Creating Creators

For my college thesis, I chose to try to understand something that all of my peers had been arguing about for years: Can anyone really be an influencer?

The answer, as I found, was both yes and no. Yes, anyone could have a lucky day online, and have a post that goes viral. However, making a full time job (let alone a career) out of being an online personality has a lot more thought and time put into it than random selfies and ad reads from Headspace.

In this 9 page paper I only begin to scratch the surface of how an influencer should organize the kind of content they make, and the marketing strategy behind every single post. Without spoiling too much, I introduce concepts like the marketing funnel, content buckets, and cross-platform integration that are obvious to anyone in marketing but are completely foreign to the average person making a go at social media stardom. I also cover the value of engagement, how influencers make money, and how to foster growth.

I also created two case studies to compliment my paper and apply the techniques I discussed. I chose two of my friends who would qualify as “micro influencers” (10k-50k followers) and designed complete post strategies for them to be able to maximize their top-of-funnel content and set them up for longevity on socials. I worked with creators to identify their key goals, and adjust their content production to best meet said goals.