If M&S did influencers...
Once upon a time, I had 28,000 followers on Instagram.
According to most estimates, that made me a ‘micro-influencer’, which is someone with anywhere between 10k and 100k followers on social media. Apparently that’s a terribly covetable position to be in these days; a press release I received this week said that ‘social media influencer’ is one of most desirable jobs for career-changers, along with ‘party planner’ and ‘author’.
Since I’m currently in the process of organising my daughter’s third birthday celebrations, I can tell you right now that party planner comes at the bottom of my list, but it’s not far behind social media influencer, given my sliver of insight into that game.
Firstly, it’s a massive bloody effort. In 2020 I became an ‘M&S Insider’ on Instagram, taking over the account from my previous boss at Marks & Spencer (I worked on the editorial team there before joining YOU magazine). My role was basically to carry on what she’d very successfully been doing – posting three to four outfit posts a week highlighting new-in products at M&S. How hard can that be right?
A fucking slog, it turns out. My flat became a walk-in magazine fashion cupboard, with endless stock entering and an unbelievable level of admin to sort out all the returns (you better believe most fashion influencers are buying stuff just to wear it then send it back to the retailer. OR, once they get famous enough, simply getting sent an endless cascade of free stuff which they then have to try and cram in to their normal-sized homes. It’s obscene, and I say that as someone who also gets sent plenty of freebies).
As for the actual photography part of influencing, it quickly became clear that my husband and I would divorce if he was involved, mainly because his idea of art direction was to say ‘Hurry up, I need the loo’ and point the camera at me for 0.5 seconds, handing over blurry pictures that had my entire forehead and feet cut off. I don’t blame him. Instead, it fell to my long-suffering little sister to slog down to South London at 6am so we could take photos before we started our day jobs (I paid her in Gail’s coffee and promises to look after her future children).
There’s also the cringe factor, which is extremely hard to overcome. I already mentioned that I basically died when people started signing up for this newsletter, but at least writing is something I’m paid to do, so I can’t be entirely crap. Prancing around in front of the camera wearing M&S frocks however? My entire soul left my body every time someone walked past during a photo shoot. And I couldn’t pose to save my life; all my photos were just me grinning like a dork who didn’t know what to do with their arms (which was…accurate).
Obviously I’m not comparing the hard work of influencing to being an A&E nurse or cleaner or working in the Boohoo factory (where, god help us, most of those influencers’ clothes probably come from). But it’s not just wafting around on press trips and opening boxes full of Diptyque candles, as some people might believe.
For me though, the shittest thing about being an influencer is that so much of your worth is measured by what strangers think of you. It’s like a high school popularity contest writ large; your whole value is based on getting likes and followers and engagement from people you’ve never met, who don’t actually know you. I was able to detach myself quite a lot from this because I was ‘performing’ the influencer role as part of my job, but I can imagine that if you’re running a more personal account – as most influencers do – this numbers game could drive you absolutely mad.
I remember talking to a fashion influencer once, before I took over the M&S insider account, and telling her that I thought her job looked amazing. ‘Oh no, I’d much rather be doing an office job, I just do this because it fits round the kids’ she told me. At the time, I thought she was bonkers, but having had some sense of what Instagrammer life is like, I totally get it.
I’m not suggesting everyone feels like this – clearly, some people are living their best lives as ‘content creators’, and through my job I’ve met plenty of excellent people who make their living on social media (and fangirled a fair few at events). When my time at M&S was up though, I was more than happy to pass over my account and hop back into anonymity once again, albeit with a few more comfy sandals and floral dresses to my name.