This story originally appeared in the Burnout Issue of The Peak. View the full issue here or more stories on our page.
In an increasingly oversaturated era of the internet, a growing number of college students lead double lives as online personalities. Brand ambassador roles and beauty content are especially popular, but like any career, the day-to-day of a college influencer is not always glamorous. Creating content involves navigating trends and marketing tactics while also helping them.
Liberal studies senior Michelle Huis a content creator at Cal Poly that posts lifestyle and beauty content. While she still enjoys making daily vlogs and fashion videos — which she first started posting her freshman year of high school — she began working as a brand ambassador in college. Today, she works with brands such as LaCroixand Bearpaw, a footwear company.
“I feel like I don’t really have a niche,” Hu said. “My niche is just being a college student.” With a passion for making and editing videos, Hu has to remain authentic on camera and grow her audience naturally.
As a smaller content creator, Hu has faced challenges that make it diffi-cult to land more opportunities. In the grand scheme of college influence, Cal Poly is a smaller institution, which can make it harder for student ambassadors to get chosen by brands. Cal Poly is often not listed on applications for brand ambassadorships, according to Hu.
At times, she feels the weight possibly being overlooked for a brand ambassadorship for reasons beyond her control.
“Sometimes I’ll apply for a brandcollab and see who gets it, and it’s usually not a person of color,” Hu said.”Sometimes they’ll choose the blonde girl that goes to ASU, especially over the person of color that goes to CalPoly.”
While Hu makes a variety of videos, she never really knows how they will perform. Trends have gone in and out of vogue throughout her career,and platforms such as Instagram andTikTok have unpredictable algorithms.
“Right now, I feel like everyone has such a short attention span, so the trend [of ‘Get Ready With Me’ videos] is like fast-paced, very aesthetic clips,”Hu said. “Trends are changing all time, so who knows, maybe vlogs will come back.”
Letting trends guide her content but not overtake it is a fragile balancing act, one that Hu tries to keep in mind when working with brands.
A frequent collaborator with skin-care companies like CeraVe, Dove and smaller Korean businesses, Hu tries to maintain transparency and authentic-ity in her reviews. Not every company shares the same values. Earlier in her content career, Hu spoke with brands willing to fake results in their ads.
“There was one time I had to promote these sheet masks, and the sheet masks made my skin dry,” Hu said “I didn’t end up posting the video because they wanted me to put some serum on after I took off the mask. That’s not something I would do.”
She prefers working with companies that allow you to to test their product first, to make sure she’s promoting quality products.
“Some brands just say, ‘Here’s product, make a video and send it back to us,’” Hu said. “Now I look at people’s ads and I’m like, ‘Did that really happen to your skin?’”
Part of the job entails becoming a little cynical, but it has led Hu to be more purposeful in her partnerships. While student influencers have a larger presence online than your aver-age college student, it doesn’t make them any less susceptible to burnout.
Because there are so many moving parts, creating content isn’t just a numbers game. According to Hu, there’s a phenomenon that other content creators can relate to: the videos she thinks will “flop” often perform the best, while those she hopes will get the most traction sometimes do the opposite.
