic young photographer wanting to talk to everyone and enjoy Instagram.”
It was this very enthusiasm and sociability – central to the cultivation of followers on any social media platform – that gave Lauren the break she needed.
Companies had started taking notice of her and of the relationship she’d nurtured with her followers, and a trickle of invitations – trips to Hamilton Island, to the Australian Open in Melbourne – soon became a deluge.
Today, Bath has just short of 400,000 followers and is what is known in social media parlance as an “influencer”.
For instance, tourism organisations hire her to travel to the destinations they represent and produce photographic campaigns which she then shares with her vast following through Instagram and secondary platforms of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Steller and Trover . The by-products of her success – speaking engagements, educational workshops, guest blogs, consultancies and project management – supplement her income.
“I now pitch and plan multiple influencer trips both here in Australia and overseas, and I’ve had a handful of successful keynote speeches, although I still get nervous,” Lauren says.
“I have a great and ongoing relationship with my clients, which means I can rely on consistent work. I treat this like a business and a career – from my initial loves of travel, photography and social media, I’ve discovered an equal passion for business and marketing.”
You can follow Lauren Bath via Instagram at @laurenepbath. PHOTO: Instagram.
Social media
Social media has changed the way women do business: it’s given them a voice in a realm dominated by men, intensified opportunities for collaboration, improved access to prospective markets and provided flexible working arrangements.
And the rise of blogs – an online version of the chat across the back fence – has given marketers a new way to sell their products.
Lorraine Murphy is one of many women forging new careers on the back of this market.
“I’d been working in public relations for eight years and started to build relationships with some successful Australian bloggers,” she says.
“Their audiences were growing at a rapid rate and brands were starting to take interest. However, they didn’t have the skill-set to approach brands themselves and to manage the strategy and negotiations that came with that. I thought I could create a business that would address that problem, given that I understood what the bloggers were trying to achieve and also what motivates brands.”
Lorraine quit her job in 2012 and set up The Remarkables Group (theremarkablesgroup.com.au ), Australia’s first blogger agency .
She and her team sign influencers (bloggers and vloggers or video bloggers) exclusively and liaise between bloggers and brands that are keen to market their products via sponsored posts, campaigns and other collaborations.
The agency manages each element of the bloggers’ income-generating output – branded content, reader events, guest posts and appearances in TV and print advertising.
“Having an agent means that bloggers have more time to devote to doing what they love – creating great content for their readers,” Lorraine says.
“Brands have high expectations of the campaigns they do with bloggers, so setting objectives, creating strategies and evaluating campaigns are also part of what we do. There is no formula – it’s about trying new things and learning from the ensuing success or failure. The best thing bloggers can do is focus on growing an engaged audience – to a certain extent, the financial benefits will follow quite organically from that.”
Yet while social media has liberated women from the constraints of the traditional economic model, it has also increased their workload: platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest are the online equivalent of New York’s Times Square, pulsating with life, restless for the next big thing.
“It can be incredibly time-consuming and as anyone who has built their own business or worked on something they are passionate about will say, there is no knock-off time,” says Bianca Slade, Blue Mountains, NSW-based creator of the healthy food blog Wholefood Simply (wholefoodsimply.com).
“An enormous amount of work is required to maintain engagement with your community. Maintaining your site, servers and all things IT can be stressful and frustrating. When your site crashes late at night or at inconvenient times, it can cause a little drama. It can be much more expensive to run and maintain a website than most people would imagine – than I would ever have imagined.”
The hurdles? Social media and its inconveniences is a phenomenon not confined to bloggers, vloggers and Instagrammers. For a business to succeed in this brave new world, even the most social media-averse people must overcome their prejudices, says Steven Lewis, Director of Content Marketing in Australia for digital strategy firm Taleist (taleist.com).
“I know some people think being absent from social media is a sign of their culture or refinement. When you’re selling something, however, it’s seldom a good tactic for the product to be invisible,” he says. “One way or another, most of us are selling our expertise. The more people see us as experts – and the quicker we can get them there – the more people will consider what we’re selling.”
Steven says a businesswoman’s social media strategy should clearly define her brand’s goals, determine where relevant audiences might be found and discern ways in which to attract that audience’s attention.
And it should persevere, no matter what.
“You have to find the right people and start to build a relationship with them,” he says. “You have to find things to say and to share things that are interesting to them, and you sometimes have to take a one-on-one approach. The payoff will never be immediate.”
It’s impossible to predict how social media will transform itself in the future and, in doing, the ways in which women can make a living from it. For Instagrammer Lauren Bath, some important principles remain: work hard, treat your clients well, be alert to opportunity, never be afraid to try new things – and don’t ever take someone’s money unless it aligns with your brand.
