Building an online presence and becoming an influencer is more complicated than it may seem. While many people focus on followers — expecting brands to flood them —engagement is essential to a content creator’s success. One of the most common misconceptions surrounding social media personalities is that their jobs are easy; however, it takes hours of strategizing and planning to create a profitable page and presence.

That’s why Taylar Barrington-Booker created Cliquish — which officially launched in August — to train women on how to be more effective influencers on Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Barrington-Booker’s marketing expertise equipped her with the tools to make a platform that will help aspiring influencers and bloggers make an imprint online.

Before creating her platform, she was a communications and marketing teacher in Georgia and a marketing consultant on the side. The founder has intertwined her teaching skills into Cliquish, providing workshops and tools for content creators and bloggers.

“People think it’s easy to monetize, but there is a science to it,” Barrington-Booker said. “It’s not like the brands are just going to come to you. The work that you get is the work that you go get for yourself.”

For $7 per month, Cliquish users can learn how to attract some of the top brands, build contracts and partnerships, and improve their pages’ engagement.

As a graduate of Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University (FAMU), the Chicago-native said that FAMU taught her about the power of community when achieving goals.

“FAMU is still teaching how to thrive because of the support of family,” Barrington-Booker said. “Being a small school and an HBCU, it felt like I was just surrounded by family.”

Barrington-Booker said she wants Cliquish to also have a community feel to it so that each member can be successful in their own right. Despite the name, Cliquish is set to bring unity to a competitive space. Barrington-Booker said that she wants to reclaim the title “cliquish” to have a more positive connotation with her platform.

Her experiences with bullying as a child and her evolution as a FAMU student, are what led Barrington-Booker to name her platform Cliquish.

“I wanted to create a healthy, welcoming space for women,” Barrington-Booker said. “With my experiences in the industry, I know that it is not always that way.”

Nearly 65 percent of businesses were set to increase their influencer marketing budgets this year, and influencers of color are struggling to get a slice of the pie.

“To me, it feels like a no brainer to use influencers from diverse communities for your brand,” Barrington-Booker said. “But brands are just uneducated about these communities.”

Right now, the team is working on building its subscribers. Cliquish is also set to go on its “Faces of Content” tour in October which will kick off in Atlanta. The tour is also hitting New York City and Los Angeles before finally stopping in Chicago. Attendees will get quick tips on how to build their brands, network with other local content creators, and learn more about Cliquish.

Cliquish

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