Women's Day Feature: Ally Pintucci on Being a Social Media Influencer [Pt. 2]
We closed our 2016 interviewing Ally Pintucci, a social media influencer and content creator, who turned her passion into a full time job We were able to ask about her process and learned how she was able to reach where she is now. Lucky for us, we had another rendezvous where we got the opportunity to gain further insight about her demographic, social media accounts and day-to-day life.
Being a social media influencer has given Ally an important perspective that some may have trouble remembering while scrolling through their feeds, especially when she gets comments such as “Let’s trade lives, I’m so jealous”, or “I want your life”. Ally wants people to remember People often forget that social media is the “highlight reel of one’s life”. She does, however, make a conscious effort to remind her audience that things aren’t always as perfect as they seem.
“One day I decided to do a more 'vulnerable' post about a breakup, and I posted about how upset and heartbroken I was along with a photo. Later on, one of my readers reached out and said “I’m really glad you posted this, because I used to go through your feed and compare my life to yours, and ask myself what I was doing wrong.”
Ally explains how this really affected her, because she deals with her own struggles and daily hurdles just like the rest of us do, leading her to become more conscious about making her posts more authentic.
We all deal with our own demons and daily hurdles and Ally’s no different. That’s why she made a conscious decision to make her posts more authentic.
This created a genuine dialogue communication with her audience, whom she aims to inspire people - motivating them to share their own experiences, ask for help, or reach out through empathy.
“People are hesitant about reaching out, but I’ve realized you have more in common with people going through stuff than people who are not. I want to connect with people in a way that’s authentic, that makes them say “that was me, I went through that too”, to me, it’s about being more authentic and finding a genuine way to relate with my audience.”
According to Ally, expressing your social media personality begins with “deciding what your core values are, your mantra, and your personal branding.” She personally has created a ‘box’ within her brand, where she asks herself “am I offending anyone with this?” and “am I acting with integrity and am I doing everything authentically?” By creating your own core values and branding to create a ‘box’ will help when deciding what posts to create, by making sure everything fits inside.
In her opinion, Social media possesses a fine line between authenticity and exaggeration.
“Everything you put out there, it’s not like it’s made up, it does happen, but the issue is that it doesn’t always show the in-between, it doesn’t always show the struggles or the stories behind it. The issue is when it’s so curated, it’s not black and white.”
We all know that social media can be overly consuming, with people seeking validation through social channels shares and likes. Ally finds herself at times getting caught up trying to push her content out to the world, closely watching her stats and numbers. Sure, this makess sense, considering she’s turning this into when it’s your her career, but she can still easily relate to the all-consuming feeling that social media sometimes brings is all too relatable.
Apart from the negative sides of social media, Ally is quite pleased and intrigued to see the impact that she can have on people through her channels. She asks herself how she use social media and its power in a positive light.
It’s not all negative with regards to social media. In fact, Ally mentions utilizing her streams to see the potential positive impact she can have by putting a spotlight on issues close to the influencer’s heart.
“For me it just comes down to choice, and it excites me that social media allows us to have the ability to touch people’s lives all over the world, in a matter of seconds. I think it’s exciting if we can choose the way we use it.”
We asked Ally about her collaborative project, When In Doubt, Love, which is centered on the concept of discussing love in a real and raw way.
“People tend to talk about love in this really fluffy and perfect way. We wanted to portray this view that every single human faces doubt, male or female. We encouraged people to try and act from a place of love. If every single human can be a bit more aware of that, imagine what that can do to the world.”
One of the ideas that Ally and the other creators of this project decided upon was starting a “love revolution”. Ally explains that she personally had an emotional blockage towards the word “love”, but was eventually fortunate enough to have met someone who changed that view, showing her the importance of not just the word, but the feeling too love from a romantic and human way.
“I personally struggle with doubt all the time. For me, it wasn’t like I was telling others how to live their lives, but instead finding myself through this journey in this community. I’m still in the process of learning how to love, so I’m super grateful. It came to a point that [it] wasn’t my project and my space anymore and with the circumstances that happened I could’ve chosen to be mad, hate, or act from a place of love. It was a stepping stone for me and my personal brand about building a community, learning to understand with compassion and have a little love for yourself.”
Check out Ally’s pages below:
Instagram: @allypintucci
Website: www.allypintucci.com
When In Doubt Love: http://whenindoubtlove.com/our-story/
Find out more about the When In Doubt, Love project here.