Being a social media influencer can be lucrative for some. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, some of the top influencers in the world right now are soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, who makes $3.9 million per sponsored post, and Kylie Jenner, who makes $1.8 million per sponsored post. 

Social media has shaped people’s everyday lives with an abundant amount of access at the quick click of a button. But what about the power of social media influencers as they create brands that people would want to follow?

For influencer and recent Syracuse University graduate Shockey Sanders, who went viral on TikTok during her undergrad years, it’s all about staying relevant.

“Once I created a little bit more of a niche to my content and was repeating certain trends or certain types of videos on my page, I realized that I was gaining more traction,” Sanders said. “From there, over the course of about a year and a half, that’s how I kind of grew my platform to where it is now, and have been able to expand it outside of TikTok.”

Sanders is now in grad school pursuing a neuroscience degree, and she’s learning that making a living as an influencer is not an easy road.

“Just as quickly as you can get 10,000 Instagram followers in a week's time, they can also go away,” Sanders said. “I did not want to pursue this long-term as a career because I saw one video I made get 5.6 million views and the next day I post a video, it gets 20,000 views.” 

Despite the difficulties, the power of social media in building personal and professional brands is undeniable. Professor John Glass of Syracuse University teaches a graduate-level course called “Social Media for Communicators.”

“The class touches both on sort of how to manage and work with social media platforms, as well as strategy for brands, companies, nonprofits [and] how they can leverage social media in order to better their business or the mission of their company,” Glass said.

Glass says it’s critical to stay in the know as platforms change or new ones pop up in order to stay competitive in this arena.

“It’s really key that those of us here in higher education are staying in contact with that to ensure that students are prepared as they go into the workforce to be able to plan and market and participate in things on social media,” Glass said.

Sanders won’t be giving up on being an influencer, though. She’s following the professor’s advice and expanding to different platforms.

“I’ve switched a lot of my content over to Patreon, where I do longer form and written podcast content about how to apply for your undergrad if you want to be in the field of STEM, how to apply to graduate school now that I’ve been through that,” Sanders said. “I talk about the research in my field that I’ve read or I’m currently doing because that’s the niche that I found on TikTok and Instagram that I enjoy doing the most.”

She says it's a balance between the online world and the real world.

“It definitely flows from being really enjoying it and also having to completely step away and never just wanting to open the app again,” Sanders said.