Anyone can be a social media influencer and make a successful career out of it. You don’t have to look a certain way, or put out only certain types of content. What you should focus on is to create authentic content that connects with your audience, be persistent, and learn from other creators. There’s no magic formula, but small and consistent steps make all the difference. The influencer marketing industry is massive, and there’s plenty of room at the top.
You may not know what you’ll need to do to become an influencer, but reading this guide is a great start. Below, find useful tips that’ll help you get started as an influencer and earn your first dollar.
How to become an influencer in 10 steps
Ready to join the ranks of some of the biggest social media influencers out there? Here are 10 steps that’ll take you from absolute beginner to top creator.
Step 1: Start
This probably isn’t the first guide you’ve read about becoming a social media influencer. That’s why the first — and arguably most important — step is to just start. Don’t worry about getting everything perfectly right when you start. Just start making your first piece of content, tie it to something you really care about, and go from there. Spend less time worrying about how to start and more time just doing it.
Step 2: Pick between starting on one platform or many
When you first start out as an influencer, you can choose one of two approaches. Either you post on multiple different social media accounts or you start with just one. Which approach you pick is largely up to you.
Some will say you should focus on growing an active presence on one platform first, rather than spreading yourself too thin. That way, you’ll benefit from zeroing in on one channel and dedicating more time and effort to creating content and building a following there.
With the other approach, you’ll have to do a bit more upfront work to publish engaging content on multiple platforms, but it can be worth the extra energy to get more reach — and build your audience more quickly.
Whether you start on one platform or many, you’ll want to consider these two things before picking a platform for your content:
- Content type: Instagram and TikTok are better suited for fashion creators, because these platforms allow you to share bite-sized visual content. On the other hand, YouTube works well for travel and lifestyle creators who want to share longer vlogs.
- Target audience: Publish your content on the platform where your target audience is most likely going to see and interact with it. For example, if you’re targeting Gen Z, you’ll probably have a better chance at connecting with them on TikTok.
Step 3: Pick your niche
Start by publishing content on topics that genuinely interest you and showcase your true personality. You can create content on just about anything — from fashion and lifestyle to tips for managing Excel spreadsheets. So don’t be afraid to think outside the box.
“Usually, people get clarity as they go. A lot of people don’t know exactly what they want to focus on early in their influencer journey,” says Folasade Daini, a content marketer and creator. “Don’t be pressured to niche down too early. Explore your interest and see what gets your audience’s attention.”
Helen Maria Faliveno, the founder of My Mindful Movement, takes a similar position. “I personally don’t think you need a niche to become a successful influencer. I feel the niche is ‘you’ and your personality. Being true to who you are will attract the right audience,” the fitness instructor says. “I have tried to niche down in the past, but I ended up alienating a lot of loyal followers, so I reverted. And although I may seem like a jack of all trades, my core beliefs and my personality is still the common thread.”
You need a clear “why” to guide your choice of content topics. For example, Malvika Sheth creates fashion and beauty content to empower individuality for young women of color, especially South Asian women. When you share content around topics you’re passionate about, you demonstrate authenticity and originality — two important qualities for earning trust online and building a loyal following.
Step 4: Create content consistently until you have a strong presence
Successful influencers don’t publish content once and call it a day. Publishing quality content consistently helps you build momentum and engagements for your social media channels. Essentially, the more you publish content, the higher the chances of the algorithm getting your content in front of your target audience.
Alexa Renee, a travel content creator with a combined following of over 113,000 on Instagram and TikTok, says that consistency has been a game-changer for her influencer career. “I post at least every day on TikTok and at least 2-4 times a week on Instagram,” she shares. “With consistency comes growth. And I’ve established trust with my audience. My best advice for someone who’s new is to just start creating. People get so caught up on the platforms and the aesthetics, but ultimately to be successful, you need to have content.”
Renee adds, “Try to stick to a posting schedule and show up for your audience. If you have a creative block, find 10 influencers that you like or look up to, and review their profiles. See what content they’re making and what performs well for them. Don’t copy, but let their profile and content inspire your own. Add your own twist for your specific audience.”
Step 5: Find your voice
You might think the social media landscape is overly crowded with people trying to do exactly what you’re doing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
As an influencer, you’ll be building your own personal brand, which depends on finding your own unique voice. Your voice is a combination of all the small choices you make as a creator, from what you create to how you make it and even how you engage with your audience. When you’re early in your career, you can experiment with these choices to see what works best for you.
Try a new editing style. Film something for a topic you never thought you’d even touch. Try collaborating with a creator from a completely different niche. These experiments will help you find your unique voice.
