As a creator, we want to know how brands and agencies choose the content creators that they’re working with, right? We want to get inside the minds of the campaign managers. Aren’t you curious what they were thinking when they went with another creator over you? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know how budgeting works and why the brand can only pay you a certain amount of money?

This week, we’re here with Sonia Elyss, a marketing consultant and the founder of incredible talent, marketing, and content agency, Round Twelve. Sonia takes a fluff-free approach to helping modern beauty brands gain visibility, become fan-favorites, and amplify their “why,” She has ideated and executed campaigns for top beauty brands like Clarins, Kiehl's, and IT Cosmetics.

Today, Sonia is giving us a peek at the other side of the business. How does she find creators to work with? What does she focus on when looking at our profiles? How does she determine what rate she can offer each creator? What do her agency and the brands she represents expect for sponsored post-performance? What makes her want to work with a creator again (or NOT)?

We’re giving you the scoop on all things newsletters. This my Biz BFF is Soulcial Scoop.

Building your email newsletter is essentially mandatory at this point for content creators as you need a way to reach your audience in case our favorite social media platforms shuttered one day unexpectedly, right?

But creating your list and sending out weekly emails is a bit overwhelming, and you may not know where to start. We get it!

This week, we’re here with Dylan Bridger, an email marketer who helps coaches and course creators make more money with email marketing. He does this by providing done-for-you email copywriting services, and done-with-you email marketing coaching and training. Over the past 10 years, his marketing funnels have generated $2M+ in sales for his clients.

This week, Dylan is answering all of our burning questions about newsletters. What do we include in them? How often should they be sent? How can we avoid people unsubscribing? How can we grow our email list? And how and when can we monetize it?

How can you utilize Instagram Stories to build loyalty with your audience and drive traffic to your other content on the ‘gram? What should you even post there? How many days a week should you be posting? How many Stories posts per day will suffice?

Those are the questions we’re answering today with lifestyle content creator Danielle Gervino. Danielle got her start in 2015 when she needed an outlet for her designs and writing passions. Danielle’s creative approach to the latest style and beauty trends coupled with her passion for living a career-driven yet well-balanced life has allowed her to connect with the “everyday girl”, offering all kinds of inspiration to her community along the way.

She has absolutely mastered the art of creating Instagram Stories that people actually want to watch, find incredible value in, and can relate to.

Danielle has an incredibly loyal following, and for many of them, her Stories are why they feel so close to her and come back time and time again for more. Today we’re answering all of your questions about utilizing Instagram Stories as a creator like a PRO.

As creators, we know that follower count isn’t everything, but it absolutely holds some weight, right? However, in today’s creator economy, follower count is becoming less and less important and things like community and engagement are what the brands are really interested in.

Depending on the brand’s goal, engagement and community can be the make-it or break-it. If the brand’s goal is sales or even brand awareness, they want to know that you have an audience who listens to you. That’s why it’s so important for creators to focus on building a community vs. just a following.

But what’s even the difference between a following and a community? What are the benefits of having a community vs. just a following?

This week, we’re here with Melissa Chanel, a fellow Charlotte creator and the founder of Kicks & Fros, a community celebrating black women and sneaker culture. She has done wonders on her platforms to create genuine communities that gather because of their similar interests.

Today we’re answering all of your questions about creating a loyal community vs. just a following. First of all, what’s the difference? Also, what can creators do to boost their engagement and build community? How can you slide into someone’s DM to build a relationship with them without it being weird? What does a loyal community look like from a brand’s perspective?

We all love using Pinterest to find photoshoot inspiration or DIY projects, but when it comes to growing and monetizing your Pinterest account as a creator, there’s a lot to learn.

Did you know Pinterest is more of a search engine than it is a social media platform? Did you know that it can take a couple of months for your content to get indexed in the search results before you see growth?

This week, we’re here TWO special guests: Whitney + Allie, the Pinterest pros behind Ride the Wave Social. Whitney is a Verified Resident Pinterest Creator with a background in creative marketing that fuels her passion for brand integrity and turning first-time followers into brand loyalists. Allie is a Certified Pinterest Strategist with a passion for fusing innovative strategy with authentic content to help grow an engaged community on social media.

Ride the Wave is a Pinterest-First social media agency for content creators. They help creators, service providers, and course creators use the power of Pinterest to build an engaged community, increase their income streams, and diversify their online presence.

Today we’re answering all of your questions about using Pinterest as a creator. How can we grow the views and follower count on Pinterest? What’s the best way to research keywords to use on the platform? Where do we need to put these keywords? How can we actually make money on this platform?

