But I fear this recent surge of online content might be the end of me. It feels like every time I open Instagram I’m being sold the very career I’ve had for over a decade but by someone who has been doing it for a year or 2, sometimes only a matter of months - but not only that, they’re sharing how much money they’ve made in an extortionately short amount of time and then even more so going on to explain how you could achieve that success too…by buying their course.

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And now we’re here - at the last one, which in my experience is the one that most people fail to execute properly. Making all of the other answers pretty irrelevant to be honest. But before get into it, I think we should have a brief conclusion over what we’ve uncovered so far.

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But if I asked you what you want to be known for, I’d be pretty certain you’d say the same thing, or something close enough that’s most likely a remix of your previous answer.

That my friend, is the disconnect within your content. And it matters enormously.

What you do is a description. What you’re known for is a reputation.

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Someone shows me their online content. It’s well made, the aesthetic is on point and the captions are grammatically correct. They’ve also been posting consistently for the past month and following as many virality tips and jumping on trends ; so I guess you’d expect them to be nailing it online right?

No. It’s not working, they’re not attracting the followers they want or seeing an increase in engagement - and they’re baffled, hence why they’re asking for my opinion. One of the first questions I often reply with is…

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Most people who build a social presence don’t know what they actually want it to do.

They want to grow and they want to be seen. They want to build their brand (whether that be a personal one or a product/retail brand). These are real everyday desires, but they’re not answers. They’re directions without a destination. And when you don’t have a destination, every road looks equally valid, and none of them feel like progress.

The first question in the Brand Discovery Brief is this:

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I want to talk about a pattern I’ve watched play out hundreds of times over fifteen years of working in and around social media.

Someone decides they want to build a presence online. Maybe they’re launching a business. Maybe they’re a creator who’s been meaning to get serious. Maybe they’re a brand that’s watched competitors grow and decided it’s finally time.

And so they do what feels logical. They look at what’s working for other people. They pick a visual style. They write their bio. They start posting.

Within a few weeks (yes that quickly), something feels off. The content isn’t landing the way they hoped. The growth is slower than expected. They’re putting in real effort and not seeing it reflected back. So they start tweaking. A new format. A different posting time. More hashtags, fewer hashtags. A rebrand.

The problem persists. Because the problem was never the content.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe, after watching this cycle more times than I can count:

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Every platform you have built your business on top of has already demonstrated this is true.

Facebook organic reach dropped below 2%. Instagram’s non-Reel content reach has been declining for years. TikTok has shown consistent preference for accounts with existing traction, making it harder for newer and smaller creators to break through. Algorithms shift. Platforms pivot. Formats that worked brilliantly become deprioritised as the platform chases its next revenue model.

And yet, most creators are still putting the majority of their eggs in platform baskets they don’t own.

So what does ‘owning your platform’ actually mean?

Owning your audience means having a direct line of communication that does not depend on any algorithm, any platform’s continued goodwill, or any third party deciding whether your content is seen.

In practice, in 2026, this means email.

An email subscriber has actively given you permission to contact them. When you send a newsletter, it lands in their inbox. Not maybe, not depending on when they last engaged with your content, not filtered through a feed of 200 other accounts. It arrives. They open it or they don’t. But the delivery is yours.

Email also converts at rates that social media simply cannot match. Creators with owned email lists are significantly more likely to generate sustainable, predictable revenue because an email subscriber represents a fundamentally different level of intent and trust than a social media follower.

The significant resurgence of newsletters and email-first content strategies we’re seeing right now is not a trend. It’s a correction.

Creators who built everything on social platforms learned the hard way what platform dependency costs. They experienced algorithmic cliff-drops that cut their reach in half overnight. They watched platforms remove features they’d built entire content strategies around. Some lost accounts entirely through hacking or policy violations.

The migration toward owned audiences, such as Substack, and direct email lists, is a strategic response to a decade of evidence that building on rented land is dangerous.

