When it comes to explaining my job to new people it is often met with a either a slightly confused expression or in the case of my Grandma Lynch a reply along on the lines "So something to do with that internet thing?". She was sort of right and sort of wrong, so I wanted to share with you what I do when I'm not writing blog posts or sharing content on Instagram. In short I am the person on the other side of most conversations I have with people who work in PR for different brands and so seeing both sides of it I have a fairly unique understanding of influencer marketing as an industry. I've been doing it for nearly six years now and have seen how the industry has grown and changed into something that most people have heard of today. 

Rewinding back to the very beginning of my career, I was almost two years out of University with a Fashion Journalism degree and not a sniff of a job in what I wanted to do at the time, which was to write. By chance I one day followed Missguided's PR Twitter account (which I don't think exists anymore), and saw they were looking for someone to look after their blogger outreach, which is an old school term for influencer marketing. The job involved moving to Manchester which I did in a heart beat, six years and various positions later working with brands like Public Desire, Proactiv+, Footasylum Women's, Fragrance Direct and Optical Express here I am today doing the same job on a freelance basis, and blogging myself at the same time. 

Outfit: Western Fedora and belt from Primark, Jacquard Weave Dress from H&M
So what does influencer marketing actually mean? In short, it is when a brand wants to work with an influencer to promote a certain product. This could be clothing, make up, an event, a new product launch or campaign and is usually done with a goal of making people aware of the brand/product/event or to generate sales or obtain new customers of said brand/product/event. My job in all this is to come up with the ideas, work out who would be the best influencer(s) to work with for the project, contact those influencer(s) or their agent, send out the product or book event venues etc, ensure everything goes live on time, make sure everyone gets paid on time when payment is involved and then report on it afterward to see if we met our goals and what can be improved on next time.
The perfect example of this in action was me seeing that the gorgeous Amy from The Little Magpie has recently curated her own collection in store and online for H&M, and me immediately buying this perfect little dress after seeing Amy wear it and front the campaign, and then showing it to you in this blog post. That is influencer marketing at it's finest and most effective. 


When it comes to campaigns I have worked on there are lots I'm super proud of, and without sounding like I'm giving you a re-run of my CV I wanted to share a couple with you. The first was a campaign for Public Desire which showed how different influencers wore Public Desire shoes for different events, we did lots of different activity around this such as showcasing influencers holiday style centred around Public Desire's shoes. My personal favourite was when we took seven influencers to Wildlife Festival in Brighton and shot a High Summer Look Book at the festival across two days. Everything from hotels and trains to press passes to take photos at the festival had to be organised by our team and was a lot of fun to work on which helped make the end result such a success. Another was for Proactiv+ who are a skincare brand for acne prone skin. We ran a huge campaign with them over six months, including working with two health and lifestyle influencers who we asked to make a breakfast, snack, lunch and dinner recipe to promote clearer skin. We then filmed this in short video segments for Proactiv+ to use on their social media and marketing channels, as well as a Facebook live session to the standard of TV cooking program that was seen by over 43,000 people. 


I feel like influencer marketing was something I was almost destined to work in having had my own blog since the age of around nineteen (eleven years ago). My blog has taken on many names over the years and has seen varying levels of commitment from me including not blogging at all while working on the other side of the industry up until the end of last year. It is something I love doing and am still a bit annoyed at myself for having let it slip for so long. That said I am lucky to be able to see both sides of the influencer marketing industry as I am fortunate enough to sometimes have brands get in touch with me wanting to work on small projects or to review their products. More recently I have also been paid to do, however whether a gift or a paid activity I will only take on things I truly love and believe in. Working in the industry I know it's never good to take on something for the sake of it when you aren't really passionate about it and I would never want to mislead my readers in that way either. To be really clear, on my Instagram I will always mention if something has been gifted to me in the caption, and when I have been paid to create content and post it you will see the word 'Ad' at the start of the caption as is the ASA (Advertising Standards Agency) requirement. On my blog you will the same on the titles of my blog posts as of 21st July 2019. 

For those of you who might have had some questions about what I do for a living or how influencers work with brands, I hope this has provided a little bit of insight. If you have any questions about influencer marketing at all (or want to hire me) please do feel free to pop me an email as I love chatting about it at robyn@therobyndiaries.com.