Thirteen years ago, when the concept of being an influencer was still in its infancy, one local mom embarked on a journey that would not only redefine her identity but also inspire countless others in the community.
Meet Kristin "Kiki" Davies, a devoted mother of two boys, aged 11 and 13, whose personal journey from new motherhood to successful blogger and digital creator has resonated with many.
"I felt like I had just kind of lost myself. I watched my husband going to work every day in a suit and going out for lunch with his friends. I was at home with a mom bun and Lululemon sweatpants. And, you know, just my whole purpose wasn't being a mom, which I loved, but I also felt like I lost that identity that I had before as being a career person and working every day. I felt like maybe it was time to do something again for myself. So I started my blog."
It wasn't long until her blog morphed into something more.
"Fashion, travel and beauty and I felt like there was a niche for that because there was a lot of moms out there feeling the same way. It was also just trying to inspire them to take care of themselves. So this whole 13 years I've been doing this it's all been about self care, especially for women, especially moms, just reminders to take care of yourself and that feeling good and looking good is still important, no matter what your age."
Davies, who lives in Bearspaw has over 83.7K followers on her Instagram account, Pursuing Pretty. She said the social media platform is constantly evolving and you need to keep up to stay in the game.
"Reels have changed the whole game. Instagram wanted to really just compete with Tik Tok and the platforms are so similar now but the difference with that is that reels, if you're doing them correctly, and you have a very specific niche, Instagram does show your reels to a lot more people. So you have a bigger reach than you had with a photo."
"I've been finding a lot of success with really short videos and if you add text, so keep your videos about eight seconds or less. Add text and maybe you cut the text a little bit quicker so people have to watch it again."
"The more views that you get on a video, the more it's shown to other people."
"There's also SEO in Instagram now, this little trick that a lot of creators do now is they write search engine optimization (SEO) keywords on top of the video, they shrink the text and hide it in the video. Instagram has become searchable just like Pinterest or Google. You can search certain keywords and those videos will pop out without hashtags."
From Left: Lauren Meister, Kiki Davies & Eric Ruttle You can often find Davies at local rinks with both sons playing hockey in Cochrane.
She said there's often a misconception when it comes to how long it takes to create content.
"I will spend at least an hour creating one outfit and probably filming about 30 minutes of video and shrinking that into seven seconds. Then you're adding those keywords, you're adding the hashtags, you're adding the music and then the caption."
The 41-year-old left her career to create content full-time.
"I was a teacher in Calgary at the Calgary Board of Education for 10 years. Then I decided that I could make just as much money staying home with my kids and doing full time blogging and traveling and Instagramming. So I left teaching and did that full time."
As part of the job, Davies has had the opportunity to travel while creating content.
"The things that stick out the most probably is when we've gotten to go on vacations together as a family. Sometimes I'll work with hotels. The Fairmont has been one that we've worked with several times, they take very good care of us. We've been to Bahamas, we've been to Hawaii. There's lots of ways to reach out and usually those things are not paying. They're not something that you would earn money for but you're getting compensation through the use of going on a trip. I've been to Scottsdale, Arizona many times for trips and they're really fun when you get to go on these content creation trips."
Fri, May 3, 5:30 PM
Full-time, Part-time, Retail