To many of us, there may be no more amorphous aspiration as being an Influencer. In our Age of Social Media and ever-present smartphones, it’s become a far more common career goal for many digital natives, particularly if you’re Gen Z (people born after around 1997). In fact, according to recent research, more than half of Gen Z believes that they can realistically make it a career.
Thanks to Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and a plethora of other social media outlets, the path to celebrity has never been more accessible to the masses. To put it in perspective, longtime celebrity pillar People magazine has an average monthly circulation of around 82 million readers. Influencer MrBeast has 219 million YouTube subscribers. If you haven’t heard of MrBeast, ask your kids. They’ll know.
Initially, being an Influencer was simply being a celebrity who was active on social media – the Kardashians, Jenners, soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, actress Selena Gomez are some headliners here – then it became the milieu of bloggers and experts who developed a following from niches like fashion, makeup, travel, investing, etc. Knowledge became power.
But now a third wave of Influencers has taken form. Call it Influencer 2.0: people who have cultivated a brand of image and partnerships with well-known companies to launch themselves into an online stratosphere of fame.
Take Alessandra Liu for example. Alessandra, now in her late teens, has become an Influencer powerhouse with almost 1.5 million Instagram followers. She began her journey only a few years ago when she set up an Instagram account and started tagging brands during shopping trips with her mother. That’s when corporations took notice and started reaching out to her.
To give a sense of how far she’s come in such a short time, Alessandra just returned from a multi-week trip to Dubai where she was doing fashion shoots with internationally awarded photographer Nasir Majeed.
Working mainly with boutique brands, companies have offered her collaborations for her postings. Online retailers such as Shein and Temu have sent her products to spotlight. A sink company even sent them a high-end sink for their home just to make a video. Now, she’s looking past the New York Fashion Week scene that she’s enjoyed and pivoting towards national brands – and beyond.
She’s now been on Times Square billboards, magazine covers, worked as a model, and even is listed on the “Famous Birthdays” website. She’s set to head to California soon to shoot a music video.
Alessandra is currently the youngest Hollywood Executive Producer in history, listed on IMDb for an independent film she produced in 2022 called Grace that received multiple awards at several film festivals, and has acted in another short film called Endless Summer. She's also appeared in 7 television commercials for national brands and filmed 2 pilots for both Comedy Central and Viacom. She’s now focused on Hollywood as a continued step, acting, producing, leveling up. Exponentially.
According to her management team (yes, she has one), an Influencer’s rise on Instagram is fueled by an algorithm that feeds content to an audience that might be interested. If you’ve ever Googled “Canon” and suddenly find your social feeds rife with camera ads, that’s how it works.
However, online science can only do so much. Without staying true to your brand and a constant stream of likable posts, there will be no organic growth. Without that, an Influencer has no influence.
A video of her simply walking down a sidewalk during her trip to Dubai garnered 59,000 views in just 8 hours.
“I’m posting all the time,” Alessandra explains. “Wherever my inspiration takes me, I’ll post a video. Once in a while, I might be off for a couple of days, recharging my creative batteries, then I’ll be right back at it. It only takes a few seconds to post a video and engage with my followers.”
Alessandra has come so far that a lot of building her brand is done passively. Companies, photographers, real estate moguls, and more are approaching her to collaborate. Yet the important thing to remember is that success as an Influencer in the “fame industry” isn’t simply about posting selfies. Like any other career, it takes dedication, creativity, and a clear plan to maximize your longevity.
For Alessandra Liu and many other successful Influencers, social media is just the entry point into a bold new world that will continue to evolve. Strap up and we’ll see where that takes us all.
Alessandra…the youngest Hollywood Executive Producer in history
A third wave of Influencers has taken form