Hey
I just spent a week in Florida on a trip with hundreds of Instagram and TikTok influencers and I’m here to spill the tea on 6 things I learned.
Sounds fun?
Read on for the juice from the jacuzzi…
6 things I learned from spending a week in the company of influencers…
1. They output very little
I’m not throwing any shade here, at all.
But from what I’ve seen, the output of many travel influencers is pretty small.
Relatively speaking.
From a week long trip, some of them might output only one or two IG stories each day plus a couple of reels when they get home.
Those are the deliverables.
Quite frankly, that’s nuts to me.
From a week-long trip, I’ll typically output 10 stories per day, multiple reels, Facebook posts, 5+ articles, a couple of YouTube videos, and thousands of photos that I’ll use to update and republish my existing articles.
Am I working too hard? Maybe.
While I’ve been pushing out the quantity, these guys have been focusing on quality.
2. Influencers get paid to travel
Never in my life have I been paid to travel anywhere.
Sure, I get trips like this for free sometimes, but I pay for most of them myself.
Influencers, on the other hand, are often paid not just expenses, but a flat fee on top, for their content.
How?
They either do a ton of outreach and networking, or they have agencies who do that for them and take a cut.
I recently attended a webinar that explains how to partner with tourist boards.
If you’re into travel, you can watch the replay of that here.
While some people do get paid directly from Instagram and TikTok, it’s usually not very much.
Many influencers rely on brand deals to pay their bills.
For them, travelling for free isn’t usually an option.
3. A LOT of work goes into each minute of content
That 60-second reel you just watched?
That took days of work.
Oftentimes, everthing is scripted ahead of the trip and it might even go through several rounds of edits between the influencer and the brand.
When it comes to filming, they already know all the shots they need.
So while they might only output one reel from a trip, that could still be as much work as I put into several blog posts.
4. Somehow, they don’t need sleep
If you have to be up at 6 am to take photos, would you go to bed at 4 am?
Me neither.
But most influencers have some sort of superpower that lets them bypass the jet lag, take a quick snooze, smash a Red Bull and then be chirpy AF for the next 20-hour-long day of activities.
Meanwhile, my 40-year-old anemic self can’t even string a sentence together until after the third coffee.
This is why most influencers are in their twenties.
5. Their digital PR game is next level
While niche site people like me are paying agencies to do their digital PR and get articles in newspapers hoping for a backlink, influencers are playing a whole other game.
Newspapers are paying them for interviews so they can write articles about them.
Backlinks? Probably, but they don’t care.
6. Nobody does Facebook
‘What’s your biggest channel – Instagram or TikTok?’
That was a common question.
‘Facebook’, I said.
And their eyes widened.
‘Really? People use Facebook?’
I had a Facebook account before these people were born.
I was running Facebook ads while they were learning their times tables.
I wish that was a joke.
I make zero money from Instagram.
I won’t even have TikTok on my phone.
The concept of making money from Facebook is so alien to most influencers that they wouldn’t even consider it.
But, you don’t know what you don’t know, right?
I’m back from the trip now with about 5,000 photos and videos and a huge to-do list that I’m hoping to tick off before my next trip in a week’s time.
This is why I try to leave 3 weeks between trips.
Meanwhile, my influencer friends have done their IG posts and are already off on their next trip.
It was super fun to take a closer look at how other people run their businesses.
In January, I’ll be launching a roadmap to help people who have never used Facebook learn exactly what to do to make money from it, step-by-step.
So even an 18-year-old could follow it. LOL.
It’ll be cheap, under $50.
If you already have a Facbook page and want to ramp up how quickly you can create social-first blog posts and unique memes, then check out the tools I had especiually built for that in my Niche Toolbox.
(Readers of this email get 25% off with code 25TOOLBOX)
Have a nice Christmas if I don’t see you before
(Yep, it’s the season where every chat ends with those words)
– NSL