An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Create a masterclass on the problem you solve for your audience or how you do a specific thing. An example would be to create 4 masterclasses over the course of a month about how to cook, or how to make funny jokes, etc. You can break these up into 4 parts or teach on different topics.
As part of my series about “How Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Amanda Melissa.
Amanda Melissa is a personal brand strategist for women coaches, influencers, and service providers who want to attract the right clients using social media. She helped her client go from zero online sales to earning $30k in 30 days. Her mission is to help women earn more business and influence be being themself authentically online while maintaining their mental health, and running a business that fits their lifestyle.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit more. What is your “backstory”? What brought you to this point in your career?
Absolutely! I worked in corporate marketing after college. Then on the weekends I did freelance social media management for small businesses. But what I learned from talking to so many business owners, was that so many wanted to go viral but so many didn’t have a message. When I asked them what made them different they didn’t know. That’s when I saw the need to help women experts work on their brand and discover what makes them unique instead of only focusing on the vanity metrics. Because when you can clearly communicate your brand message it’s a lot easier to hire a team, save money on ads, and save time and stress by having a simple marketing strategy.
Can you share the funniest or most interesting story that happened to you in the course of your career?
I think the most interesting story is that I’ve had clients say they want to grow their influence and business online only to find out it is a lot more work than they think. I think a lot of people see the “Kylie Jenner” billion dollar brand and they think they can do it too. But it requires a lot of brand strategy, planning, collabs, PR, and content creation than what you see on social media.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I hope I’m inspiring other women and Latina’s especially that they can too build an online brand. Especially as Latina’s we don’t see enough of ourselves represented on social media. I think we as a culture still think that social media careers are a joke when in reality it requires a diverse skill set from creativity, accounting, networking, and content creation.
You have been blessed with great success in a career path that many have attempted, but eventually gave up on. Do you have any words of advice for others who may want to embark on this career path but know that their dreams might be dashed?
My best advice would be to read marketing and branding books and stop trying to go viral. I think too many times people forget about the foundations about building a brand or business. Remember that the message is what is most important in growing your community online. And I would also recommend to do a lot of inner work, you can do this by meditating. Take 5 -30 minutes a day trying to figure out what is holding you back whether it’s fear of failure, success, or rejection. You need a huge “why” to have an online business. And I think doing inner work plus strategy is so key.
None of us can achieve success without a bit of help along the way. Is there a particular person who made a profound difference in your life to whom you are grateful? Can you share a story?
I believe you definitely need someone in your corner who is your cheerleader. For me, that is my husband. I recently had a baby and he has been a great cheerleader to help me learn how to balance it all. I’m still learning! But I know I’m doing the best I can!
So what are the most exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
The most exciting project I’m working on is with my clients. I have a several different clients in different niches who are focusing on growing their audience so they can have a community that sees them as an influence and buys from them.
What are your “Top Five Ways That Influencers Can Monetize Their Brand” . (Please share a story or example for each.)
You can monetize your brand so many ways and I think influencers rely too much on collabs. And honestly, I think that’s the fastest way to burn out. I’ve noticed so many influencers feel like they have to stick to a certain niche or do things a certain way to get likes and views and the thing is you can monetize your brand in hundreds of different ways and not sacrifice your mental health. It’s also important to remember as a influencer you have a community that loves you for who you are and not just what you do.
So here’s how influencers can monetize their personal brand:
- Offer Private Voxer Support to Your Audience — a mix of text or voice message. You can offer advice on fashion, relationships, health, food, etc.
- Sell ad/content strategy to other businesses. Leverage that you built an online audience and now you can sell your advice to other businesses on how they can do the same.
- Create a masterclass on the problem you solve for your audience or how you do a specific thing. An example would be to create 4 masterclasses over the course of a month about how to cook, or how to make funny jokes, etc. You can break these up into 4 parts or teach on different topics.
- Host a virtual summit to your audience — Can you ask other peers to collab on a summit where you each teach something different to your audience. You can even make this an in-person summit but it is totally up to you.
- Create a paid newsletter — I love to think of email subscribers as the VIP members. You could create a paid newsletter about the best places to travel, or best tips on personal finances.
My best advice is to poll your audiences and see which of these offers they’d be interested in. That way you pick the right one for them.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I love this so much! I hope to inspire women to be their authentic selves. I think that especially on social media there are a lot of people trying to be something they are not. I want more women to stop trying to be perfect on social media and do things not because it gets a lot of likes but because it is on brand with the message they want to send to their audience.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this. 🙂
I would love to have lunch with JLO. I think she is so inspiring as a Latina and she is multi-passionate and able to juggle so many projects and still build a successful brand. I think it’s amazing that she has been able to adapt and grow a social media following and stay in tune with her audience for over 20 years.
What is the best way our readers can follow your work online?
Follow me on Instagram — @amandamelissa.co TikTok — @amandamelissa.c
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Amanda Melissa On Five Ways For Influencers To Monetize Their Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.