TL;DR: Avoiding the five personality traits detrimental to Instagram fame will allow you to grow and flourish.
Every career has its own set of debilitating traits that make it impossible for those that possess these traits to rise to the top. If you want to be Instagram Famous, you should avoid the characteristics and traits that have made it impossible for others to become Instagram famous. Unlike in other careers where there are a number of traits to avoid, Instagrammers and influencers only need to avoid five characteristics to achieve Instagram fame. If you eradicate these traits, while developing good characteristics, you’re well on your way to notoriety as an influencer and that coveted Instagram fame.
5 Characteristics To Avoid To Be Instagram Famous
Being an influencer is hard. However, a lot of that has to do with your attitude to work and less to do with the inner workings of the industry. Therefore, not only are there characteristics you should have as an influencer, but also characteristics you should avoid.
#1 Characteristic To Avoid To Be Instagram Famous: Perfectionism
Whatever you think about popular influencers and Instagrammers, know this: they’ve found a balance between perfectionism and output.
Although you may see 1000 things wrong with an image or video, you need to look at it through the lens of the viewer. Because, perfectionism can – and will – be your downfall once you start growing, as it becomes difficult to put out content you don’t feel 100% confident in. This can either cause you to publish terrible content because you don’t care or can prevent you from publishing content altogether, which can negatively affect your business relationships and reputation.
Rather reign in your perfectionism early on, so you’re able to create content your audience will enjoy and build a reputation based on consistency and trustworthiness.
#2 Characteristic To Avoid To Be Instagram Famous: Self-Doubt
Self-doubt can be equally as debilitating and stifling to your career as an influencer and Instagrammer, as other characteristics on this list. Because self-doubt eats away at your self-esteem and logical thinking. Eventually, you’re spending more time on self-doubt than on creating the content your audience enjoys. And if you think self-doubt will disappear when you become more popular you’re sorely mistaken. The more popular you become the more ruthless your biggest critics will become, as more people will fixate and obsess over your content, and view you under a microscope. If you’re constantly doubting yourself having these extra voices in your head can make it worse. Focus, instead, on building yourself up and having a support system that does the same.
#3 Characteristic To Avoid To Be Instagram Famous: A Need To Control
Influencers need to be able to delegate.
If you believe that you’re the only one that can do work to your standards, you’ll find yourself swamped with work, and unable to focus on more important aspects of your work, like creating meaningful content.
It’s important to understand that the creating process (taking pictures, making videos, editing, etc) is only a small portion of what makes an influencer profitable.
Therefore, if you’d like to turn influence into a full-time job, you’ll need to be able to hire a team of individuals who can do the other stuff so you can focus on creating and coming up with all the ideas.
#4 Characteristic To Avoid To Be Instagram Famous: Naivety
You can be as innocent as you’d like to be, but the dictionary of the word naivety is, lack of experience, wisdom, or judgment. And those are things you need to avoid altogether.
Naivety is very easy to avoid and can be summed up in one act: doing your due diligence.
As an influencer, you shouldn’t rely entirely on one person’s word. This doesn’t mean you don’t trust them, but you’re simply doing your due diligence so that if anything were to go wrong you wouldn’t be at the mercy of “little birdies” who told you, but rather you’d have facts to back up your claims. This extends to all aspects of being an influencer. From doing your due diligence when signing contracts, working with brands, befriending other influencers, collaborating, and so on.
If it’s part of your job, always do your due diligence!
#5 Characteristic To Be Instagram Famous: Inflexibility
The idiom “adapt or die” isn’t said without reason. If you cannot adapt to a changing landscape, you’ll quickly become irrelevant. Many of the influencers who’ve faded into insignificance over the last few years are the ones who couldn’t change their content. That’s why if you’re too fixated on what has worked in the past, and can’t change or take advice on what is working now, you’ll find yourself left out and overtaken by others who are willing to change. Moral of the story: Always be willing to change your content if it’s necessary.
It’s better to be aware of these suffocating traits before you launch your career as an influencer. That way, you can change and become the ideal influencer, one that both brands and other influencers will want to work with.
