Influencers are like graceful dancers on the internet. They need to captivate their audience with a stunning display, while concealing the countless hours of preparation and practice that led to that moment.
This is what makes the path to influencer status more challenging than it may appear. Accordingly, many upcoming influencers turn to Christina Galbato for advice on establishing their online personas, especially women looking to cultivate their brands.
Interestingly, Galbato stumbled into her influencer career unexpectedly. Her travel blog, which she maintained alongside her corporate job, began to garner attention, leading to invitations for press trips and collaborations with brands. She has also embarked on selling courses focused on audience building.
Her insights extend beyond influencers: providing a personal touch can aid any brand in connecting with its target audience. “Regardless of your business, it’s crucial to intertwine personal branding with marketing,” Galbato asserts.
In this article, Galbato shares her tips on crafting a basic content strategy, highlighting the importance of understanding the unique perspective you bring to your niche, and recounting what happened when she chose vulnerability over a polished image with her followers.
Curate your content.
Contrary to popular belief, leading influencers don’t merely share whatever comes to their minds at any given moment. They meticulously plan each post, ensuring the experience they offer remains consistent and relevant to their overall brand.
“Every single piece of content you publish must have a purpose,” Galbato emphasizes. “It should provide value—whether that’s educating your audience or sharing meaningful stories that forge a connection.”
A steady stream of intriguing content fosters loyalty: an audience that knows what to anticipate and when is more inclined to return regularly.
Here are some initial pointers for formulating your influencer strategy:
Identify your niche within your niche. You’ve selected the field in which you want to build influence, be it travel, business, or food. Now it’s time to pinpoint your unique angle.
Consider the question, What unique viewpoint do I offer that sets me apart in this space? Whether it’s your startup insights influencing your business perspective or your focus on meals made with pantry staples.
Once you pinpoint your angle, ensure all your creations align with it. This consistency is how you develop a standout brand in a crowded market.
Divide your content into pillars. Determine three to five categories of content you aim to produce—Galbato refers to these as pillars. For instance, a travel blogger might highlight destination guides, accommodation reviews, and travel tips. Each piece of content should fit within these pillars.
Galbato suggests aligning each pillar with a specific day of the week. For example, every Wednesday could feature a video or blog post falling under the destination tips category.
This strategy aids in maintaining the consistency crucial for cultivating a loyal and engaged following. “When visitors explore your page, it’s clear what you’re about,” Galbato states.
Connect with your audience across three types of platforms.
A common misconception is that to become a top influencer, one must maintain activity on every platform available. In actuality, this can drain your time and energy, which would be better spent creating quality, monetizable content. It can also stretch yourself thin, preventing you from maximizing engagement opportunities.
Instead, Galbato advises building your presence on three different types of platforms:
Evergreen
This is content that remains beneficial to your audience, even years after its initial posting, hosted on platforms designed to endure and be searchable, such as blog posts, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Ensure the topics you cover are timeless as well. Rather than saying, “The Top Places to Get Engaged in 2022,” consider a title like “The Most Popular Proposal Locations Around the World.”
Email list
While influencers are often evaluated based on their follower counts on social media, Galbato emphasizes the email newsletter as the most potent tool for engaging with followers. “You gain direct access to your audience without relying on algorithms,” she explains.
Social media
Social media serves as an effective means for forming close relationships with your audience in real-time, encouraging them to follow your brand and engage with your content. It’s unnecessary to master every platform—select one that feels most natural to you. For instance, Galbato enjoys great success with Instagram Reels yet has opted out of TikTok as it didn’t resonate with her.
Three is the ideal number: it’s sufficient to enable you to produce your best work without spreading yourself too thin while avoiding sole reliance on one platform that may not pan out (case in point: the 2021 Facebook outage).
People connect with vulnerability.
For a long time, being an influencer meant only showcasing the vibrant and aspirational facets of life. The prevailing thought was that audiences sought out blogs and social media for images of idyllic beaches and perfectly crafted pastries, with any sign of struggle likely prompting mass “unfollows.”
Galbato grappled with this paradox. Her Instagram was filled with breathtaking shots from press trips, yet behind those images lay concerns about her alcohol usage spiraling out of control.
In April 2021, she made the significant decision to eliminate alcohol completely. Five months later, she shared her experiences and journey to sobriety with her followers. Instead of facing backlash, she discovered that her vulnerability fostered a deeper connection.
“I received thousands of messages from people who could relate or were simply thankful because I shared something no one else discusses,” Galbato reflected. “It was the most fulfilling experience I’ve ever had.”
To be an influencer means being strategic about your content, yet also authentic.
Showing vulnerability reinforces to your followers that a real person exists beyond the posts, prompting them to want to connect further.