Step 6: Learn from the content you’ve created so far
When you’ve made a significant amount of content, it’s time to look back at what you’ve created to find opportunities for improvement. You can usually do that with analytics tools built into the social media platforms you’re posting on, or third-party tools like Buffer and Social Blade.
Look at the content that performed best. Is there anything there you can replicate, or are you looking at a fluke? Now examine the content that didn’t do so well. Are there lessons there about pitfalls you should avoid in the future?
Adapt your content based on what you learn, and you’ll keep growing.
Step 7: Create a thorough content strategy
A content strategy is a high-level plan that spells out the goals for your content, the target audience, the type of content you’ll put out, and how you would measure its success. While the general rule is that you should have a content strategy before you start putting out content, this isn’t always the case with the creator ecosystem. You can publish content first and use the engagement metrics — likes, shares, comments, and saves — to gauge the type of content your audience prefers to see on your page.
For example, in the beginning of her creator journey, Folasade Daini was sharing content primarily about relationships and godly dating. However, feedback from her audience has helped her diversify the types of content she produces.
“When I had my daughter, I shared the testimony about being sick in pregnancy, and it blew up. And I noticed that a lot of people were engaging with my content,” Daini recalls. “So, I just really applied that knowledge to try to find out ‘what are my audience’s pain points? What are things that they would like answers to?’ And I started creating content intentionally about these subjects, and I began growing rapidly.”
Apart from content engagement metrics, you can gather valuable insights for your content strategy through ways such as:
- Direct feedback from polls, surveys, and DMs: Travel content creator Alexa Renee says, “I often use my Questions Sticker on my Instagram Stories to survey my audience on the content they’d like to see, or the questions they need answers to.” Kat Norton also uses polls to find out what her audience really cares about.
- Competitor research: Check out the pages of other influencers to know the type of content they’re putting out, and apply these learnings to your own page.
Step 8: Start focusing on building your audience
Content creation isn’t the only part of being an influencer. You need to build your audience, too. The best way to do that? Engage with people who watch and comment on what you’re creating.
Interacting with your audience helps you build trust and strengthen your bond with them. That’s because content creation is a two-way street. As you publish posts on social media, your audience might leave comments under your videos, or reply to your Instagram Stories. Respond to them so it doesn’t seem like your audience is screaming into the void.
“There’s that version of people who only want to be influencers because they’ve heard that influencer marketing pays. They don’t interact with their audience or respond to them when they send a direct message,” Folasade Daini says. “If you want to be a successful influencer, you need to really offer value to your community — not just grooming them because you want them to buy the things you recommend.”
Here are several ways to engage with your audience:
- Send a personalized welcome message when they connect with you.
- Send periodic messages to thank them for engaging with your content.
- Reshare their content when they tag you.
- Like and respond to their comments.
- Like their content and follow them on social media.
- Give community shoutouts on your social media page.
Step 9: Start approaching content creation as a business
When you first start your journey towards being an influencer, it’s fine to treat this like a hobby or a passion project. You’re still learning, after all. But once you decide that you want to make being a social media influencer into a career, you need to start taking things a little more seriously. That can mean having a more rigorous routine, where you create content on certain days, review it on others, and manage brand partnerships on another day. It might involve quitting your job — or at least reducing your hours — when you make enough income to support yourself.
Having a career as an influencer can be extremely rewarding, but it can take some work once you get to a certain level.
Step 10: Look for ways to monetize your platform
Brand deals are the most popular way for influencers to start making an income, but they’re not the only method at your disposal. As an influencer, you’ll want to diversify your income so you’re not completely dependent on a single revenue stream.
That’s why we’ve got a guide to all the different ways you can make money as an influencer below.
How to make money as an influencer
Use built-in monetization options
Most social media platforms pay creators bonuses for the content they share. For example, YouTubers earn between $0.01 and $0.03 per ad view on their videos, while Instagram pays Play Bonuses for Reels.
Here’s a pro tip from Sheth: “Sometimes, social media platforms need to promote a new feature, or promote their platform itself. So they’ll hire you, and they’ll say, ‘Post X amount of videos or X amount of photos on our platform, and we’ll pay you per post.”
Partner with brands
When you’re just starting out as a creator, you’ll have to do a lot of outreach because many brands don’t know you yet — and they probably won’t trust you enough to pay you. Your job is to convince them that working with you will generate a significant return on investment for their business.
“If you’re scared to pitch brands; if you’re nervous and you don’t know what to say, it’s okay. You’re not the only one. Even creators who have been in this game for over a couple of years still face this. There’s no perfect formula for pitching,” Malvika Sheth shares.
