Social Media Branding

I have had the pleasure of having this beauty as a Social Media Dr. LLC client for her hair company The Eugenia Chaye Hair since May 2017. She has also helped me with my personal brand by giving advice on how to work with brands. She is so wise, smart, creative, chic, beautiful, sweet, and driven! I couldn't think of anyone better to collaborate on this blog other than JaLisa Vaughn! She works with brands daily and currently has 71.5K followers on Instagram.

JaLisa E. Vaughn is a 25-year-old college graduate with a love of God and a passion for hair, fashion, beauty and food. Her love for social media started long ago when she received her first Myspace page where she enjoyed connecting and inspiring people from all over the world, along with building and maintaining relationships. As social media grew, so did her engagement, with JaLisa quickly becoming a guru in cultivating and engaging every social site created; primarily Facebook and Instagram.

Now she has a significant following of women who often message and email her asking for spiritual encouragement, educational, career, fashion and life advice, JaLisa is excited to see what the future holds for her as she continues to inspire, uplift and motivate through her inspirational lifestyle blog!

I have received a few questions lately from mentees and workshop attendees about building their personal brand so why not bring in an expert that I aspire to model after!

1. How do you get started with brand collaborations?

I got started with brand collaborations by posting quality images on Instagram, consistently. As I continued to post, brands begin reaching out to me asking to send items in exchange for tags on social media. At this point, it was just merely an exchange and I was not getting paid for anything. As my following grew I put a small price on my posts and it continued to increase as things enhanced and as I put more thought and effort creatively behind my content.

2. How did you get 71.5K and counting followers?

I got the number of followers that I have from being consistent with my content and actively engaging my audience with every single post. Along with that just, merely caring about what they (my audience) wanted to see and responding to the things that brought the most engagement.

3. What brands have you collaborated with and how?

I have collaborated with too many brands to even mention. Started off as mostly fashion brands but as my following increased, more lifestyle, home, and food brands began reaching out. They would reach out in reference to campaigns they are holding and wanted me to be one of their influencers or just to pay for content they wanted me to create.

4. What's the best advice you would give someone working to boost their personal brand?

The best advice I would give to someone working to boost their personal brand is to know and OWN who they are personally. The worst thing someone can do when trying to grow their brand pretends to be something else or someone else because it always eventually comes out. And then you lose the trust of your audience and they see that you are not being authentic. Also, another huge note that every single thing you post matters in terms of quality.

5. How do you balance working full-time, running a hair business, blog, youtube, and manage your personal brand?

I actually recently left my corporate job to be a full-time blogger/influencer. When it comes to balancing it all, with the hair company I pretty much just plan my days/weeks out in advance, to make sure everything gets its proper attention. Although it is hard, I somehow manage. I also have help with social media for my hair business so it allows me to get a tiny bit of leeway, to focus on posting content for my personal brand.

6. What are your top 5-10 tips on landing collaborations and follower growth?

1. Be consistent with your posting!

2. Be yourself at all times, your audience who has been following for some time you can see when you’re starting to try to be otherwise. You will lose trust.

3. Engage your audience!

4. Make sure all of your images reflect the quality of Brands images that you want to collaborate with!

5. Do not endorse any products that you don’t truly believe in. It comes through the content and is noticeable and your audience will stop listening.

7. What is the hardest part about managing your personal brand?

The hardest part about managing your personal brand is art/challenge of growing and trying new things all while still remaining yourself. Along with that, I have a spiritual/ministry blog so I have to ensure everything I post is in line and not contradictory to what I am preaching to others (and myself).

8. How do you conduct your shootings? Schedule? Do you shoot more than one look at a time? How do you decide on locations with the impromptu weather? Do you have a glam squad? How do you manage a team financially with some many content photos?

I have a photographer that I regularly shoot with. At the beginning of every month, we plan out our shoots for the entire month and get them on our calendars. This is usually once or twice a week. At each and every shoot I will do 3 to 5 looks. I pack a suitcase with all of my clothing items and accessories and we walk around downtown or wherever we are to look for cool new locations to shoot. Being that this is a job to me, I budget it into my life just like I would any other bill, So financially it’s already planned for, not really a new expense. I also have started to work the photography costs into my rates when collaborating with other brands. I do not have a glam squad either, I do my make-up and hair myself typically for my lifestyle photo shoots.

9. What type of camera do you own? Do you ever shoot yourself with such an amazing camera? If not what do you use your personal camera for on a regular? How do you find photographers to work with and is that expensive? What about the filming of your vlogs?

I have a Canon T6 I camera. I shoot myself sometimes but prefer my photographer who is a professional to do my sponsored collaboration photos. I really just search photographers or anything I need on Instagram using hashtags or by just asking around!

10. What are your future goals for your personal brand?

In the future, as things grow for me I am really just looking to expand my brand and begin working with larger, house-hold name brands. I want to build up my YouTube channel, become more of a personality, and also get more into speaking engagements/ further encouraging other young women to follow their dreams no matter what the circumstance, or what other’s opinions may be. And BEFORE everything, growing the kingdom and bringing more people to Christ, by showing them that you can still live a life and follow your dreams while living for God and spreading his word!

JaLisa really dropped some great jewels for those of you interested in growing your personal social media brand! Please be sure to follow her platforms:

Instagram: @JaLisaEVaughn

Youtube: JaLisa Vaughn

Hair Company: MyEugeniaChayeHair.com

Hair Company IG: @eugeniachayehair

Blog: JaLisaEVaughn.com

I was so shocked when brands start reaching out to me to do collaborations but JaLisa was the first person I texted to ask for advice! She is always so helpful! I believe the goals for your brand will be here sooner than you know it! I feel inspired to do more! I am grateful to have you in my circle!

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