ENTREPRENEURSHIP
ifestyle blogger Alicia Lund
of Cheetah is the New Black
recalls her early days of blogging
in San Francisco in 2009.
She would have her roommates
or sister snap photos of
her, write her posts in the evenings, and
post to her blog on the platform Blogger.
Pre-Instagram, blogging then was just
a hobby where the goal was simply
to express oneself and connect with
like-minded people.
“I laugh at myself now, like, why was I
doing this?” Lund says. “Back in the day,
it was pure passion because
I was working full time at an
investment firm, and then it
was coming home and, like,
being so excited to shoot my
outfit. Just a young 23-year-old
sharing iPhone photos — ‘This
is what I wore today.’”
Lund’s lifestyle blog
gained traction after she
moved to New York in 2011.
The monetization platform,
RewardStyle, had just
launched and asked her to
be one of the first to use it
to monetize affiliate sales.
Around the same time, she accepted
a job at Elle magazine
as the fashion editor for
elle.com, balancing Cheetah
is the New Black in the
evenings. Working with an
agent helped her secure and
manage partnerships, a process
she took in-house after moving to
Sacramento for her husband’s job transfer
five years ago. Now, working from her
East Sacramento home, she contracts
two consultants to help her manage
brand partnerships. Her Instagram feed,
@aliciamlund, looks at once editorial
and effortless and covers home decor,
style, motherhood and travel. Lund posts
to Instagram most days, sharing a mix
of paid and organic (unpaid) content —
she says that the majority of her content
tends to be the latter. “I only work with
brands that I use and am excited to
share,” she says. “I know my audience
will enjoy what’s authentic to me.”
Lund’s website and social media
audience — more than 90,400 followers
on Instagram and nearly 155,000 on
Facebook — are accustomed to posts of
her daily life in which she embodies her
laid-back brand of casual luxury. A recent
post shows Lund barefoot in her home,
dressed in a sheer floral dress layered
with an oversized sweater, baby on her
hip. In her caption, she writes about the
effect that dressing up can have on your
mood (a subtle nod to COVID-19 living),
and recommends layering a long sweater
over a maxi dress for style and comfort.
“Now people want the connection
with the person. The (influencers)
that seem to be truly authentic
are really doing the best because
it shines through. I’m really trying
to force myself to do that right
now because I’m someone who
hasn’t been so into talking to the
camera and putting my face
forward in that way.”
ALICIA LUND
LIFESTYLE BLOGGER,
CHEETAH IS THE NEW BLACK
She then tags the designer of the sweater,
a custom hashtag that signifies the brand
partnership, and offers her followers a
20-percent off code to shop the brand. For
this post, Lund gets paid by the designer;
under the endorsement guidelines of the
Federal Trade Commission, she must
disclose this is a sponsored post.
If the business of becoming an influencer
seems unclear, it might be because
it takes a combination of abstract
qualities: charisma, the express ability
to turn one’s life into art, the confidence
to commodify said art, and an innate
desire to share, even if you’re really
quite shy in real life. On top of these
squishy, amorphous qualities comes a
number of measurable, strategic ones.
To succeed, an influencer needs to
develop skills that will help build an
audience, establish a brand and create
compelling content.
Building a following is key
As a longtime influencer (my perpetual
side gig) and a content marketer
(my day job), I feel close to the concept
of influencer marketing — yet seven
years after starting my blog, Babesicle,
which is all about California style with
a bohemian flair, I also find
influencing a mysterious
engine. That’s not to say its
moving parts and functionality
are particularly difficult
to grasp, but each influencer
approaches it so uniquely,
and there are so many nuances
to the business — which
merges creativity, marketing,
technology, personality and
chutzpah — that it never
ceases to intrigue me.
Many influencers are in
a creative field already and
develop their craft incrementally.
For Haley Titus, the
Sacramento-based styleblogger-turned-art-influencer
behind Colour Me Classic, it
was a patchwork of experiences
that afforded her the ability
to create, expand and evolve
her blog, which currently focuses
on her paintings and local murals.
“Over time, each of my jobs gave me a
different tool,” she says. “My first job was
packaging and graphic design and websites.
My second job was presentations.
My third was photography. My fourth
was managing a studio and events. And
so I think a lot of those things just kind of
gave me little pieces of the puzzle.”
Having the pieces to the puzzle can
elevate the quality of influencers’ content,
opening the door to brand partnerships.
Brands, recognizing that an
individual’s point of view is a compelling
piece of native ad content (native
ads are the sneaky advertisements that
70 comstocksmag.com | July 2020