The creators driving this shift are not abandoning social media. They’re using it differently, more so as a top-of-funnel discovery mechanism that feeds into an owned audience, rather than as the destination itself.

If you’re currently social-first and you want to change that, here’s the framework:

Step one: Give people a reason to join your list. Not just “subscribe for updates.” What do they get? A weekly perspective they can’t get anywhere else. A resource. Access to a specific type of thinking you don’t share on social. The value exchange needs to be clear.

Step two: Make it easy. Your link should be in your bio, in your content, mentioned regularly. Most creators underestimate how many people would subscribe if they were simply reminded to do so.

Step three: Treat your email list as your best audience, not your overflow audience. Give your subscribers something worth having. First access. Deeper thinking. The version of you that doesn’t have to perform for an algorithm. This is where you build real loyalty.

Step four: Diversify across two or three platforms maximum, then stop. Being everywhere is not a strategy. It’s a drain. Pick the platforms where your specific audience actually lives, show up consistently there, and funnel them toward the thing you own. For example, The Unfiltered Brief is primarily on Instagram for short form content and then right here on Substack, for more in depth written content.

Something worth remembering: platform diversification is not just about risk mitigation even though it absolutely is that too. It’s about understanding what kind of business you’re actually building.

If you want to be in the creator space for the long term, you need infrastructure that belongs to you. You need an audience that is yours to reach regardless of what any single platform decides to do next.

Social media is extraordinarily powerful for discovery and community. But discovery is the beginning of the relationship, not the whole of it. At some point, the serious question is: where does that relationship live when you take it off a platform you don’t control?

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✨ Are you a creator or running a small business and don’t know where to start when it comes to planning and posting content online?

If you’re looking for in depth strategy and development for yourself or your brand, let’s connect!

Or if you’re after advice or want to bounce ideas off someone, I offer 1:1 consulting calls. No minimum follower count is required and no question is too silly! Let’s chat here!

Maybe it’s something big, like a career move (hiyaaa it me), a conversation you’ve been avoiding, a version of yourself you’re not quite sure you’re allowed to step into yet. Or maybe it’s something smaller, but it’s been sitting there for a while, waiting for the moment when you feel qualified enough, settled enough, confident enough to actually begin.

I think most of us have something like that or remember a time when we did. A thing we’re holding at arm’s length until the conditions feel right.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, mainly because I’ve been noticing it in myself, but also because I’m not sure the feeling of readiness ever really arrives the way we expect it to. At least not first. Not before the thing.

I started writing on Substack because I needed somewhere to put my thoughts. I didn’t have a plan, or a clear sense of what I was going to say or how often I was going to say it. There was no strategy, no niche, no considered approach. Just a lot of thoughts that needed somewhere to go, and a quiet pull towards a new way of expressing myself on a platform where I was completely unknown. So I wrote something, pressed publish, and then distracted myself for the next few hours so that I didn’t think about it too hard.

Several hundred subscribers later, I want to tell you that I now feel completely settled and sure of what I’m doing here. But I’d be lying. I still don’t feel ready. Not even a little bit. I just keep going anyway. And somewhere along the way, I started to wonder if that might actually be the whole point.

Somewhere along the way we were sold a particular story about how confidence works. The story goes: you wait until you feel ready, and then you begin. You wait until you feel qualified, and then you put your hand up. You wait until you feel like the kind of person who does that thing, and then you go and do it.

It sounds reasonable. It feels responsible. But we know that it’s categorically not true.

Because in my experience (and maybe in yours too) the feeling of readiness almost never arrives before the action. It arrives because of it.

Here are three things I’ve come to believe about that.

1. Readiness isn’t a prerequisite. It’s a side effect.

The version of yourself who feels confident and settled and sure? She’s not waiting in the wings for you to finally be ready enough to let her out. She gets built, slowly, through the act of doing the thing before you feel like you should.

