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With over a decade of experience in a multitude of settings, Brianna Lynn has become an authority when it comes to all things social media and brand strategy.
As the founder YOUR LITTLE WILD CHILD and INTUITIVE SOCIAL, she’s worked with thousands of brands both as an influencer and agency owner. Her experience as a micro-influencer, and user-generated content creator, has allowed her to deliver innovative solutions that encompass creativity and strategic solutions for her clients worldwide.
Nowadays, Brianna has paused all influencer brand collaborations and other micro-influencer initiatives on her personal profile and is focusing on expanding her creative agency, INTUITIVE SOCIAL.
We wanted to get the inside scoop on Brianna’s experience in the industry and how she juggles her successful agency, with her micro-influencing career and global travel adventures.
Getting To Know Brianna Lynn: Influencer Turned UGC Creative Agency Owner
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we get started, our readers would love to know a little bit more about your background.
“Absolutely. So, my name is Brianna Lynn. I’m a wearer of many hats. I’ve done almost everything and anything I’ve wanted to do in my life, whether it was in music, being a dancer, an influencer, a UGC creator, a blogger, and even a model at one point.
My interest in psychology is what led me to marketing. And now, I’ve put all of my talents together to create my agency, INTUITIVE SOCIAL.”
How did you become interested in pursuing a career as a social media influencer and content creator?
“It was honestly all an accident. I thought I was just gonna be a writer or even a photographer and just go off to school. But at one point and I came across, a few small businesses or brand owners on Twitter. I began working with them shooting content for social media, and my Instagram blew up literally almost overnight.
I just started showcasing my work, whether it was me behind the camera or in front of it, but a lot of brands loved to send me products so that I could create content. That’s how I originally became a full-time influencer and it opened so many doors for me.”
Since 2012, Brianna has been leveraging her social media and created a successful career for herself as an influencer. She’s worked with various brands and causes, and helped raise brand awareness through her engaged audience. All of the skills she acquired and mastered during her stint as an influencer have served as the foundation for her marketing career and successful UGC agency.
What have you learned from your years of experience in the industry?
“When I first started one thing that I learned was how to balance things. I remember I went to an event and met one of my favorite influencers at the time, and I asked her; how do you do it?
She went on to tell me that it’s a lot of hard work and you have to keep at it, know how to balance things and keep shooting content, but remember to always take breaks. This advice has always stayed with me.
Your self-care is so important because burnout is real. In fact, I’ve experienced this so many times, with one burnout leading me to not post for an entire year and step back completely.”
What sets you apart from other influencers in your field?
“Basically, I only post the content or work with brands that I resonate with. I think this is a huge problem with a lot of these micro-influencers nowadays, they’re all about the money.
And I say this to my agency clients – I could care less about how many followers you have, and how much engagement you get on a post. I want good quality and authentic content that makes me feel something – because that’s what’s going to sell the product.”
What do you enjoy most about working with a variety of different brands?
“It’s definitely got to be the connections. I’m all about building long-lasting relationships. I don’t believe in one-offs unless it just wasn’t a good fit.
There are brands that I’ve worked with for years where I personally know the brand owner and we have a great relationship. I mean my mom was in the hospital, and one of the brands that I worked with at the time sent her flowers at the hospital, that’s how close I am to these brands.
I care about their story, I believe in their story and I support them and that’s reciprocated, especially now with my agency.”
What kind of advice would you give to other micro-influencers who are looking to grow their platform and partner with brands?
“Work on building that authentic connection with your audience and brands. Building a relationship, especially with brands is what’s going to lead to success versus, just wanting the free product.
I see pitches all the time and unfortunately, a lot of these creators just want free product or their approach is a little aggressive. All it takes is two seconds to actually read what the brand is about and write an email where you discuss why you and your audience would resonate with their product.
It’s a huge turnoff. Creators need to be more thoughtful and try to build those long-lasting relationships instead of those one-off paychecks or free product collaborations.”
Do you think that aspiring influencers should partner with brands for free to build their portfolio and network?
“For smaller brands that don’t have millions of dollars to spend, it makes sense that they want to start off with a free gifting collab. But, if a creator genuinely likes the product, delivers great work, and builds a relationship with the brand they’ll most likely open up a budget for future partnerships.
