While I’ve always joked about trying to build a following on my personal Instagram account, I never took any actions towards actually doing so. I always wanted to be a blogger, but it sounded a little scary to admit that out loud. To be honest, the coronavirus pandemic really pushed me to just go for what I’m passionate about.
The idea to start the Shared Genes blog with my sister came to me pretty randomly one day. I sort of threw the idea out there over text and at first my sister Sera actually laughed about it. She never thought it was something we would ever actually do. But, once the initial shock value wore off, she said it started to sound not just like a good idea, but like something fun, new, exciting, and most importantly, accomplishable.
We’ve always been the people to over-dress for occasions (our family always makes fun of us for dressing up to go to our own living room for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas) and fashion has always been something we bonded over.
But, since we’ve started this blog we’ve learned a lot about how difficult the logistics of sharing that piece of our sisterhood can be. We’ve learned about the importance of an aesthetic and how to curate the feed to accurately represent who we are. We’ve learned about color palettes. And have driven around cities looking for the “perfect” white/beige wall to take pictures in front of.
One of the biggest hurdles for us has been overcoming the embarrassment of taking pictures on a crowded street with people staring, wondering what the hell is going on. This part has gotten a little easier with practice, but the stereotypes of vapid influencers and self-obsessed millennials are still in the back of our minds.
We’ve also learned A LOT about hashtags and the Instagram algorithm. Both of us have attended “Instagram Masterclasses” that have revealed the secrets to getting featured on the explore page, using hashtags to your advantage, and not being confused with a bot or spam account. While we’re still perfecting our use of all this information to grow our following, our biggest lessons have been about the influencer lifestyle in general. This is time consuming stuff! It’s not just taking pictures and posting them. There’s lots of editing, curating, creating, writing, and learning involved.
We’ve been extremely close our entire lives, but this level of shared work has brought us even closer together. We’ve learned to appreciate our relationship and make the most out of our time together, especially since when we started we lived thousands of miles away from each other.
But after a good eight months of working on the Shared Genes blog together, we decided that our relationship as sisters is more important than the success of any blog. Being a blogger has always been my dream, so I will continue to pursue that, with Sera as my #1 fan and supporter! You’ll still see her on the blog a lot (since she’s my best friend), but sharing the details of everyday life is something I’m much more comfortable with.