How Influencers Are Adapting During the Pandemic: Alberto Ulloa @albertulloa

Just as brands and creatives are adjusting their strategy amid the current global pandemic, content creators are adjusting their work as followers shift their expectations — and spend more time online. For our new blog series, CIIC spoke with a few of our favorite content creators for their insights. Here’s our conversation with Chilean travel & food blogger Alberto Ulloa @albertulloa.

What kind of content are your followers currently engaging with? How have you shifted your content to accommodate your followers’ interest?

My followers are currently looking for cooking or sports content. I have changed my content to include cooking recipes at home and recommending restaurants that make you live their experience at home. Before the pandemic, my content concentrated more on travel, foodie, and skincare content, but I've adapted to their interests.

If you have shifted content, do you see yourself shifting back after COVID or continuing with the new content direction? 

I've changed my content, and the response has been very positive. I think people are looking to find entertaining things to do at home. My views and my engagement have increased; photos that previously had 14k visits can reach 30k.

How do you predict the current situation will change the influencer landscape? Have you felt the need to reinvent yourself as an influencer?

The landscape of influencers has already changed a bit. Still, it is also essential, people consume more Internet every day, and this is where they can find out more quickly about campaigns, advertising, or a product. At the moment, I don't feel like I should reinvent myself. What I have to do is adapt the content while using the same themes, for example, instead of touring a restaurant, feature how to recreate recipes at home, or showcasing delivery options.

Have you noticed any innovative or creative ways that brands are working with influencers now?

Generally, the brands I have been working with guide you and require that all the content is inside your house. A recent example is a campaign I did with King's Hawaiian, where I had to create a sandwich with ingredients I already had in the fridge. Here in Chile, many sports brands are doing social media lives from home featuring the products and providing followers with fitness classes. 

What are some creative new ideas/deliverables that you’ve come up with to offer to brands that might have changed their messaging or had to tighten their budgets?

I believe that many brands, at least in Chile, have the same concept of selling their products but now directly to your home, and all have adjusted their budgets a lot compared to previous years.

With the importance of sensitive messaging, what kind of backlash have you seen influencers receive and how have you worked to prevent that from happening within your own content?

I think that an influencer must be very careful in what copy they include in their content. Many people no longer watch much news because they feel like they only talk about tragedies; with that said, one should perhaps inform but not terrorize followers with relevant information. As influencers, our creativity lets us distract our followers from time to time and give them a good reason to be entertained.