Half a million followers across platforms is no mean feat — and certainly not bad for someone who started posting on Instagram for fun.
But while Gigi Robinson’s social media following initially started growing fairly organically, the chronic illness advocate was quick to pinpoint patterns in successful strategies, helping her build a thriving — and still growing — personal brand that earns her more than $150,000 annually.
She also has her work as a creator-preneur to thank for her public speaking career, a book deal, a feature in Sports Illustrated Magazine, and multiple trips to the White House.
One of the key reasons Gigi believes she has been so successful at maintaining follower growth flies in the face of ‘traditional’ social media advice: evolving her business into other areas, rather than sticking to one niche.
In the first episode of Buffer Chat: The Podcast, Gigi unpacked her journey and ‘solar system’ approach to choosing your niche.
In this article, we’ll go over some highlights from the chat — but definitely do check out the podcast if you’d like to learn more!
From photographer to photographed
As a budding photographer, Gigi took to Instagram in her teens to share her work. She won local and national competitions, showcased her work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards, the NYC DOE PS Art Competitions, and more.
“I would post my work online, not taking it seriously. Then the time came for me to apply to colleges. And I thought to myself, ‘I’m going to be a photography major. I want to be in a big city, and I want to create movie posters or have my photos in magazines.’”
She headed to the University of Southern California, where she joined the social media club USC Reach. The club helped her hone her photography and social media skills — but it was a brand partnership opportunity that truly pivoted her journey.
Gigi was working as a photographer at a commercial shoot as a student when a model didn’t show up. She suddenly found herself in front of the camera shooting self-portraiture style rather than behind it, and a realization dawned.
“I’m getting almost the same amount of money, in addition to my rate as the photographer, just for being in the content,” she says. “I’m sure I could charge for both creating and being in the content.”
Defining a niche that evolves with you
From this point on, Gigi started sharing more about her life online. She found a niche talking about what most impacted her: student life with a chronic illness. She was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome at the age of 11.
“I started talking about the struggle of being in college with an invisible health condition that teachers and friends didn’t believe,” she says. “In an inherently ableist academic system, and at a big, prestigious university, it was not taken seriously. And I was so frustrated.”
“In sharing my experience, other people really started to be like, ‘That’s so messed up. I hate to say it, but I’m a part of the community of people that just chooses not to say anything about my health issues because I’m scared of this reaction.’”
As Gigi inspired and built trust with her growing audience — now on TikTok, LinkedIn, and Snapchat, too — she was able to branch out. “I was able to also show what I was doing as a day in the life, being invited to events as a result of talking about being a chronic illness advocate,” she says.
From there, she found herself branching out into lifestyle content, and eventually the creator economy. “Because I built an audience that trusted my voice, it didn’t matter that I switched the content up. It didn’t matter that all of a sudden I was posting travel content or about trends in the industry and working with brands or making my puppy into a pup-influencer @itsmrzeke.”
She stresses that this evolution didn’t happen overnight — the key was finding a springboard for her content and building trust in that arena.
“Creators, if they want to be self-employed as a creator, need to be seen as a thought leader and a figure of authority in their original niche, so that they can expand and be multifaceted,” she says.
She has a great analogy for this: seeing your personal brand as a solar system. “I’m the sun, I’m central. And all of these niches and little parts of it — whether I’m doing public speaking, writing, or chronic illness advocacy — are planets around me.”
“As a new creator, you are starting out as that sun. You have to figure out what it is that you want to talk about online until it gains enough of a following for you to continue to expand.”
While building out your solar system shouldn’t be rushed, it’s essential if a creator wants to build a full-time career, she says. “I don’t think creators are going to survive if they stick to one thing, given the state of social media today. There’s a huge misconception that a lifestyle creator stays a lifestyle creator, a health creator stays a health creator, or a makeup creator stays a makeup creator.”