Everyone creator - no matter their follower count, engagement rate, or niche - compares themselves and their work to other creators on the internet. There’s even a term for this: Imposter syndrome.

When you’re experiencing this, you find yourself wondering “Why would anyone care about what I have to say? I don’t even deserve the recognition that I get. I’m not even that good.” It’s easy to feel like a fraud.

The worst part? It inhibits growth. How are you supposed to do your absolute best to start or grow your business when you’re busy doubting your abilities and telling yourself that you can’t do it?

This week, we’re here with Kaitlin Anthony, an Empowerment Coach, podcaster, and multi-passionate entrepreneur dedicated to helping women to come back home to their authentic selves.

As an empowerment coach, she uses her life experiences, professional training and community to coach women to claim their personal power and live their happily ever now.

Today we’re answering all of your questions about dealing with all of the mental blocks that come with the territory of being a creator or an influencer. How can a creator deal with fear? Does imposter syndrome ever go away? If not, how can we cope? What are some specific actions that creators can take to love themselves more? How can a creator tune out all of the negativity on the internet and stop worrying so much about engagement or follower count?

One of the toughest things for creators is to find out how to turn their online influence into a full-blown, profitable business. Every creator wants to know how to be a full-time influencer, right?

The hard truth is that is takes a lot of skill, education, and tons of work to get there, but the answers to many of the questions that creators have go unanswered. There’s no specific place to go to learn how to turn this side hustle into a career, so instead, we have to search and experiment quite a bit.

This week, we’re here Emma Cortes, a truly impressive full-time fashion and lifestyle creator who was able to quit her full-time job in the aerospace industry, because she was matching that income with content creation and influencing.

We’re answering all of your questions about becoming a profitable, self-sustaining business as a creator. How do you know what to charge? How often should you be pitching to brands? What does the perfect pitch even look like? How do you negotiate three, four, or even five-figure deals as a microinfluencer?

One of the best ways to build a connection with your community as a creator is to spend time with them - Lives being one of the best ways to do this. However, it’s also the one option that most creators don’t take advantage of - mostly because they’re nervous about putting themselves out there.

Live videos can be extremely uncomfortable. What if you mess up? What is no one comes? What if the people that do come don’t interact? Will Lives ever not feel weird?

This week, we’re here with Emma Ragland, owner of Ragland Clothing Co, who has truly mastered the art of hosting an incredible Instagram Live. Emma started her business when she was only 17 years old and runs it currently as her full-time job - with Instagram Lives being a huge driver of her income.

Today we’re answering all of your questions about lives on social media. Emma shares her top tips on how to bring traffic to your Lives, what you can do if you’re ever feeling awkward, and how you can use Lives as a way to drive real traffic to your profile/business.

Many creators simply don’t know what they’re getting into when they get into this industry. Not growing quickly, low engagement rates, constant imposter syndrome, trying to “niche down”, the frequent rejection from brands we’ve been working hard to impress - these are all struggles that creators everywhere deal with incredibly frequently.

This week, we’re here with Jordyn Rush of Your Pal Jordyn, who is a lifestyle, fashion, and travel content creator focusing on incorporating a bold, vibrant element into the lives of everyone in her audience. With a background in both sales and marketing, Jordyn has been able to take her social media career full-time in 2 years.

Today we’re sharing our experiences of going through the struggles that each and every single creator reading right now goes through no matter how long you’ve been at this or how many followers you have.

What do you do when everyone around you is growing faster than you? Will brands still take you on even when your engagement rate is low? How do you deal with imposter syndrome as it sneaks into your life more than you’d like it to? Why won’t brands pay me my rates or anything at all?

As self-employed creators, we need to learn to handle our money in a much more strategic way than a classic W2 employee. BUT finding out how to do this and be prepared for these types of situations is hard. Most of us don’t have someone to guide us. We look on the internet, but the information we find is confusing and lacks clarity for someone who doesn’t understand legal jargon.

This week, we’re here with Sabrina St. Peter, who is an established bookkeeper, and the owner of Smart Spark Business Solutions, where she remotely assists small business owners in the marketing space - including content creators - with their bookkeeping needs. She strives to make bookkeeping accessible to all businesses no matter if they are just starting out or have been around the block.

Today we’re answering all of the questions you have about money management as a content creator. How can you prepare for taxes? What’s the best way to keep track of your income and expenses? Can you count travel, beauty services, and meals as business expenses?

How many times have you seen creators at a glamorous event like RevolveFest and thought "damn, how do I get on the guestlist"? Many times, brands work hand-in-hand with publicists like Mackenzie Judge of Gal Media to give their offerings new life via events, installations, influencer campaigns, and creator collaborations.