I didn’t feel like a writer before I started writing here. I felt like someone who wanted to express my feelings and thoughts in a way different to how I’m able to on any other platform. So I started writing, and then I kept writing, and now, somewhere between the posts and the comments and the messages from people who recognised something in what I shared, I actually feel more like a writer than I ever did when I was just thinking about it.

The doing came first. The feeling followed.

2. Identity catches up with action - never the other way around.

There’s a gap between who you are in your head and who you’re becoming in practice. And that gap can feel deeply uncomfortable, because you’re doing something you don’t yet have the identity to match. You’re showing up as a version of yourself that hasn’t been road-tested. It feels presumptuous, almost. Like you’re getting ahead of yourself.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand: that gap isn’t a sign that you’re a fraud. It’s a sign that you’re ahead of your own story. Your sense of self is just catching up.

You don’t wait to feel like a runner before you put on your trainers. You run, and then one day you stop saying “I’m trying to get into running” and start saying “I run.” The identity arrives in the rearview mirror, after enough miles have passed.

3. Doing it without feeling ready is not a workaround. It’s actually the whole thing.

I used to think that the goal was to eventually feel ready. That at some point I’d reach a level of confidence or competence or clarity that would make the starting feel natural. That the discomfort of doing things before I felt qualified was just a phase to push through on the way to some more settled version of myself.

I’m not sure that phase ever fully ends.

And I’ve slowly made peace with that. Because I think the willingness to act without certainty is not a crutch you use until the real confidence arrives. It is the confidence. The confidence isn’t the absence of doubt. It’s the decision to go anyway.

Strangers on the internet now read something I nearly didn’t publish. And I’m still not sure I know exactly what I’m doing here. But I’m doing it. And that, I think, is the whole point, isn’t it?

If there’s something you’ve been waiting to feel ready for, I’d gently offer this: you might be waiting for a feeling that only the action can create. The readiness is on the other side of the starting, not before it.

You don’t have to feel like it. You just have to go.

Go forth and prosper my friend x

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Are you a creator or running a small business and don’t know where to start when it comes to planning and posting content online?

If you’re looking for in depth strategy and development for yourself or your brand, let’s connect!

Or if you’re wanting to get advice or bounce ideas of someone, I offer 1:1 consulting calls. No minimum follower count is required and no question is too silly! Let’s chat here!

When I started on social media back in 2011, YouTube had been around for 6 years, predominately hosting amateur content, with vlogs on the rise but not taken too seriously by the masses. Twitter was my main platform (which I gained around 3 million followers pretty rapidly) and Instagram was in its most basic form (having only launched late 2010) but gaining more and more attention by the day. Back then if you’d told someone that you were an influencer or content creator they’d look at you with the same confusion as if you’d just told them you sniff socks for a living. However, according to a 2024 article published by Fortune, more than 30% of 12–15-year-olds named YouTuber as their number one career aspiration with a further 21% wanting to be TikTok creators.

It’s been one of the most rapidly evolving careers this generation has ever seen, yet because no one had done it before, it really was a case of the blind leading the blind when it came to figuring it all out. For example, when I had around 300k followers (probably somewhere between 2012-2013) I was predominately working on a gifting basis and very rarely, if at all, would request a fee from the brands that were sending items to me. And that’s not to point a finger and blame the brands, they didn’t know it was a legitimate marketing and sales tactic and nor did I. I would have never thought that it was a form of promotion that would go on to compete with mainstream advertising. Like, what do you mean my social media channels will go on to reach more people than Vogue, Elle and Glamour magazines…combined?!

As time has passed and the world of social media has evolved exponentially, it would still seem that so many people are almost scrambling to try and get a piece of the pie. A pie which only seems to be getting bigger and more valuable by the second. And as someone who feels confident in saying they were a part of the hypothetical pie when it was merely some flour, sugar and some store bought pastry, I have had enough time and experience to know what to do in order to create a sustainable (and successful) career - but perhaps more importantly, what not to do!

