“Don't
compromise yourself. You are all you've got.”
Janis Joplin
Welcome to A Secret Blogmas
2025!
Today is Day One and the very first Secret of the Series is all about authenticity, honesty, and transparency. It’s about the importance of being yourself – truly yourself. Being you 100% of the time that you spend online – but especially when you’re creating content – can be so important and influential upon the popularity and success of your content and/or the platform on which you publish it! Keep reading to find out why this happens and how you can put it into practice with your own content creation…
1. Trust
No matter
what industry you’re in/your content is about, a frequently used – and often
popular – format of content which is affected by honesty, authenticity, and
transparency, are advice and tips posts. This is because a very important
component to prevent your advisory content from falling on ‘deaf ears’, is that
your followers or audience trust you and you can gain that trust from being
100% yourself in your content creation. If an online user sees that a content
creator is true to their values, that they let their personality shine through
their content, that they engage with their followers in an honest and genuine
way, that they keep to their promises, and recognise their mistakes, they are
so much more likely to trust in that person’s content and the messages being conveyed
in it.
2. Emotional
Connection
Being
transparent, honest, and authentic can also impact the emotional connection a
follower experiences towards the content creator. This is very obviously and
understandably an element that is more easily affected when it comes to mental health
related content because the creator is more likely to be sharing personal
experiences and showing their vulnerability. But this can also be done through
being consistent in showing your personality and being open about your values
and beliefs, in a way which perfectly illustrates a creator stands for a lot
more than their blog or social media account. Expressing gratitude to your
audience/followers and recognising just how important and influential they have
been on your content’s success and the opportunities that its popularity is
affording you.
3. Engagement
Encouragement
Being authentic
and genuine can be really encouraging and motivating for a follower to want to
and feel driven to engage with the creator and/or their content/platform in the
many ways available these days – especially on social media channels. If a
follower deems an influencer to be honest and transparent, then they’re likely
to have more confidence and interest in building some sort of a connection with
them through content engagement. Encouraging engagement and having good
insight/statistics around your content/audience engagement levels can do
wonders for being presented with, or receiving positive answers to, collaboration
pitches. Being able to tell well-known individuals and brands or charities that
your content receives likes and lots of positive feedback in social media
comments, can be fundamental in them recognising that a partnership with you/your
platform would be a good publicity opportunity.
4. Competition
Differentiation
In an industry
that is as over-saturated as the Influencer realm is, standing out from other
content creators can be essential to your popularity and success, and one means
of doing this (standing out) would be by being honest, transparent, and authentic.
A topic that is up for frequent discussion online is typically that surrounding
a content creator’s realness, how personable they are, and whether their
content is an accurate and honest portrayal of their entire life. A very common
concern around content creators is the fact that a person posts the content
they want you to see, no one posts wholesome reels on Instagram or opinionated
tweets on Twitter/X that they don’t want people to see! So, when you’re looking
at content and making judgments on a person’s entire life because of it, always
bear in mind that those few pieces of content are what the person has been
chosen to put public. How much hardship is happening behind closed doors? And so,
being someone who publishes a content that balances the hardship and the wins,
achievements, and milestones; will separate you from the rest.
5. Sustainable
Long-Term Influence
Being
deemed as trustworthy and transparent, can really lend itself to just how long you
can maintain the gravity of your influence and the popularity and the success
of your content. Whilst content creators who are merely following trends to the
letter can be a lot more likely to achieve ‘viral’ moments where their platform
and/or content is being seen by a much larger audience, that type of content
and those types of creators are equally less likely to have any longevity in
their influence and following. Building a loyal following with honest, transparent,
and authentic content that is both creative and personal, brings a much larger
likelihood to a content and/or platform having a much longer and better-quality
reign in terms of its popularity and success.
6. Follower’s
Mental Health
The mental health
of a content creator’s following/audience can – in numerous ways and for
numerous reasons – be affected by the creator’s attitude and response around
authenticity, transparency, and honesty. One, more common example, would be
around body confidence and self-worth. Where a creator is more honest and open
around their body-image and where they publish imagery that portrays their body
in a more exact and realistic way, their followers will be a lot more likely to
adopt that same attitude to their own body, their confidence around their appearance,
and their thoughts on self-worth and self-image.
