The term "influencer" has become a daily part of our normal vocabulary over the years since companies around the world have been partnering with content creators to tap into their audiences to raise awareness about a product, service or event and use their connection to their audience to get them to take a specific action with their brand.

Now, influencers have been around since the dawn of time, long before social media. Think about all the athletes with sports shoes: Nike had some of the best commercials and everybody wanted to go out and purchase some after watching the funniest commercials from the likes of Penny Hardaway and Michael Jordan, to name a few.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, an influencer is simply a person or thing that influences another. Now when you look in Oxford, you will have noticed it's added an updated definition for "influencer" with the "marketing" tag. In marketing, an influencer is “a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.”

We are all influenced by various people to purchase products or sign up for services. Think about all the purchases you make and then think about what you do before making the purchase. Reading reviews online, reading an article about the product, watching videos on YouTube or heading to social media and seeing what your favourite social media personality has to say about it.

Folks have often asked, “How do you become an influencer?”

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Well, I decided to ask someone who has been creating content since she was 14 and has blossomed into one of the top content creators at 21. Her name is Nakiah Castang, aka @iamnakiah on social media.

Here are Nakiah’s five tips on becoming an influencer:

1.

Know your niche – Pick a niche that you would like to get into and make sure that it is something that you are comfortable doing and it's not something you want to do because of the hype.

If you cannot cook, do not go into cooking content because you see some other cooking influencer doing cooking content and it goes viral – that is their niche. If you love animals and you are knowledgeable about them, create animal content.

The point is to create content that you can be consistent with, that is authentic and natural to you.

2.

Inspiration vs copying – There is a difference between searching for inspiration and being a copycat. There will be times when you do not know what content to create and you can scroll through to see what people are doing –but do not copy and paste what somebody else is doing.

Put your spin on certain trends. Show who you are in every trend that there is.

That is what will attract people. Your followers can tell when you are not being yourself and when you are not being authentic in your videos.

3.

Accept feedback – Do not neglect your followers and their feedback. Remember, these are the people who are going to help you make it to where you want to be.

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