ARCHITECTS OF NEXT: Natalie Glaze/OneFifty
Imagine being happy. (Nearly) all the time. You’re imagining Natalie.
Imagine you get to combine two things you love, every week. Creating great content for your blog and helping create a better way for brands and social influencers to work together.
Actually make that three things you love: add brunching hard, with maximum avocado.
Natalie is one of the OneFifty team, focussed on developing new, better ways for social creators and influencers to work with brands, to create what comes next. She’s also a celebrated pro blogger, covering travel, fitness, food, and more.
Natalie started her working life as a media buyer/planner. An appreciation of the value of data didn’t eliminate a desire for more creativity on a daily basis. “I just felt there had to be more – I had things I wanted to see, things I wanted to say”. So, blog in-hand, she decided to split her time between creating content and enjoying amazing experiences, and working with brands as a freelance social media consultant.
Her life reflects the development of social media as a marketing discipline – from interesting development, to mainstream marketing. “I’ve seen so many people create careers from social media. It’s fundamentally changed the way we look at a typical career path, adding freedom, creativity and accessibility.” That’s not just affected her life, however. “The way brands realise the power of social media, and the way they seek to utilise influencers has changed too. Generally for the better, but there are still brands who don’t embrace the potential, and others who don’t understand the balance required between an influencer’s objectives, and their own.”
Where journalists used to look to media organisations for structure, Natalie looks to other content creators. “My biggest inspiration are definitely fellow bloggers. Lots of my friends have built successful brands online, and are literally loving – and smashing – life. That’s hugely empowering for me to see, too.”
Looking at 2017, one of her key focus is the way short-form video, such as Instagram Stories, creates new ways for creators to develop content: “It used to be the case that people either did text, image, or video. Now, increasingly, people are doing two, or even three, of these. That’s exciting to be a part of.”
Sometimes it’s neither what, or who, you know. But how you know it. Natalie’s eternal happiness might in part be due to working out something much of the world’s only just waking up to: that if you create great content, and ensure everyone generates value, you can enjoy a great avocado-based breakfast. That’s definitely something to smile about.
To stay ahead think/do:
Top Insta follow – Jay Alvarrez, A Bikini A Day, Symmetry Breakfast, Condé Nast Traveller, Sincerely Jules. I can’t choose one!
Productive habit – making lists
Unproductive habit – being late
Favourite brand – too many favourites, impossible to choose. Maybe another unproductive habit is being indecisive.
