How Lockdown has Led to the Rise of Family Influencers

This year has been a rather unusual one, to say the least. All of our lives have changed this year, with all of us having to stay at home, work from home and even home school our children for a few months.

It has caused the marketing world and that of online influencers to have to adapt to continue to be successful. Travel influencers, in particular, have struggled, as we haven’t been taking trips, and the glossy lifestyles of the rich and famous are not what we want to see when they seem even further apart from us than usual.

We, as consumers, aren’t interested in seeing someone’s seemingly perfect lifestyles of trips in your Range Rover to your lunch date out with your tiny pup and your bestie, with your Birkin sat on the table next to you (that does annoy me anyway – please get your damn bag off the table where people eat). And they can’t do that right now anyway, so they have to change how and what they post.

We might all be in it together, but realistically someone with a huge house in the country with a swimming pool and a six-figure income isn’t relatable to us right now. They aren’t worrying about being furloughed or losing their job (although of course, they are probably earning less too) and they probably aren’t suddenly struggling to make ends meet.

We are also witnessing how incredibly hard our doctors and nurses have worked for us all this year, as well as them putting their own lives at risk for us, and the sharp contrast between that and celebrities or large influencers lives’ is too stark a contrast.

It means that lots of bloggers and social media influencers have had to change what they do to stay successful and keep making money, leading to a rise in family influencers as well as a tendency to be more real online.

Family bloggers and influencers are often seen at home or going for dog walks in the woods. They tend to be more likely to show their real lives and be like one of us, even if they have 50,000 followers on Instagram.

We are not looking for aspirational; we are looking for real, relatable content that makes us feel that we’re not alone in this and that we’ll all get through it together. Whilst we’re worrying if we can make ends meet we don’t really want to see that huge influencers’ brand new #gifted kitchen.

I also think this year that we are all a little more aware of what is important to us — family, friends, loved ones and time together.

We want to see the people who are closest to us in terms of lifestyle, and so those small micro-influencers, and in particular family-style influencers are seeing a lot of growth this year. We’re all online a lot more this year, and we’re not getting to see our family and friends – so relating to those we see online is more important, rather than being drawn to the more ostentatious huge influencers we may usually enjoy.

Smaller influencers are also more likely to engage with their audiences, reinforcing their reliability and the feeling of a relationship. We all need that feeling of connection right now when we may not be getting it in our ‘real lives’.

More and more bloggers are switching to more family and lifestyle content this year. Travel bloggers have been hardest hit, with trips cancelled, hotels closed and no press trips to go on so there is less content to write, and less money made. Travel companies aren’t spending their budget on advertising right now. Plus, people aren’t searching for information about a specific country and where to go on holiday next, so the views aren’t there leading to more loss of income from affiliate links and ads.

High-end fashion bloggers are also having to switch things up; most of us don’t want to see their brand new three thousand pound bag and it can seem quite tone-deaf to share those things right now.

But social media and internet usage is up, and so the audience is still there, plus a lot of them have become parents now, so it makes a lot of sense to make the switch to a more lifestyle and family content creator. The audience is there and the brands are still working with them so, even though influencers have to be more thoughtful about what they post right now, they still have the potential to grow and earn an income.

Things that we can do at home, such as fitness, self-improvement, and looking after our wellbeing are all things that we are going online for now, so brands and influencers have the opportunity to advertise to a captive audience via the influencers who are changing things up.

Currently, all of our lives are so much smaller, and that means we are looking to those we can relate to and engage with, and that means it is the smaller family and lifestyle bloggers are who we are looking at right now. As an influencer, it’s important that you be flexible and open to change to be successful, and this year has really shown that more than ever.

This is a paid partnership with Intellifluence.