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1. Maintaining integrity is difficult, but vital.
Celebrity chef and nutritionist Serena Poon, added “influencer” to her impressive list of qualifications and titles, after sharing her knowledge online. It wasn’t that she stumbled into the career, but rather, her career as a female entrepreneur cemented her expert place in the food industry, building a reputation and in return, fans.
Today, she’s not only the founder of Just Add Water, but also the voice behind Serena Loves, both of which have thousands of followers across social media platforms and their dot-coms. She shares posts on Instagram, Twitter, and her blog, and she’s in the process of launching a podcasts. “From sharing posts about meals, recipes, nutrition and wellness tips, to travel and culinary adventures abroad, I very organically began to grow my community. As my following began to grow, and the comments and questions came in response to the information I shared, I realized there was so much more to the power of our social platforms. It was at this point that I began to really focus on my messaging with my posts,” she explains.
That was five years ago, and since then, she’s been mastering the learning curve of understanding what type of content attracts and converts her audience, as well as staying true to what helped her arrive at this destination: her integrity and authenticity.
“I am very passionate about staying authentic to my health and wellness philosophy, educating people, and empowering each other. The content I create for my audience, even if in collaboration with another brand, is also aligned on these points,” she continues.
“As an influencer, I attend a lot of events, network in the different circles that make up my interest groups, and share those experiences with my following. I receive a lot of requests for advertised and sponsored posts for products, but I only choose brands that are aligned with my messaging because the content that is created for sponsored posts needs to fit seamlessly in with the posts I do for my own brand. They can’t come across like ads. At the end of the day, you are always creating content in some form, whether it’s informative or simply sharing tidbits of your own day-to-day life, because your audience has an interest.”