1.
Credibility
Honesty,
transparency, and authenticity can also impact a content creator’s levels of
credibility in a way that is hugely important for their future by reflecting on
their professional reputation. Where a creator is transparent in their content
and general use of the online world, it can cause a recognition that they are
less likely to have been manipulated when they are giving recommendations,
encouraging purchases, or publishing more general advice posts and industry-themed
tips. It can make the creator seem more relatable to their following and the
public in general, and this can really foster a sense of confidence and trust
in their words, values, and the messages they convey through their online content.
2.
Long-Term Collaborations
Being so
honest and transparent in content creation, can really contribute to fostering a
sense of commitment and of loyalty that can go far with longer-term partnerships
and collaborations between the creator and well-known individuals, brands,
charities, and organisations. If a creator seems trustworthy and their content
is reliable and authentic, then why wouldn’t you want to team up with them on
projects and joint-content creation? Because that isn’t just about their content,
being trustworthy is a personable trait that – if anything – brings encouragement
when considering a relationship with someone that is described as being that
way.
3. Protection
An honest
and transparent content creator who remains authentic and trustworthy despite –
and unaffected by – any popularity and success around their content, can end up
– as a result of these qualities – having some sort of protection when it comes
negative feedback, misinformation, gossip, and rumours. Their honourable
attitude and values that are embedded in their content creation, can not only
give a lot of people the attitude that they won’t believe any untrue gossip
about that person and/or that if they were to hear something, but that they
would also actually openly, passionately, determinedly, and confidently fight
to defend that content creator too.
4. Industrial
Respect
Earning respect, in any career, can be challenging and a gruelling, uphill task that is often seen as difficult and demanding because the topic of respect is often a personable one where even just the word can be defined differently between different people! With it meaning different things to different people, this often results in it taking a varied standard or expectation in order to gain respect from one person than it may to gain it from someone else. It could appear ‘easy’ and straightforward in a relationship with one person and another person in your life might fight against thoughts of respect and struggle to experience that feeling toward a person. Gaining respect in a content creation career where your audience can vary so much, is no different.
Reduced Pressure
Authenticity, honesty, and transparency are three attributes and qualities to a person and their online content, that can all massively contribute to the content creator experiencing a reduction in pressure for a number of different reasons and in a number of different ways. Ultimately though, I think that the most common thought process or experience regarding this for content creators of different industries and themes, is the notion of ‘keeping up appearances.’ This could be a huge reference around the topic of body image as mentioned earlier in that if you post edited photos, you’re going to feel almost forced into always editing your photos for consistency. But another instance around relieving pressure, is the importance of balancing content which sheds light on both positive and negative experiences, thoughts, and feelings. If you only post about the big, positive moments, and then something difficult happens – even if you think creating content on it would be helpful for you – you may face some self-created barriers of thoughts around not wanting to ‘ruin’ everyone’s opinion of how wonderful your life is.
2. Supportive of a Good Self-Identity
Transparency, honesty, and authenticity can affect this area or element to a creator’s mental health and emotional wellbeing in a few different ways. One of the most significant of these is that having a good self-identity can lead to a large reduction in experiencing challenges such as cognitive dissonance and Imposter Syndrome. Avoiding these has meant/is because if you are completely yourself online as you are in person, there’s no gap and no difference about you, as a person so it’s easier to recognise and accept who you are because you have alternative definition or illustrations of it. Being without that, often means the creator’s integrity is affirmed, there is encouragement of self-acceptance, and that consistency is reinforced. All these thoughts and feelings can result in a healthy and safe long-term wellbeing.
3. Healthier Boundaries
A method of being honest, authentic, and transparent within your content can be by sharing personal details, thoughts, feelings, and/or experiences. But, having these very healthy and positive qualities, can often leave you developing equally healthy and positive boundaries – and this isn’t in terms of a following or audience. Instead, it is referring to boundaries around the recurring, difficult decision on what should be shared and what should remain private and personal. Being honest in your content can really contribute to ensuring there is a commonly understood agreement as to what is off-limits in your life in terms of it being posted on social media or written about in a blog post.