“I think that it’s imperative for a creator to branch out — to have these lofty dreams and goals of becoming a speaker or writing a book or hosting a show or hosting red carpet events, because it can happen. I’ve seen it happen for my friends. I’ve seen it happen for other creators in the industry, and I have even seen it happen for myself. It just takes perseverance and time. And this is not something that happens overnight.”
@itsgigirobinson Were creators at The White House 🇺🇸🎉 #whitehousecreator #itsgigirobinson with my bestie @sophiesargent ♬ The Star Spangled Banner (United States of America National Anthem) [Instrumental] – U.S. Army Band
Experimentation and consistency
For new creators or businesses, Gigi’s advice is to experiment strategically and stay as consistent as possible. As she started building and growing, she took things “one day at a time.”
“It was a lot of experimentation. There’s never a formula or a roadmap to follow. You have to find what works for you. ‘A day in the life’ vlog may work for one creator, and a ‘get ready with me’ is going to work for another, and if either of those creators created the opposite kind of video on their page, it probably wouldn’t perform well.”
She emphasizes that this is important to note for brands providing creators briefs for projects. Let creators integrate your brand or product into their content, not the other way around.
After she started building a following as a chronic illness and women’s empowerment advocate, Gigi began reviewing products from that lens. “So I would talk about a skincare product as I was showing these really aesthetic clips of it, and I would talk about how doing skincare made me feel more confident and inspired.”
As that content garnered attention, brands started to take notice, and she started booking brand partnerships. From there, she began to consider what life as a full-time creator could look like. “Back in 2020, I was just showing the behind-the-scenes setup of filming a YouTube video, or how I ended up landing a brand deal.”
“Because I was doing that original content where I was experimenting, brands started paying me to create ads for their brands by integrating it into my lifestyle content, and then my audience started being interested in how I was getting paid to do what I had been doing.”
Through all that experimentation, Gigi was staying consistently active — something she feels is even more crucial in today’s social media landscape. Right now, she believes the “secret sauce” is posting at least three times a week on each platform. Video is Gigi’s format of choice because it can be repurposed across Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok.
“That’s three times a week, so about 12 posts per month on Instagram Reels and/or Tiktok, plus adding supplemental photo posts in there too.”
Her last piece of advice for creators who want to monetize their work? If you want to earn money, you’ve got to build a business.
“Not enough creators are thinking about content creation as a business or as a personal brand,” she says. “They’re thinking about it in terms of just posting online and seeing what happens, instead of reverse engineering where they want their business to be.”
5 actionable tips from Gigi
The full podcast, which we’ve included above, is well worth a listen for all the fascinating advice Gigi shared. Here’s a quick summary of the lessons we unpacked above, along with more helpful tidbits:
Become a must-follow voice in your niche: Establish yourself as the ‘sun’ in the solar system of your personal brand, and add new ‘planets’ into the mix as you grow.Test the waters: Experiment with new subjects, formats, and trends, and monitor the results to see what resonates the most with your audience. Stay consistent: Aim to post at least three times weekly on your primary channel. Explore new platforms early: Gigi was a Threads early adopter. “Threads has been amazing for reaching people — I gained almost 9,000 followers just by showing up there.” Don’t sleep on LinkedIn as a creator: “Posting on LinkedIn is one of the best things I’ve done,” she says. “I know there’s more brand money coming to the platform, and building a network on LinkedIn has really helped me grow as a creator.”
More resources for creators
Just getting started as a creator? We have a host of resources and guides that might come in handy:
📚 29 Scroll-Stopping Instagram Post Ideas to Fill Your Content Calendar
📚 7 Tips for Managing Multiple Social Media Accounts Like a Pro
📚 6 Psychological Techniques to Help You Write Great Social Media Hooks
📚 7 Simple Habits to Help You Get Better at Creating Content More Consistently
📚 How to Get Your First 1,000 Followers Across All Major Social Media Platforms: The Ultimate Guide
