We recently connected with Jennifer Lynn and have shared our conversation below.

Jennifer, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I think it would be naive of me to claim that I’ve learned all of the ins and outs of the content creation industry. I am a big believer that when we stop learning, we stop improving. I think the two biggest ways I learned to create content were by observing successful bloggers and the type of content they put out, how others engaged with their content, and by purposefully finding bloggers that I connected with on some level whether aspirational, similar to myself, or dissimilar in looks, but passionate about the same things. By following so many content creators I started to think about what I would want to create and what type of creator I wanted to be.

Additionally, I spent many hours researching editing platforms, tips for creating engaging content, researching tools to improve my filming process, and tips for ensuring that my content would be seen by my target audience (i.e., SEO tools, utilizing Creator Search Insights on TikTok, understanding how the Instagram and TikTok algorithms work).

Knowing what I know now, I would have spent more time learning how the TikTok and Instagram algorithms worked. I initially had started my content creation journey back in 2019 and was wildly unsuccessful. I know it’s kind of taboo to admit failure, but I never cracked 200 followers on Instagram. I didn’t even know what TikTok was at the time either, so I spent tons of time creating content for a following of less than 200 and now I realize that my reach was likely significantly less than that. Between late 2019 and early 2024, the landscape of content creation changed drastically, and I felt a renewed sense of inspiration. I dipped my toe in slowly and started to learn what the algorithm would pick up and played on that.

My biggest obstacle has always been my attention span. I struggle to convince myself that hours of research is truly worth my time. I look back now and I think that if I had just slowed down, researched more, and saw the value in that research, maybe I would have had more success in my first go at content creation.

Jennifer, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

For my personal content creation endeavors on Instagram and TikTok, my primary niche is skincare & beauty, but I bring in elements of lifestyle content to allow my audience to get to know me on a more personal level than just sharing my favorite products, giving reviews and recommendations, and inspiration. I was not seeing that many plus size content creators in the beauty and lifestyle niche and I wanted to be that person for other women. To this day, I get DMs here and there asking me if I have other plus size creators I would recommend because we all have this inherent urge to consume content put out there by people who look similar to us. That’s why representation matters – everyone deserves to be able to find others who share similar life experiences to draw inspiration from. At the end of the day, I just hope people watch my content and walk away feeling educated and inspired to try new things in the beauty industry from someone who is just like them.

For my podcast, You’re Pretty Also, the idea was brought to me by my best friend early in 2024 and I immediately jumped on the opportunity. We had always joked that we deserved our own TV show because we think we’re funny (someone has to, right? Might as well be us!) and that we always find a way to have a good time no matter where we are. Our vision for the podcast was for it to feel like our listeners were hanging out with us catching up over brunch on a Sunday. Our niche is ‘Society & Culture’ – which basically gives us a pass to talk about whatever strikes our fancy. We’ve covered topics from friendship breakups to wild news stories like the 8 year old who drove herself to Target this year. We have several segments each episode: How You Be? (a way to check up on each other over the past week since we last filmed), Worst Case Scenarios (think – Would You Rather?), Shower Thoughts, Sweet & Salty (the best & the worst things we experienced that week), Current Obsessions, and of course our primary segment which runs anywhere from 15-45 minutes depending on the topic at hand. It has been so fulfilling and really brought me and my podcast partner, Jim, even closer.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

I absolutely love engaging with my community via the comment section on my posts, engaging stories on Instagram, hosting lives on TikTok, and making it a priority to respond to DMs regarding my content in a timely manner. Part of the fun of content creation is building a community and engaging with them. I consider all the girlies I’ve met along the way to be my besties. Without community we have nothing online – just a bunch of people screaming into the void. Additionally, I am very honest in my product reviews – if I don’t like something I will say that. On the other side of the coin, if I don’t like it, but I think the product has merit for someone else, I will give an example of why I didn’t like it, but who I thought the product would work well for. For example, I have combination-oily skin, if I tried something, but it didn’t work well for my skin, I would likely recommend it to someone with dry skin. Honesty in reviews and properly disclosing sponsored content go a long way to build trust with your audience.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My current goals are to hit 5,000 followers on Instagram and 10,000 followers on TikTok. The growth on TikTok has come much more naturally, and I tend to focus more of my efforts on that platform. I know we’re all worried about the potential to lose TikTok, so I’m really trying to put quality time and effort into building a community on Instagram as well. At the end of the day, the numbers are just that – numbers. I want to continue to build an engaging community that sees the value in my content, so the quality of interactions on my posts are what I use to measure the success of the content.

Additionally, I want to improve my metrics with Instagram Reels specifically. Improving the views and the amount of times my content is shown on Facebook as well is the primary goal right now, and I’m deep in the research process for that. My best advice – never let the numbers alone get you down. Focus on creating an engaging community and the numbers will follow.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/Jenniferlynnshops
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferlynnshops/
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@jennifer_pdx