{"id":134810,"date":"2021-03-16T12:21:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T11:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/?p=134810"},"modified":"2021-03-17T10:19:38","modified_gmt":"2021-03-17T09:19:38","slug":"how-the-pandemic-has-impacted-influencers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/blog\/how-the-pandemic-has-impacted-influencers\/","title":{"rendered":"One year on: How the pandemic has impacted influencers"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is by Slummy Single Mummy<\/a> blogger Jo Middleton, exploring the impact the pandemic has had on the influencer industry.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Jo<\/p>\n

A year ago this week, (or is it four? It feels like four years at least\u2026), the UK entered its first lockdown. Nobody knew what to expect, how long it would last or what the impact would be on jobs, on whole industries and on our emotional well-being.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At first I wasn\u2019t too worried. As a freelance writer and blogger at Slummy Single Mummy, self-employed now for over 12 years, I\u2019m used to my income going through peaks and troughs. I have some savings – not a lot, but enough to mean I don\u2019t need to rush out and sell the kitchen appliances at the first sign of trouble – and I\u2019m good at holding my nerve when it comes to cash flow.<\/p>\n

As one by one all of my existing blog projects were suddenly \u2018paused\u2019, (read \u2018cancelled\u2019 ultimately in most cases), and the tumbleweed rolled around my inbox, I lay in the garden reading Agatha Christie books and getting a suntan. \u2018Give it a couple of months,\u2019 I thought, ever the optimist, \u2018and everything will be back to normal right?\u2019<\/p>\n

Wrong.<\/p>\n

Instead here we are, one year down the line and, as a blogger and influencer, work is far from back to normal. No press trips, no events, no fun video projects where I have three weeks to learn Spanish<\/a> and go on a date with a Spanish man called Marco. Nada.<\/p>\n

The salt rubbed in the wounds is that I\u2019ve not qualified for a single penny of financial support either. My earnings are over the cap and while as a single mum and sole breadwinner I\u2019m definitely not rolling in disposable cash, apparently my average income means I should have made better pandemic provisions. Consider me told.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve found interesting though is how different brands and different influencers have responded. Campaigns have been switched up to focus on the joy of staying at home and I\u2019ve seen a significant increase in approaches for projects around takeaways and alcohol. And while I\u2019ve personally found it difficult to concentrate and hard to motivate myself, other bloggers have seized the opportunity of more free time to try new things and start new projects.<\/p>\n

Take John Adams for instance, who blogs at Dad Blog UK<\/a>. Pre-pandemic I\u2019ve always admired John for his consistency and positive attitude. You just know<\/em> that John works hard, and I was not surprised to learn that he was one influencer who has been using the last year productively.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

\u201cLockdown inspired me to do two things,\u2019 John told me. \u201cNumber one, decades after leaving school, I started studying GCSE maths. It’s an exam I failed in my youth and it’s always bugged me. I sat exams in November and January and I’m just waiting for the results now.<\/p>\n

“Number two, I launched a podcast called DadPodUK<\/a>. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for ages so I produced a mini-series of eight episodes. To my amazement, those episodes were enough for me to get a Runner Up accolade in the inaugural Podcasting for Business Awards. This, despite the fact that early episodes were a bit ropey in places because I had no idea about recording audio, a skill I have rapidly taught myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Admirable stuff right? There I was, signing up to an interior design course that I managed one module of, and John was resitting his maths GCSE. Not everyone though, (me included), has found it so easy to maintain that sense of drive and determination in the midst of such uncertainty.<\/p>\n

So many influencers I\u2019ve spoken to have told me that work just stopped in the early months of the pandemic. In an industry that can feel unpredictable at best, (I often wonder when someone is going to notice that I don\u2019t have a \u2018proper job\u2019 and make me work as a plumber or something), we shouldn\u2019t underestimate just how unsettling this was.<\/p>\n

‘The first couple of months into the pandemic work basically stopped,\u2019 says Fritha, aka Tiger Lilly Quinn<\/a>, \u2018which was worrying but not unexpected. I think like the rest of the world brands didn’t really know what lay ahead or what would be appropriate in terms of advertising. It’s been a slow climb back over the past year and our income has definitely taken a big hit.\u2019<\/p>\n