4. Genuine Connections Created
Having mentioned connections and relationships twice, the first was regarding a follower’s relationship with the Influencer/content creator, and then the second chat about it, was regarding collaborations and partnerships. This time, however, it’s really, far more about how these connections can impact the Influencer’s mental health. Building some sort of genuine relationship with others due to your authenticity and transparency, can be really rewarding and can work to motivate you to continue to have this attitude or method of working/creating content. Building genuine, trustworthy, and loyal connections in this industry, can also be uplifting and encouraging in terms of your actual content creation too.
5. Trend Burn-Out Prevented
There is something to be said for those content creators or Influencers who are forever and only creating content that abides by current trends and certain viral ‘challenges.’ Their content very obviously and understandably, tends to be more likely to achieve ‘viral’ status itself and typically gain hundreds of thousands - if not, millions! - of views/followers. The difficulty in that way of working though, is that it can often to lead to a special, specific type of burn-out whereby there’s a challenge in either maintaining that level of content creation to respond to the speed in which trends are changing and being created, or that there’s a challenge to find a trend that works and then the struggle to suddenly be relying upon your own thoughts, ideas, and creativity.
6. Resilience Against Negativity
Being honest, transparent, and authentic can also provide a sense or level of resilience for an Influencer or content creator who – because they are only being themselves – feel more able and confident in defending themselves throughout any negativity. They can typically feel a sense of comfort and reassurance that they’re stuck to their own values and kept their personality throughout their content creation journey. And how can anyone argue with someone or say something bad about someone who hasn’t been at all fake, phoney, hypocritical, fake, superficial, or any of that?! What can you say about a person being themselves?
I’d like to think that these are qualities where, staying true to myself, means having the ability to be this way because this (honest, transparent, and authentic) is how I am in real-life too! Doing it with mental health related content has been tricky though…
Firstly, I’ve struggled with being a little too honest and that risking triggering and upsetting people by being too detailed or providing too much information with instances that are typically around suicide, self-harm, abuse, and rape. I find it very difficult to have to sensor myself when I’m writing about my life and my own personal experiences where, when you’re the one actually experiencing them, no one sensors anything for you! No one regulates what you hear or see!
My other difficulty in having these qualities and using them through my content creation, has been particularly relevant recently in my current mental health relapse. I’m very aware that my content – from the beginning of my blog being me as a sectioned psychiatric hospital inpatient, to now being in my own home – can very easily seem like it’s intended as a story for hope. That my journey can seem to be inspirational for some people who are inpatients or who are struggling with hallucinations and/or suicidal thoughts and feelings. And so, to be honest and say that I’ve relapsed and that I’m struggling again, really worries me that it will be destabilising to others too. That others will lose sight of the positives and will question “if it can come back for her, why would I be any different and in recovery and completely ok forever now?”
For both of these struggles, I had to come to recognise two things:
1. I recognised and accepted that sometimes, it was really important to add a simple ‘TW’ (trigger warning) to the title of my content in order to protect others because the last thing I want is for my content to cause harm and upset in any way.
2. I realised that blogging about my relapse and any other difficult moments amidst my very un-linear(!) recovery, was more likely to help me and feel therapeutic to process things and get it out of my head, than it was to cause harm to readers and followers.
1.
Show behind-the-scenes moments.
2.
Disclose where there are adverts or paid
collaborations.
3.
Admit to mistakes and changes in your
content/platform.
4.
Don’t copy style of voice etc for your content.
5.
Balance publishing content on achievements
along with that about struggles.
6.
Be honest in promotion and providing tips and
advice.
7.
Engage with your audience/followers.
8.
Be consistent with your values that shine
through your content.
9.
Be transparent on any limitations e.g. the
frequency of publishing content etc.
10.
Have a balance on being open and honest and maintaining
a level of privacy.