Remember that you should only pitch a brand if it aligns with your mission, and if you’re genuinely excited about partnering with it. A big part of being an influencer is building and keeping your audience’s trust.
“Ask yourself, why am I reaching out to this brand? And what’s the potential value I could provide to them? Be completely honest, even if all you have is, ‘Oh, I posted a story, and I tagged your brand.’ Or ‘I visited a store, and I found your product really interesting. And I would love to share it with my followers,’” Sheth says. “At the end of the day, the brand can sense when there’s any sense of dishonesty, or if you’re trying to over-exaggerate.”
Become an affiliate marketer
According to Zip Recruiter, affiliate marketers in the U.S. make more than $150,000 annually. As an affiliate marketer, you earn monetary commissions on every sale that happens through your custom links or referral codes.
There are several affiliate programs you can join, depending on your niche or content focus. For example, Malvika Sheth is a member of LTK, a top affiliate network for fashion and beauty creators. She is also an Amazon affiliate.
“A lot of people in my community would ask me, ‘Where did you buy this? Or where did you shop this?’ And I’ll share my affiliate links with them,” Sheth says. “Being able to directly give people those links sometimes does really help. And it adds up to a decent amount of income.”
Sell digital products
As an influencer, you have a community who knows, likes, and trusts you. When you have an engaged audience, it’s a lot easier to get their buy-in for things that you promote, including your own digital products.
Digital products are any virtual item that customers can download instantly upon payment. They can range from paid community memberships and eBooks, to downloadable prints and templates. Selling digital products not only allows you to earn passive income, but it’s also a way to provide additional value to your community beyond the free content that you share online.
Want to start building and selling digital products? Then we’ve got the tool for you. The Leap is a link-in-bio storefront and AI-powered authoring tool that allows creators to build and sell digital products quickly and easily. Interested? Try The Leap for free today!
Sell merch
Lots of social media influencers launch a line of merch to supplement their income. With all the print-on-demand services out there — which manage everything from putting your design on merch to shipping that merch to customers — it’s never been easier to start selling merch. Just come up with some designs referencing your brand and your content, and you can quickly spin up merch your audience will love.
Start your own product line
A product line is a more involved method for making money as an influencer, but it can easily be one of the most lucrative ones. Lots of creators launch their own product line, from Emma Chamberlain’s Chamberlain Coffee to Logan Paul and KSI’s Prime Hydration. It can take a significant investment in both time and money, but having a line of products you love means your audience can buy straight from you instead of going to a brand.
Want to grow faster as an influencer? Diversify!
Focusing on one channel and revenue stream only serves you at the beginning of your influencer career. As you grow, you’ll need to explore new social media platforms and create multiple income streams for your business. You can start from posting on Instagram, then build a following on TikTok, and eventually launch a paid newsletter or a membership site.
An influencer’s career ebbs and flows. Growing your presence on multiple channels, as well as having extra streams of income can help you pull through tough months, when things don’t go so well with your main revenue stream or social platform.
Follow The Leap on TikTok and Instagram for more monetization tips for creators. We also make a newsletter.
FAQ
What is an influencer?
An influencer is a type of content creator who makes social media posts recommending products and services to their audience. These creators make most of their income from brand deals and affiliate marketing.
How do you become an influencer?
These are the steps to becoming a successful social media influencer:
- Pick the social media platform you want to start on.
- Pick a niche.
- Create content consistently until you have a strong presence.
- Find your voice.
- Learn from the content you make.
- Build a content strategy.
- Build your audience.
- Approach content creation as a business
- Monetize your platform with brand deals.
How do you become an Amazon influencer?
To become an Amazon influencer, you’ll need to do a few things:
- Build an audience by creating content consistently.
- Apply to the Amazon Influencers program.
- Once you’re approved, build your Amazon storefront, adding products you’ll want to recommend.
- Make content recommending products from Amazon.
Once you’re an Amazon influencer, you’ll earn a commission each time someone in your audience buys something from Amazon.
How do you become a travel influencer?
To become a travel influencer, you’ll need to build up your audience on one or more social media platforms. From there, you’ll need to find brands who are willing to partner with you for sponsored high-quality content. For travel influencers, that might be a travel agency, an airline, or a hotel chain. With a brand partnership secured, you can then make content about your travels and be paid when you recommend that brand’s products and services.
How do you become a fashion influencer?
Fashion influencers make sponsored content about jewelry, clothing, and more. Brands will pay them to make this content to get access to their audience. That means becoming a fashion influencer requires a loyal audience, a brand partnership, and the ability to make great content that inspires your audience.