Mackenzie dove headfirst into public relations and has found her passion in planning events and activations for her agency's clients. She's incredibly invested in the beauty industry as well, even donning her own podcast, "The Blondie Beauty" where she's interviewed huge names in the industry like Deborah Lippmann, Jessica Chia, and more.

So, what does a publicist look for when recruiting influencers? How can we get invited to these out-of-a-dream events? How can we work hand-in-hand with publicists and create great relationships with them so that we can help make the brand’s digital advertising dreams come true (and ours in the process)? We're sharing the answers to all of the questions and more in this week's episode.

As someone who's been in the media world for over 12 years, Tom Boyd knows a thing or two about being a creative. He believes that creators are brands and that they need to learn how to position themselves as such. That's exactly what he's done on his own personal platforms garnering an audience of over 68k.

Today we’re answering all of the questions you have about being a BRAND as a creator. How can you stand out to brands with unique concepts? How can you position yourself in a way that will appeal to your audience and fulfill you? How can YOU be a trusted brand as a creator?

Have you ever thought about what you would do if Instagram or TikTok completely folded tomorrow? This week, we’re here with Ashlyn Greer, owner of digital personal styling concierge, Fashivly. Her business completely blew up, and she was able to take her influence off of social media and build a loyal community of customers.

Today, we’re answering the big questions that all creators face: What kind of business can I create to sustain myself off the internet? How do I expand my influence? And what does it take to start a business?

Why are brands just GHOSTING you? You must be the problem, right?

In today’s episode, we’re here Justin Moore, AKA the Creator Wizard, who is a successful sponsorship coach and agency owner who dove into the industry after years of helping his wife, April, with her sponsorship success about 10 years ago. His family combined has over 1.3 million subscribers on YouTube. You could say he knows a thing or two about the business.

Today, we’ll be answering the big question that all creators face: Why the heck are brands ghosting me? Did you know there are at least nine different reasons for this? Listen now for the scoop.

Can you relate? You’re ready to turn your online influence into a profitable, self-sustaining business, but you’re unsure of the logistics of running a legitimate business. That’s exactly why I want you to meet MY mentor, Deana Gore (who also so happens to be my cousin!). If you’ve ever heard a great piece of business advice from me, chances are she taught it to me or at least influenced me to learn it.

She herself is the incredibly successful small business owner of Wilbraham Candle, but she’s also been the Vice President of People and Business Resources at a multi-million dollar national parking management company for the last 15 years. Today, we’ll be sharing everything a creator needs to know how being a legal business, staying safe with the nitty-gritty of small business laws, and negotiating your way to financial freedom.

We all have things about ourselves that we're nervous about sharing, but Reagan Campbell is the perfect example of why you should display your "imperfections" and run your business with confidence. As someone with over 326k TikTok followers and a Port Wine Stain birthmark, you can imagine the internet trolls that she endures. In this episode and on her platforms, Reagan has taken all of that negativity and turned it into something beautiful by spreading awareness and helping her community learn the power of confidence.

So many creators have a tough time building a profitable business of their online influence, but talent managers like Samantha Zinkovich of Zink Talent, help their clients do this all. day. long. In this episode, Samantha dives deep into how she lands some huge partnerships for her clients at Zink Talent, an agency she started, including what to charge, how she creates relationships with brands and some valuable negotiation tips.

Influencer platforms are one of our favorite ways to connect with some of the biggest brands in the world, and Hashtag Paid is at the top of that list. Today, we’re chatting with Hashtag Paid’s incredible social media manager, Danny Desatnik, about the inside scoop into having success monetizing as a creator on influencer platforms. How do they choose creators? What trends are brands loving? What’s a day-in-the-life as someone managing the social platforms for every influencer’s favorite place to find brand collabs? All those questions and more as answered in this incredibly valuable episode.

In this week's episode, we're breaking down influencer management with my lovely manager, Becca Folsom of Blogist — an influencer management and strategy agency that helps influencers connect with more brands and overall have more success on their platforms.

Becca shares her perspective on how influencers can be successful in getting a manager and working with them successfully and how to work with more brands even if you're not ready for a manager.

At 23-years young, Gigi Robinson has become a pro at blending mental health and social media into her day-to-day content. She's been able to master multiple different forms of content creation such as social media, podcasting, and public speaking to help instill confidence in her audience of over 150,000 people. She’s been featured in Vogue Business, Teen Vogue, The Today Show, Bustle, Business Insider, and many more. Today, she's sharing her tips on becoming a confident creator who knows their shit.