Influencer
Lifestyle Influencer Jessica Jerrard on Staying Motivated and Balancing Work, Life, & Motherhood
Dealing with negativity, posting consistently, and staying motivated are common challenges among content creators. Lifestyle and fashion influencer Jessica Jerrard shares her experience balancing everything, staying motivated, and collaborating with brands.
About Jessica Jerrard
Jessica Jerrard began dancing at a young age, which later led her to model. When she first started modeling, the photos were shared through magazines.
Jessica shares, “My life took almost a crossroads because I loved what I was doing, especially as I trained as a dancer, but I also loved the modeling side, but that didn’t make enough for my bills, so I looked at what else I could be good at”
She looked into sales and marketing, leading her to her current cybersecurity and content creation career. As more and more magazines were shut down, modeling became heavily based online, which prompted Jessica to create her Instagram account.
During the pandemic lockdowns, she devoted more time to content creation and noticed a significant spike in her following. Jessica’s content focuses on lifestyle and fashion topics.
She explains, “A lot of my stuff is very much about day-to-day wear or collaborations or if I’m going to an event, what kind of [fashion] can the real girl wear and juggle her life, her work, and her children at the same time, but still keep a sense of herself. I think that’s where I’m finding most of my new followers are coming from.”
Balancing Life as a Content Creator and Mom
Jessica Jerrard works full-time in cybersecurity, models, creates content, and is a mother to two young daughters. So, how does she do it?
She explains that at times she’ll concentrate on her Instagram by posting a lot of reels and content, but other times she focuses on different goals and aspirations.
“There’s only so much you can give and spread yourself out across being a mom, working full-time, and being a content creator. I feel that I’m finding that juggle quite hard, finding it hard to juggle and pour equally into each of the three.”
For example, Jessica posts less content during busy times of the year with family, such as Christmas. However, she’ll come back strong afterward to continue juggling her work, content creation, and family life to the best of her ability.
Jessica’s Best Performing Content
Jessica Jerrard posts a wide variety of content, including fashion, lifestyle, mom, fitness, and travel content. Generally, she finds that her travel content performs the best, especially when she recommends specific activities and places to visit.
A recent post that performed well featured a holiday outfit with her youngest daughter.
She adds, “It’s just a normal person traveling, you know, your normal things and your normal places, instead of some Death Island somewhere. That’s what I’ve found the most [engagement].”
Jessica Jerrard has also expanded into TikTok and is finding rapid growth there, especially with the fast-changing algorithm.
“With TikTok, I’ve found that you can grow really quickly overnight. For instance, I haven’t got as many followers on TikTok, but I’ve got like two [thousand] on there, but at one point, I was only at 50, and then overnight it just went up to 500, then a thousand, then, it just grew really quickly, so I think I will probably concentrate more on there.”
@jessica_jerrard #grwm #work #womeninstem #womeninbusiness #outfitideas #workwearstyle #workwearstyle #workwearfashion #morethan #haveital ♬ Iced Coffee – Arthur Hill
What Motivates Jessica
Jessica’s biggest motivation comes from her strong drive and desire for success in all areas of her life.
She shares, “I want to show that you don’t have to just be one thing. You don’t have to just be a career woman, you don’t have to be a wife, you don’t have to be a mom, you don’t just have to be a mom, and you don’t just have to be an influencer or content creator 24/7. You can show all these different parts of your personality. No one is just a single lens. They have loads of different facets to their personality.”
Joining Sintillate Talent, a multi-award-winning international talent and influencer agency representing individuals in 18 countries globally, has also greatly motivated and helped Jessica grow her social media accounts.
Jessica Jerrard explains, “The agency is what took me to the next step from just a few thousand [followers] to the next stage when I really had a goal of hitting 10,000 followers. The agency helped me to do that with different collaborations. We are on chats every single day.”
She adds that the agency is on chats with its influencers daily, sharing updates on algorithm changes, collaborations, and content ideas. Gaining 10,000 influencers was a long-held goal of Jessica’s, so hitting this goal was a significant highlight for her. She has already set a new goal of 20,000 followers to continue encouraging her growth mindset.
“What I’ve found really beneficial from the agency and also the collaborations that they get and the contracts that they work with are really good, especially for micro-influencers like myself. I don’t think I’d be able to get my face out there without them.”
Collaborating with Brands
After signing on with Sintillate Talent, Jessica Jerrard has had many more opportunities to collaborate with brands. One of her favorite campaigns was with Romwe, a massive social-inspired apparel retailer.
“They’re [Romwe] the clothes that I would actually buy myself, so the content and the diversity that is able to be created with their product is really good. The other campaign that really sticks to mind is where we did a smear campaign, so that was really encouraging women to go and get their [smear] test, especially women my age. It’s something that in the UK, they don’t normally push you to it until you’re about 35, but it’s so important to get checks before.”
Jessica also loved another campaign that encouraged women to be independent and empowered. She shares that these campaigns are very close to her heart, which is why they stick out to her so much.
Addressing Negativity in the Space
Jessica Jerrard would love to see more regulation on negative comments online.
She shares, “It’s so easy for someone to sit behind a keyboard and just say whatever they want because they have that barrier… it should be more [regulated]… to educate that it’s not okay to speak to people like that and there are negative effects.”
As creators grow, there is even more pressure to be and look a certain way, especially when you hit a certain number of followers or appear on TV or in magazines. Jessica shares that she’d love to see regulations about what people can say to creators because of the negative impact these comments have on people’s mental health.
Future Plans
Jessica Jerrard explains that she can’t say much about her plans, but she has a couple of campaigns she hopes to work on. She’s also working to improve her engagement and the content she puts out continuously.
In closing, she shares, “Just about the agency, one of the things that is quite key around their core value is very much about the mental health, which we’ve touched on already, but it’s very much around supporting each other…When your engagement levels are low, it almost feels like you’re not enough… It’s really important to have good support around you.”
