Market yourself online like an influencer.
Tara Michelle is an influencer who is famous for her YouTube channels, Tara Michelle Vlogs and Tara Michelle.
I’ve been following Tara for about a month, since the beginning of December 2020 when she started her Vlogmas series on her YouTube channel. After watching one vlog a day, I learned a lot from Tara about copywriting that explains why she’s so good at what she does.
From a copywriting perspective, here are four techniques that I’ve noticed Tara uses to influence us.
1. Sticking to a niche: Vlogging about her life in Toronto.
Tara recently shared her top nine most liked posts on Instagram, and the majority of them were from Toronto, even though she only moved back to Toronto in the end of 2020.
I suspect this has to do with her narrowing her focus on a smaller audience. There are so many influencers in LA and it can be hard to differentiate yourself. Of course, Tara did very well as an influencer in LA, but I believe she will do even better as an influencer in Toronto.
Here are two reasons why I think her most liked photos were from Toronto:
- There was very little content to create during a pandemic for most of 2020. When she moved to Toronto, it was a different vibe that provided freshness to her content.
- People need to see themselves in whatever you’re doing, otherwise they won’t care. I started following Tara Michelle after I came across her empty apartment tour vlog. By focusing on a smaller audience, ones who can relate more to her content, ones who were looking for content exactly like this, she is able to grab and hold their attention.
2. Selling benefits not features: Promoting brands so smoothly you hardly notice it.
What inspired me to write this post was when Tara sold me on HelloFresh when I didn’t even know I needed it. She did it so smoothly and naturally that it didn’t feel like she was promoting something — it felt like a friend was simply telling me about an awesome product.
And that’s what good copywriting is: speaking to your audience in a way that resonates with them, helping them find solutions to their problems, and connecting good brands to good people.
The secret is that she appears to genuinely love the product, and when you love something, don’t you want to share it with other people too? However, she doesn’t just rave about how much she likes the product, she strategically lists all the benefits for her audience. As a copywriter, you are probably aware of the importance of benefits over features and answering the question, “so what?” What Tara does is explain the features of the product, and then immediately describe the benefit to her audience — which is what really matters and what people really need to know about.
It’s important to note that her vlogs are mostly about her, and people come to be entertained by her life. So, when she comes on promoting a product, she must be careful not to sound too salesy or else her viewers will surely notice the contrast between her “real” self and her “promoter” self.
Even though Tara’s content is all about her life, it is still very you-focused and you can tell she tries to serve her community as best she can. By this I mean whatever she does, she does it for her audience. For example, on day 14 of Vlogmas Tara posted a video with the title: “Trying ALL the Starbucks Holiday Drinks so YOU DON’T HAVE TO!” which is much more relevant than simply saying she’s drinking all the Starbucks holiday drinks. Crafting your headline like this answers the “so what” question by telling consumers why they should care and why they should watch the video.
3. Personalization: Giving people what they want with her Imagine It Yours clothing store.
What I really love about Tara is her Imagine It Yours clothing store. First of all, it’s a strategic move because she grew her following by starting in the fashion world, so she knows a lot about fashion as well as what people are looking for in the world of fashion. After curating looks for people, designing her own clothes is a natural progression to give her audience exactly what they want.
Second, I love the name “Imagine It Yours.” It’s perfect. As a basic copywriting strategy, telling people to imagine is a powerful tool to get them into the headspace where you can sell to them. Again, people need to see themselves in whatever you’re doing or else they won’t care. Telling them to imagine immediately gets them to imagine. Also, using the word “yours” grabs people’s attention because it’s about them. Any you-word will be relevant to people.
Third, the website copy. A stroke of genius that I’ve never noticed before but makes total sense is naming clothing pieces after people. For example, the Valerie Pink Sweater, the Gabrielle Ruched Dress, and the Sofie Tie Dye Hoodie. This connects with people on a personal level, because it literally speaks to their identity. It uses a psychological principle called the implicit egotism effect, where people tend to favour things that are associated with their own names.
Tara recently asked her followers on the Imagine It Yours Instagram story to send her their name if they want an item named after them. This element of involvement not only strengthens the bond between her and her followers, but also gets her followers to feel more ownership to the piece of clothing she’s offering by creating a sort of psychological endowment effect where they place more value on something they helped “create” than something else. This tactic definitely helps Imagine It Yours get a leg up over the competition who sells a Striped Pattern Oversized Sweater.
4. Creating a sense of urgency: “Get it or regret it.”
This is also another copywriting technique many copywriters are probably aware of: creating a sense of urgency. This means creating an environment that makes people feel like they have to buy now.
Tara does this really well on all her social media outlets when she promotes her brand Imagine It Yours saying “get it or regret it” at the end of her sales copy. This is a brilliant phrase to use for two reasons: First, it states a clear call to action that tells people to buy now. Second, it strikes a sense of fear of the consequences if you don’t, which is the fear of regret.
What makes this the perfect saying for her is that her clothing typically does not get restocked. When they sell out of something, they usually come out with new styles rather than restock an existing item. This means if something sells out, it’s likely gone forever. This is important because you don’t want to create a sense of urgency without good reason, or else you’ll come across as sleezy and manipulative, like the boy who cried wolf. Imagine It Yours is able to say “get it or regret it” because it’s true: if you don’t get an item now, you might regret it when it’s gone later.
It’s short, punchy, cute, and it rhymes.
Rhyming may not seem like much of a big deal, but studies show that people deem phrases that rhyme as more true than phrases that do not. While the effect is subtle, rhyming does have an effect on people. In addition to being short, rhyming also makes the phrase very memorable.
