Social Media Influencer Jobs – Everything There Is to Know

With 3.78 billion users worldwide as of 2021, social media is not going away anytime soon. Its massive reach, cultural impact, and sustainable business model gave birth to social media influencers. It is one of the hottest social media jobs fueled by huge followings and quality engagement.

With their solid reputation and likability, social media influencers have become one of the most significant disruptors in the public’s consumption cycle. This is the reason companies are seeking them and partnering with them. 

Read on to find out how to become a social media influencer, where you can find gigs, and what you can earn as one. 

  • All About Being a Social Media Influencer
  • What a Social Media Influencer Does
  • How to Become a Social Media Influencer
  • Where to Find Opportunities as a Social Media Influencer
Social Media Influencer Jobs - Everything There Is to Know
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All About Being a Social Media Influencer

Social media influencers are users of any social networking platform that is popular and they often own the most followed accounts. They earn by partnering with companies and endorsing brands to their followers. Companies choose influencers based on their reach, credibility, and ability to market products and services.

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Social Media Influencer Jobs - Everything There Is to Know
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Social media influencers are rewarded financially or with free stuff. They could also enter an agreement where they are compensated in an intangible form, such as publicity and exchange of services. Influencer marketing involves public relations, content creation, and promotional slants.

Social media influencers can emerge onto almost any networking platform, such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, or through personal blogs. They create content about different things or focus on a niche, which attracts companies with relevant products or services. For example, makeup influencers promote the brands they use while demonstrating their makeup styles.

Felix Kjellberg, known as PewDiePie, is a YouTube vlogger famous for his videos on gaming, while Charli d’Amelio became popular for her dance videos on TikTok. Meanwhile, there are influencers like Emma Chamberlain who simply document their lives and interests on the platforms. Social media influencers are also called digital influencers, internet celebrities, lifestyle gurus, brand ambassadors, and viral stars.

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Why Influencer Marketing Is Thriving 

Being a social media influencer is a high-risk, high-reward job. Dedicating your time to churning out content and growing and retaining followers could either give you rewards or none. 

It is a popular pursuit today because data shows that Millennials spend 11 hours a week on average consuming content from sites like YouTube.

Moreover, 54% of internet users turn to social media to research products they plan to purchase in 2018. In the same year, 49% of consumers said that they always consider influencer recommendations. With this, marketers invest in digital media advertising, collaborations with influencers, and content strategy. 

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What a Social Media Influencer Does

Social media influencers do not simply post a photo of a product or service on their platforms. They essentially become a part of a company’s marketing team, developing useful, interesting, and on-brand content to promote products or services.

Social Media Influencer Jobs - Everything There Is to Know
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When you become a social media influencer, it is your responsibility to review your contracts. You must be sure that the products and the reputation of the company you’ll work with reflect your image and won’t damage your connection with your followers.

If you don’t have a team yet, you’re in charge of creating and publishing the ad on your platform. Sometimes, companies will send you a ready-made post, a template, or just the product. If it’s just a product, you will have to take photos of the product, edit them, write the captions, and schedule the post while observing agreed-upon sponsorship guidelines

You have to respond to your audience’s feedback about the product or share links that will direct them to the company’s official pages. Sometimes, social media influencers are not asked to directly market a product or service. They can be asked to share an article about a company, republish a post from its own account, tag the company to a photo, or mention them in a caption.

Social Media Influencer as a Job

Like any business or job, being a social media influencer is not free from paperwork

On top of contracts, there are taxes to be paid, invoices to be made, and forms to be filled out. If you’re just starting out and don’t have staff yet, you must be aware of finance and accounting

How to Become a Social Media Influencer 

First off, you need to know the ins and outs of social media as you can’t cultivate the crop without knowing how fertile the land is. For example, if you want to be an Instagram influencer, you should know how to switch your personal profile to a business profile so you can perform marketing actions like running ads.

Social Media Influencer Jobs - Everything There Is to Know
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You must have the technical skills to operate in a crowded digital environment and add your own flair to it in order to stand out. Video editing skills top the list aside from having decent photography skills to capture the beauty in anything. 

You may want to choose a niche for yourself so that all your creative energy flows in one direction while establishing a brand you’ll be remembered for. Having a niche will also help you to streamline not just your target audience but also the type of brands to collaborate with. 

In terms of education, there are no clear-cut requirements. Though it would be a plus if you have some background in marketing communications or have worked in a company involved in digital publishing and social media advertising.

Useful Skills and Apps for Social Media Influencers

You can try enrolling in short courses and workshops that can help improve your storytelling techniques. Writing skills are useful for writing scripts for your videos, captions for social media posts, and correspondence with companies you want to collaborate with. 

It’s easier nowadays to enhance photos and videos due to the availability of apps or filters integrated into social media platforms. To make your photos look professional, you can try Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, and Snapseed. Video editing apps like Adobe Premiere Rush and Filmora Go are easy to use and compatible with different social media networks.

If you need to create posts for Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest, graphic design tools like Canva and Adobe Spark can make wonders. If you become a hit and are getting offers left and right, you need social media management tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to manage and automatically publish your posts. 

Where to Find Opportunities as a Social Media Influencer

You have a great start as a social media influencer if the number of your followers is constantly growing. That means people are starting to notice you, and companies are likely to check out your account. But there are other strategies for you to grow your social media accounts and attract potential brands.

Social Media Influencer Jobs - Everything There Is to Know
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One way to get noticed by brands is to be present where companies are looking for influencers. For example, companies are likely to use Google to search for influencers. Work on identifying the keywords in your niche so you can apply them to your social media platforms. 

Companies use hashtags when they are looking for bloggers, vloggers, or content creators. On Instagram, you must accompany your posts with hashtags so that brands can easily find you. For example, you can use #FashionBlogger, #YouTuber, or even #influencer. 

Another way to grow your followers is to collaborate with other influencers or join online forums. From your influencer career, you could land a TV gig or promotion, publish a book, or even create your own product line. In the long run, you may use what you know about social media in a job as a social media marketing executive or a digital content specialist.

Social Media Influencer Earnings

Your earnings depend on the number of your followers and how influential you are. You can charge per campaign or on a post-by-post basis. Data shows that a YouTube following of 7 million or more could give you as much as $300,000 for a video partnership. 

A YouTuber can get $7.60 per 1,000 views with 45% of that earnings going to Google. With 100,000 followers, one post on Instagram will net you $5,000. 

If you have over 1 million followers, you can make more than $250,000 per post. Celebrities like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Kylie Jenner, and soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo earn more than $1 million per post. If you are on TikTok, you must have a minimum of 10,000 subscribers and over 270 million views a year to earn $100,000.

The Bottom Line

Social media influencing is a tough nut to crack and takes a humongous amount of time and effort

As you grow your followers, remember that fame comes with great accountability as each piece of content you post, and the product you promote, could potentially change someone’s life. And what you want to see is the good kind of change.