I’ve created those campaigns, whether they had a budget or they didn’t. When someone is just launching their career as an influencer I’d always recommend starting off with gifting. That’s how I started years ago.”
Over the past 12 years, Brianna’s experience in the industry has allowed her to master skillsets in brand strategy, styling, production, and brand partnerships.
Her previous agency, in-house, and consulting roles are what inspired her to launch INTUITIVE SOCIAL an agency that specializes in creating inclusive user-generated content that showcases each brand’s unique story. Her main aim as a founder is to help her clients foster long-lasting relationships with their audiences and creative teams.
Could you tell us a bit about your successful UGC agency?
“I launched INTUITIVE SOCIAL in 2019 because I wanted to create relationships with my clients that were more personal and authentic. I had this burning desire to make a difference and felt somewhat trapped in my current in-house role at an agency.
I decided to step away from my job and travel to see if I could get some clarity on what steps to take next and after an eat, pray, love moment I took the leap of faith and launched INTUITIVE SOCIAL.
Things snowballed, and before I knew it we had a full roster of clients. That’s when I started hiring a team of creatives, including photographers, writers, strategists, and UGC creators that could help bring our clients’ vision to life.
Over the last three years, we’ve built an extensive directory of UGC creators whom we collaborate with on a regular basis.”
What have been the biggest challenges in working with brands and creating content for them?
“I think at the time the main challenge was working through the safety protocols because of Covid. We had to make sure that everyone was safe and finding models for everything was also difficult. That was the biggest challenge.
But as far as a general struggle, that would have to be keeping up. We’re so busy with constant shoots and delivering beautiful content. We don’t just shoot normal photography, we shoot a whole library of content for our clients to spread out over a couple of months. This makes their investment well worth the spend.”
How do you ensure that each brand’s unique story is properly represented in your work?
“I’m very honest, I don’t sugarcoat things and that’s the one thing I tell all my clients. I always say – I’m not here to just put a bandaid on it. We’re very honest with our clients and if something’s not working we’re going to keep adjusting the strategy until it does work to make sure we’re getting the job done to our standards.”
What strategies do you use for creating effective user-generated content?
“Part of our strategy is that we work with our content creators on a retainer basis. So it’s not just a one-off. A lot of other agencies partner with creatives as a one-off.
But with us, we like to work with our creators over a three-month basis. Because when you work with a creator or an influencer and you only see them use the product or talk about it one time it doesn’t convert.
They say you have to see something seven times until you buy it. So in our strategy, we implement that. Some people might say that it’s the same as getting an ambassador. And it’s not really. Because again, we’re not asking them to post on their behalf. They’re just sending us the content.
We just want the content. We love your face, we love your energy, and we love the style of how you talk about certain things. Create the content for our brand and we’ll use it on our social strategy, paid and organic. And that’s what’s working for us.”
What advice would you give to someone who wants to start their own UGC agency?
“Be yourself. Be authentically you. You’ll find that you can literally sell anything when you’re being authentic and true to yourself, and that’s also true for UGC services.
Whether you’re an influencer, a UGC creator, an agency owner, a social media manager, or a freelancer, people feed off of your energy.”
What do you think about influencers or UGC creators partnering with brands that don’t align with their audience’s values for the sake of a paycheck?
“It boggles my mind, I literally just saw a TikTok titled “How I just made $30,000” shooting content. And when you look at companies they’re partnering with you realize that these aren’t products that they would use in normal life nor would their audience. So what’s the point?
When my agency runs campaigns, we want our creators to use a product for a while instead of just sending out a product to somebody to use once for a photo or video. I want to see them use it for a while, hear about their journey, and I want them to be honest about whether they liked the product or not.
I’ve had plenty of those experiences before, where I didn’t like a product, but I was also professional about it.”
Do you find that brands are becoming more open to constructive criticism given the cancel culture trend?
“Yes, they are. Brands are definitely starting to realize that if they don’t like a comment they should take it as constructive criticism versus getting offended and defensive. Because when they do get defensive it normally leads to social media trolling after the brand said something that they shouldn’t have, and then of course, we have a whole issue where either the influencer or the brand gets canceled.
