We recently connected with Niki Bridges and have shared our conversation below.
Niki, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry.
When I started my blog, businesses and publications were eager to reach out and court bloggers and influencers and there were many opportunities. Lots of invitations, events, and paid opportunities. As time went on, the word “influencer” kind of became a dirty word and many of the opportunities that were abundant before kind of dried up. Today, being an influencer looks a lot different. You have to make your own opportunities now. You have to pitch directly to brands instead of having them reach out to you, create something compelling to show brands why they should use you and pay you for your work. You have to become educated about things like SEO, analytics, reach and engagement. And you have to really deliver and not just show up.
Niki, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve always had a love of writing, dating back to when I was a kid and wrote several fiction pieces, to dabbling in poetry and in journalism when I got older. Time passed and I got sidetracked from my journalistic leanings. As I got older, I gained an interest about happenings in my local community. A lot of people always said that there was nothing to do in St. Louis, but I kept seeing all these various events by looking at out local weekly paper and checking out different websites. I started to send my friends an email each weekend to help us plan what to do that weekend.
Time went on and I met a guy who was a recent transplant to town. I befriended him and started showing him around to help him acclimate. He noticed that we always had so much fun at these different events and he suggested that I turn in into some kind of service. I was busy finishing up my grad school degree so I put it on the backburner. We revisited the idea when I graduated and STLNightOut was born.
STLNightOut is a website and calendar that lets the people of St. Louis know all the cool and wonderful people. places, and things that we have available in town. I’ve had the opportunity to attend some cool events, meet great people, and make a little money. I’m most proud of twice being an official blogger for St. Louis Fashion Week and working with organizations such as Shakepeare STL, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and Music at the Intersection. I also like to put a spotlight on great nonprofit organizations in the community such as Pianos for People. People can feel free to submit events to be included on the calendar and I’m also open to offers to cover events as well. I always say that my calendar isn’t everything that’s going on but pretty much has everything that I would want to attend if I could clone myself. I’ve gotten compliments about how diverse the events on my calendar are–that it’s not just about club events–that there are festivals, art openings, food events, community support events. I’ve got it all.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
I wish I knew about all the social media management tools that are available. There are a lot of things out there to make life a lot easier.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
We started out just handing out our business cards at select events and asking people to follow us. We had an elevator speech prepared and had several people just follow us on the spot. Today, I’ve run into people who already follow us and who have encouraged their friends to follow us to. I would say to figure out what social media channels you need for your business and which ones you don’t need. We had a Tumblr, we had a You Tube channel, we were on MeerKat and all these other things. When Facebook and Instagram Live became an option, we dropped MeerKat. We didn’t need Tumblr or Pinterest for our audience and didn’t have the energy to try to maintain a YouTube channel. Think about what you can reasonable maintain and what will work for each platform. We created our own website, but you can work with a website developer if you want something more customized, but there is a lot that is free or low-cost out there to use.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.saintlouisnightout.vom
- Instagram: @stlnightout
- Facebook: @stlnightout
- Twitter: @saintlouisnight
Image Credits
Niki Bridges