Book Review | Influencer : Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media by Brittany Hennessy

If you are an influencer, blogger, instagrammer, or anything along those lines, you’ve probably heard of the book Influencer: Building Your Personal Brand in the Age of Social Media by Brittany Hennessy. I first heard of it through a podcast that I was listening to (an influencer one probably) and thought I had to get this book! It sounded like a gold mine filled with resources to help me navigate the blogging world. I got it off Amazon, read the book in two days and here are my personal thoughts:

Giving a little background of the book, Brittany Hennessy was the Senior Director, Influencer Strategy and Talent Partnerships at Hearst Magazine Digital Media. She was able to see both sides of the influencer market form the demand and supply side and through her experience, she curated this book that is a stepping stone to guide influencers through the influencer world.

Pros

The entire book was an easy read, largely because the font-size was larger. The language also leaned more towards a conversational nature so it felt as if she was speaking directly to me. My favorite parts were reading about the insights of influencers/bloggers who are already excelling in the field. These industry insights were all different and I loved the creativity behind the questions asked.

The author’s own industry insight were extremely engaging. Because she came from the other side of the influencer market, she was able to tell the rise of the industry through her eyes. Being amidst the start of this market transition, I could tell she was extremely knowledgable and excited about this new field. She was able to dissect situations she has encountered to talk about the good and bad. From providing specific languages to use in emails to actual templates, there were many helpful tips and guides to use. Ones that you can literally “copy and paste” into your own emails. Her pricing chapter was especially helpful to me since she really went in-depth about what each influencer’s brand and time is worth. Hennessy was able to use her experience to really delve into what companies were looking for and what is most helpful to us.

Cons

Throughout the tips given, the book constantly targeted influencers with a larger following, around 50k to 100K. The brand deals and other partnerships that she references are usually larger projects – for instance, projects that include flying influencers to places and paychecks in the 5 digits price range. This made some concepts hard to relate to on a personal level since I am not at those numbers yet. I can foresee a lot of other smaller bloggers feeling the same as me.

I found that a lot of the tips given throughout the book were available online. I knew a lot of them before reading this book because I googled and searched the answers to those types of questions. For instance, you can definitely find guides on media kits for free online and there are tons of free blog posts outlining what is needed on a media kit.

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It’s a relatively inexpensive book, $13 on Amazon for the physical copy or $3 for the Kindle copy. This book is great if you want to hear industry insiders’ stories and you want all of the tips and basic how-to’s in one concrete place. But if you are looking for a lot more advice and a step by step on how to start, I’d say there are better resources on the Internet for free or other books that are available. I overall think I enjoyed the book!

A million and one thanks for reading — until my next lil’ thought then!

xx jen