Influencer
Balancing A Full-Time Job With Content Creation With Fashion Influencer Erika of Erika_r__
Erika of Erika_r__ is a hair model turned fashion influencer creating content sharing her day-to-day outfits. Currently, she works a full-time job, which she balances with creating content. She shares how working with Sintillate Talent has helped her land more brand opportunities, gain confidence, and establish a support system. Keep reading to learn more about Erika’s pivot to video and fashion content and what she wants to see in the creator space.
Erika of Erika_r__ is a fashion, beauty, and lifestyle content creator and UGC creator with over 32,000 followers on Instagram. However, her creator journey didn’t start in the influencer realm. Instead, she began sharing hair modeling content online.
After deciding to stop hair modeling, she pivoted and began sharing fashion, beauty, and lifestyle content. This change allowed her to grow her following to an impressive audience and join Sintillate Talent, an award-winning international influencer agency with representation in 18 countries. They specialize in providing brands with exceptional talent for PR events, photo shoots, online campaigns, and much more.
Creating Fashion and Lifestyle Content
Erika shares, “I do not have a specific creative process. I’m just trying to share with my followers what I’m wearing day to day.”
Recently, Erika started creating color-coded Instagram posts so that her feed is organized by blocks of outfits in one primary color. For example, she posted pictures of herself in silver for winter and pink in February.
She adds that her fashion content tends to perform best, so she is shifting away from beauty and lifestyle to focus more heavily on fashion content.
“I think my followers are relating more to that [fashion] instead of beauty or lifestyle. That’s what I’ve noticed, so I think I’m going to go more into fashion and do more posts about it instead of beauty or mixing it.”
Pivoting to Video Content
Many creators have noticed that Instagram pushes reels more than traditional picture posts. Erika is adapting her content to this trend by mixing reels with her fashion pictures.
She also started a TikTok recently to grow a secondary platform and continue exploring more video content.
Erika explains, “I’m getting followers on there [TikTok] as well, but I can say it’s a bit more difficult than Instagram.”
While she’s not sure what the exact difference between growing on TikTok and Instagram is, at this moment, she is experimenting with the same content on both platforms to see how they perform differently.
Balancing a Full-Time Job and Content Creation
Erika works a full-time job and runs active social media accounts, which she hopes to grow into a full-time career. One of her biggest challenges is managing her time, balancing her full-time job, and growing her content creation career.
She shares, “At the moment, I’m working five days per week, so I have just a weekend to create content for all week. It’s a bit stressful. It’s like I literally have two jobs at the moment. I’m doing a normal job five days per week, and then [during the] weekend, I need to prepare everything for a week ahead. I think that’s the most challenging part.”
She adds that when brands send her items, it can be incredibly challenging because there may be a quick turnaround of only two days where she must create new content and post it featuring the items. The holiday season was particularly difficult for her because of the tight turnaround times brands expected from her.
The Most Exciting Brand Collaboration
Erika’s most exciting brand collaboration was when French purse company, Polène, sent her one of their luxury handbags. This collaboration occurred after Erika joined Sintillate Talent, who facilitates the majority of her brand deals.
Erika shares, “I liked [working with Polène] because they’re very famous and, to be honest, I didn’t have that many followers. I was really surprised that they reached out to me just wanting to work with me. I was excited.”
Erika created straightforward content of herself showing off the bag and close-ups of the bag itself for this collaboration.
She adds that many of her brand collaborations have been in exchange for products. However, she continues to build paid brand collaborations to build more substantial revenue streams for her business.
Working with Sintillate Talent
Sintillate Talent is a multi-award-winning, international talent agency helping talent to grow online. Erika has been working with Sintillate Talent for about six months and has reaped many benefits.
She explains, “What I liked about them is I could relate because they are promoting self-awareness, helping girls to grow and to gain confidence. I can relate to this.”
When Erika was younger, she was bullied a lot at school for her weight.
Joining Sintillate Talent has helped her to grow her self-confidence as a person and content creator, which has provided massive benefits for her. They have also helped her secure more brand collaborations, allowing her to expand her platform.
What Erika Wants to See in the Creator Space
Erika would love to see Instagram revert to being a picture-first platform and stop trying to compete with TikTok.
She notes, “Instagram is competing with TikTok. They’re trying to push reels more and more, which I heard some content creators were complaining [about]. Instagram used to be for the pictures, and now they’re trying to push videos while we have TikTok. If we [creators] want to create videos, we can do it there. Instagram was made for pictures, but now we have to mix it.”
As for herself, Erika’s biggest goal is to make content creation a full-time job and business. She adds that this will probably take a lot of time, but she’s excited to continue working towards it and transitioning her content to focus primarily on fashion.