But, there’s also a bigger picture beyond that, which comes down to diversity.”
So, do you think brands are missing the mark when it comes to diversity campaigns?
“We’ve seen huge campaigns about it, especially within the last few years. And I recently just talked about it on my TikTok, how we should be educating everyone about these important topics while keeping it professional, and of course diverse, by being authentic and not just putting up this facade.
It’s so unfortunate, but a lot of companies are hopping on the diversity trend for all the wrong reasons, and what we can see happening is that their audiences don’t appreciate the sudden change and can read through the bullshit. Audiences know when something is authentic vs when a brand is running a campaign for clout.
I’ve worked with clients as an influencer and through my agency that unfortunately, I had to cut ties with because I value my beliefs a lot more than a paycheck.”
What have been the biggest successes of your UGC agency?
“We’ve helped our clients generate over two million dollars in revenue. Let alone one business that went through a complete rebrand. It’s a small black-owned business that was discovered by celebrities and beauty YouTubers such as Jackie Aina who had supported the brand for over eight years. She’d discovered the brand, purchased and promoted the brand for free because she genuinely loved the products. We used all these different types of celeb UGC content in a campaign that we ran on Pinterest with an ad spend of $300 and the client generated her first $64,000 per month.
That was a massive win for us during the pandemic. During a time when so many businesses were struggling. And thankfully we helped them in the best way that we could.”
What kind of impact do you hope to make with your UGC agency?
“I think I mentioned it before, but I’m really interested in the educational side of things when it comes to diversity. We need to be talking about it more and that’s what we’re known for. Everyone on our team, whether they’re a UGC creator or any of our in-house team members are all diverse.
We’re always talking about the do’s and don’ts, what we should be doing as a brand or as an influencer. So I just hope to keep educating in those areas.”
What do you think are the most important skills to have for success in the influencer industry?
“Keep creating – just keep creating anything as examples to build a really healthy portfolio. Because with a lot of these brands, they’re looking to see what can you provide. And make sure to keep improving your skillset.
And it goes without saying but, don’t fake anything. I think that’s been the common theme on social media over the last three years. The new generations on TikTok are calling for authenticity. Nobody’s interested in fake it till you make it anymore. Just be real.”
Do you think that there are a lot of creators faking their engagement?
“Yes, which is what originally led me to become a UGC creator versus an influencer. Because again, I love influencers in general, but the market is high risk and everyone’s faking their engagement nowadays. And not everyone can point that out easily unless you know what to look for.
It’s a huge turnoff for brands, who are afraid to invest or run influencer campaigns because of a nasty past experience that they have gone through. This is why they’re more interested in working with UGC creators.
Instagram peaked over the last decade and everybody realized that they could become an influencer overnight by faking their followers and engagement. It catches up with you because brands get savvy to it, they either figure it out before the project or sadly figure it out after when they’ve got like absolutely no return on investment.”
What are the dangers of fluffing your numbers as an Influencer?
“Everyone uses what are called pods. But, it doesn’t matter what algorithm trick you try, these apps are smart. You can’t fool the system. It just hurts everyone in the long run and might cause your account to get deleted.
I’ve seen the apps and the bots, some of them are great, while some of them are not. But it’s such a high risk, is it even worth it? Especially when you can easily run ads on the platform itself to generate results with no risk.
But everyone’s just trying to take shortcuts, that’s all – they want overnight success.
We’re creating a world where you’re unimportant if you don’t have followers, likes, or engagement. And that’s really sad.”
What new projects are you working on and what can we expect to see from you in the near future?
“I’ll be opening up my consulting services, for group sessions and one-on-ones for brands, social media managers, and influencers.
We’re also launching some courses before the fall time, if not definitely before the end of the year. These courses are for social media managers wanting to learn more. We’ll also be expanding our digital products for brands, influencers, and of course, agency owners or social media managers that are wanting to grow.”
Where can our readers find you?
“People can find me on Instagram under the handle @yourlittlewildchild. You can also check out our website INTUITIVE SOCIAL, and follow my agency on socials under the handle @intuitive.social.”
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Courtesy : https://www.netinfluencer.com/brianna-lynn/