“Anybody thinking of following this path must remember to use their powers wisely,” Lauren says.
“Just because I make a living off this now doesn’t mean I’m going to sell out.
I’ve been offered as much as $1000 a post to promote products that I don’t believe in and I have turned the money down.”
A photo from The Organised Housewife on Instagram.
Blogger success
One of The Remarkables Group’s success stories, The Organised Housewife (theorganisedhousewife.com.au ), now generates more money for its creator, Katrina Springer, than a regular, full-time job would.
The blog began as “something to do while the kids were at school” and now receives more than 1.7 million monthly page views, has nearly half a million Facebook fans and 45,000 email followers.
“Six months after I started, I realised I was spending a little bit of money to run the blog and wanted to cover this, so I sold an ad space to a local business in my sidebar,” says Gold Coast-based Katrina.
“More businesses approached me to write and publish posts to help create awareness of their brands and products. I also started to create printables – like rewards charts for kids, cleaning check-lists – to sell. I now have a shop filled with over 400 digital products.”
Purchasing power has shifted to the internet and it’s engagement of this kind that inspires companies to collaborate with bloggers on advertising campaigns. Last year, Kia launched a promotion that gave three of The Organised Housewife’s readers the opportunity to have a room reorganised by her. Eight hundred people entered the competition and the return on investment was impressive.
“The [Kia] car was integrated seamlessly into three webisodes,” says Lorraine. “The campaign reached a total of 2.3 million people and we know that four in five readers were more likely to buy the car as a result – five had already bought one!”
Podcasts the next big thing?
Today’s hot new social media trend is tomorrow’s cast-off – just ask MySpace – so forecasting the future of this rapidly changing realm is a virtually impossible task. Yet one trend which may well outlast others is podcasting. Old-fashioned communication wrapped up in modern packaging, podcasts are easy to download, portable audio files that tell a compelling story. Steven Lewis, Director of Content Marketing for Australia at Taleist, explains their appeal.
Why are podcasts growing in popularity? Podcast audiences might be smaller [than on other platforms], but the audiences are dedicated and loyal. People have less time than ever and podcasts reach them in their last bastions of free time, when they can’t read or watch videos – when they’re working out, walking the dog, driving.
Give us a practical example of how a podcast might work. You’re in business because you’re an expert in something that people want, which means they’re interested in it.
A camera shop could have a podcast about photography and equipment reviews. The subject is obviously interesting the customers and the content shows off their expertise and builds trust.
A cookware or appliance company could have a show about food. It’s not about selling your product, it’s about building a relationship because people buy from those they know, like and trust.
Do podcasters need special equipment? You need decent equipment and you need to know what you’re doing with it, but $600 should get you there. People will tell you it can be done with a $20 USB microphone, but how long would you listen to something that sounded like a Skype call recorded in the toilet? A professional will help you with audio quality, but the real reason to use a professional is with structure and content.
Is one podcast enough? “Podcast” implies more than one episode – an album rather than a single – but we’re keen on the idea of “seasons”. You can have a limited run of podcasts and repeat the process if it works out.
How should women promote their podcasts?
Shamelessly. If you’ve made a podcast, it’s no time to be shy. Women are lucky because there are many networking groups aimed at women and some of them have podcasts.
The Australian Businesswomen’s Network (abn.org.au) is an excellent example. If your podcast is good, there are other women who will talk about it to their audiences.
TOP FIVE STEPS TO ONLINE SUCCESS
Amanda Martin , the Managing Director of Style Hunter Network (stylehunter.com ), gives her pointers on how to prosper online.
1 Your personal brand online is everything. How you market yourself and your career, how others see you – everything from your appearance, your manners, your personal and professional networks to your experience are a reflection of you and of the organisations and people that you’re associated with.
2 Your website is your number one marketing tool. The first step is to know your customer. Understand who you are talking to. Building customer personas that are relevant to your business will give you a solid understanding of how you should be communicating to them on social media.
3 Facebook for business is all about people and building a community. People stop when they see something engaging. If it is not visually engaging, they will scroll past (think about your own social behaviour). As the business page curator, you need to be very clear on how you want your audience to respond and develop content accordingly. Once they see something they like – if there’s enough information in the post – they will either like it, share it, comment on it, or take action (visit the site). It is unlikely that they will do all of these.
4 While Twitter is fast news on the run, it’s more conversational than Facebook. The key to making Twitter work for your business is content. The Twitter news feed moves very quickly, so the more content you are producing, the more chance you have of your followers engaging and taking action.
5 Remember that everyone’s watching, always. Don’t publish anything on social media or online that you wouldn’t print.
A version of this article originally appeared in The Australian Women’s Weekly’s How Busy Women Get Rich 2014 issue.
A VIDEO YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Science can now delete and alter your memories
