For those who don’t know her, Margaret Zhang is an Australian writer, stylist, photographer and model with well over a million followers across her social media accounts.
At 23 years old, she’s both an influencer and a branding consultant, having worked with the likes of Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Uniqlo. Margaret’s recent Vivid Ideas Game Changers segment encompassed brand differentiation in the digital age, told through Margaret’s personal anecdotes as both a public-facing model and from running her own one-woman creative consultancy.
Margaret recently spoke as part of Vivid Sydney, a large annual lights, music and ideas festival here in Sydney, Australia. Her talk covered some useful basics for launching your own digital business, such as knowing your audience, choosing the right channels, engaging influencers and most important of all, to love every minute of what you do.
Here are three key tips for becoming an online influencer like Margaret Zhang:
- Never stop learning. For me as a Gen Y-er the biggest takeaway is encapsulated in this quote “The value of your years of experience actually starts to depreciate if you don’t constantly update your knowledge”. It’s not just how long you’ve been in the industry but how you continue to stay relevant. This may mean mastering a new social media platform, or mastering CSS to tweak your website.
- Have a great online presence. It seems obvious, but if your website and social media presence isn’t amazing, fewer people will take you seriously. Think of it as your digital business card: you can use these tools to show you’re worth working with. Margaret has a clean, magazine-style website and blog, and a frequently-updated Instagram account packed with beautiful images.
- Be authentic. Sure, everyone presents their most polished selves on social media. But with daily Instagram updates and frequent blog posts, Margaret lets her fans see a snippet of her authentic self. And at Vivid Sydney, she opened up further, letting the audience really get to know her.
I found the talk very inspirational. You can read a full write-up on her talk in this article I wrote for Australian publication, The Iris.
