Skip to main content

Superstar influencer Quinn Slocum talks building brands and living well

 

For many young professionals today, influencers are the new rock stars; it’s the career everyone wants, but few are quite sure how to attain. It’s no surprise influencers are so popular. In the age of social media, where everyone feels the need to share pieces of their daily lives, influencers get more than just the occasional like and a fleeting sense of acceptance in a cold world. They also get paid.

Becoming a social media influencer isn’t easy. You probably won’t find a degree program for it. The best way to study may be to learn from the influencers themselves. On DT Daily, we talked to Instagram superstar Quinn Slocum, who talked about how to build an Instagram following (something we’ve written about before), his tips for young entrepreneurs, and the importance of giving back to the community.

Slocum’s most famous Instagram page is @bestcelebrations, which showcases heartwarming videos of people celebrating, whether in sports or just life. He got his start when he was just an 8th grader.

“I was a kid who just loved lacrosse. I made sports edits on Vine… and I was making these edits, and I found someone through Instagram who was like ‘Hey, I need edits done for my sports page. Can you do them?’ And I said ‘Heck yeah.’”

From there, Slocum started a variety of social media pages, the first of which was dedicated to pictures of famous athletes’ houses. Building the brand wasn’t easy; sometimes the houses in the pictures didn’t actually belong to the athletes in question.

“I think people called me out every time like ‘That’s not his house!’” Slocum says. “So I didn’t know… there was like a 50 percent chance it was. So I could be posting some random rich guy’s house. That was the fun of it.”

“I felt a little embarrassed,” he continues, “but it was also kind of funny at the same time, because while there was the 3 percent that were like ‘That’s not his house!’, I still fooled 90 percent of people into thinking it was. So it’s a win-win, you know?”

Always eager to give back to the world, Slocum has some advice for aspiring influencers: Don’t get too focused on the numbers.

“It’s awesome growing an Instagram and stuff, right?” he asks. “But you want to make sure that at the same time you’re inspiring people and doing your part in making an influence in the world. One of the people I really look up to, Jay Shetty — I met him back in January — he’s really all about that. Everything he does is in order to give back. And that’s just kind of how I want to live my life and make a difference.

“I could be happy living in a van.” Slocum explains. “I would be happy as long as I’m traveling and doing my thing, rock climbing, taking photos. I would be so happy.”

Money and fame are nice, but to one of Instagram’s great success stories, they are no substitute for a life well lived.

Digital Trends Staff
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Digital Trends has a simple mission: to help readers easily understand how tech affects the way they live. We are your…
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more
Worried about the TikTok ban? This is how it might look on your phone
TikTok splash screen on an Android phone.

The US Supreme Court has decided to uphold a law that would see TikTok banned in the country on January 19. Now, the platform has issued an official statement, confirming that it will indeed shut down unless it gets some emergency relief from the outgoing president.

“Unless the Biden Administration immediately provides a definitive statement to satisfy the most critical service providers assuring non-enforcement, unfortunately TikTok will be forced to go dark on January 19,” said the company soon after the court’s verdict.
So, what does going dark mean?
So, far, there is no official statement on what exactly TikTok means by “going dark.” There is a lot of speculation out there on how exactly the app or website will look once TikTok shutters in the US.

Read more