It has been the same for Donna from What The Redhead Said<\/a>. Although Donna has normally remained upbeat, regular watchers of her Instagram stories will appreciate the subtle but clear correlation between the stress she\u2019s feeling and the number of fudge recipes she creates. (I can vouch for the fudge recipes though – homemade slow cooker fudge has become just as much of a crutch for me during lockdown as I suspect it has for Donna.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWork for me vanished at the start of the pandemic,\u201d says Donna. \u201cI had a good three months where I earned next to nothing. I had a lot of work cancelled that involved content around days out, holidays and festivals. Influencers just stopped being able to promote huge chunks of everyday life literally overnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve seen a lot of influencers give up and go and get ‘proper jobs’ because trying to juggle a freelance career, sporadic income and family life is just too much. There’s a lot to be said for a guaranteed income during a pandemic and I can completely understand why some influencers have thrown in the towel.\u201d<\/p>\n

I can totally relate to this. After years of self-employment I took the huge step in November of taking a permanent, part-time job. Partly it was to have that regular income stream – the months of uncertainty had started to take their toll on my cash flow nerves of steel – but partly to address the issue of motivation.<\/p>\n

In normal times I would work from a coworking space or cafe to break up the day and keep me focussed but with just the same four walls around me I was finding it increasingly difficult to find any structure or motivation at all. Making myself accountable to someone else has forced me to concentrate, if only for a few hours a day, and has helped to give me back a little of my pre-lockdown mojo.<\/p>\n

Another consideration for influencers has been the type of content to post. We all want to be respectful of the difficult situations that people have been living through, but at the same time there\u2019s clearly a huge appetite right now for any escapist.<\/p>\n

I know in the early weeks of lockdown, (when I wasn\u2019t sunbathing), I spent a lot of time walking in circles around the park listening to episodes of The Great Indoors<\/a> podcast from Sophie Robinson and Kate Watson-Smyth from Mad About the House<\/a>. That was pure escapism for me – escape from a world of uncertainty and greyness into a cosy, comforting and colourful landscape. I pictured myself under their duvets with them as they tried to record remotely with decent acoustics and their light-hearted positivity was a tonic.<\/p>\n

\"Kate<\/p>\n

I spoke to Kate about how she managed the balance between creating content that was fun but not overly frivolous.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo start with I found it hard to decide on content,\u201d says Kate. \u201cIt didn’t (and still doesn’t) feel right to keep talking about new stuff when people were worrying about how they were going to pay their bills.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, it’s good to see that people are understanding the link between their homes and their well-being and mental health and are trying to make their homes work for them through their choice of colour and decor.<\/p>\n

\u201cBroadly speaking it’s a good time to be writing about interiors as interest is high (my blog had record-breaking numbers and engagement last year) and people want to know what they can do to make their homes both functional and attractive. For me that has all been good – all I ever set out to do with the blog was to encourage people to ask if they genuinely liked and needed what they were buying, so they wouldn’t make expensive mistakes and so their homes can support them and make them happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the future looking like for influencers? Will we see a return to pre-covid levels of activity? I think so. Just over the last month I\u2019ve noticed my inbox getting busier as brands adapt and start to look forwards. I think that having an exit plan has given everyone a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel and although it may take a while to get back to normal, there are surely going to be an awful lot of brands wanting to get themselves back on the radar and so plenty of opportunities for influencers to support that.<\/p>\n

\u201cA year later, my income levels are nowhere near where they were before the virus took hold,\u201d admits Donna, \u201cand it’s only now, a year after the initial lockdown, that I’m starting to receive a few tentative emails about reviewing hotels or going on press trips. Overall though\u00a0 I’m starting to see brighter days ahead. I’m getting more emails, I have a few nice little campaigns lined up for the coming months and everyone just seems more willing to make plans and move forward once lockdown starts to ease.\u201d<\/p>\n

I agree with Donna – brighter days do feel like they\u2019re ahead. And in the meantime, maybe I\u2019ll just make one more batch of lockdown fudge.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A year ago this week, the UK entered its first lockdown. Nobody knew what to expect, how long it would last or what the impact would be on jobs. Jo Middleton of Slummy Single Mummy shares her story and speaks to other influencers about a year in lockdown. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":134827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7365,7272,1449],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134810"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/423"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134810"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134826,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134810\/revisions\/134826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vuelio.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}