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Before I continue, it goes without saying that you can treat social media however you wish. As long as you have good intent and aren’t set out to cause harm or distress then post and share as you like - but to be honest, if that’t the case, then this article probably isn’t for you and that’s ok. However, if you’ve been trying to or considering giving social media a go, either from a personal perspective or as a brand, then these are some basics to not only remind yourself of when creating content, but also revert back to when the inevitable happens and you feel like you’re hitting a brick wall when it comes to reach, followers, creativity and all the other hurdles the online space will throw at you.

1. You do not have to post everyday. Controversial I know, especially when there are accounts claiming that you need to post 5-7 times a day on TikTok. I am yet to discover someone who has posted everyday for a prolonged period of time that hasn’t experienced burn out very quickly and needed to regulate their nervous system due to a mental breakdown from the stress that was inevitably caused. To be more specific - on TikTok, if you’re able to post daily, brilliant - you go Glen Coco. The content style on there is a lot less polished and a video that’s been filmed whilst you’re sat in your car offering value can be a great way to build trust and relatability with your audience. On Instagram, that’s not the case so much. It’s still very much the more ‘aesthetic’ platform (something that I’m itching to discuss in a future article). And with that comes the desire to not only post but more so consume much more considered content. I do think the landscape is changing and Instagram will inherit more of TikTok’s fast paced, ‘thrown together’ style content as the Gen Z audience grows, but I think that ultimately, regardless of the platform the main focus on content should be quality over quantity.

2. Stop trying to go viral. If I had a £ for every time a brand or aspiring creator asked me the ‘secret’ to going viral, I would be writing this article from a super yacht that could compete with that belonging to Jeff Bezos. I have no idea why people are so obsessed with virality when all of the data shows that it doesn’t impact growth, retention or popularity in a prolonged and positive way. In fact what it does, is share your content to a much larger pool of people than usual, most of whom don’t relate, nor will engage adequately and will swipe past it leaving an increase in viewing numbers but not much else. If you know your target demographic then each piece of content should aim to talk directly to that person. All of us like to consume content that we can relate to when scrolling on social media, we want to feel hypothetically seen and heard by the accounts we choose to follow - so instead of posting in a way that is trying to speak to thousands of people in Wembley Stadium, you want your content to feel as if you’re sat opposite someone in your local coffee shop. That’s the person who will invest time, energy and money into what you’re offering. And that’s way more valuable than going viral.

3. Ignore the ‘how to’ videos/posts. This may seem slightly hypocritical coming from a newsletter designed to help you on social media, but one thing I can assure you, is that you will never (and I mean never) see a post from me that says something along the lines of ‘This is how I gained 1 million followers overnight - follow these steps and you will too’. My main reason for having a hatred for that type of content is that it’s usually a funnel to hook you in and convince you to buy some sort of digital download for £200 in order to be successful when in actual fact you’re likely to be able to find the content of said download readily available elsewhere online, for free. And I’d like to clarify, that this isn’t discrediting digital downloads, I think there are some really helpful and useful products available - but it’s those videos that usually start with a line such as ‘I grew 100k followers in 6 months - this is what I did’ that then goes onto list a bunch of non-negotiables that aren’t transferrable to your life or capabilities for whatever reason (time/location/posting schedule etc) and at the end tries to sell you something based on all of those things that you already know you can’t commit to, therefore adding to your stress and desperation to try and follow these unrealistic steps. You need to find what works for you on social media, not how to follow the supposed steps from someone else, and that’s what my intention is through these newsletters.

4. Affiliate marketing isn’t for everyone. This one is a little more niche but something I feel isn’t spoken about enough. I think that affiliate platforms can be an incredible source of additional income and if it works for you and your content style then that’s great. But the more I discuss it with others, the more resistance I often hear about. It can have a detrimental effect on your relationship with your audience - creating affiliate links for everything from your dining table down to your toothpaste can be (to put it bluntly) annoying and unnecessary. I’ve also witnessed in some cases, creators specifically linking luxury or more expensive items that they don’t even own nor would they buy themselves just because it comes with a higher commission rate. I guess this is another ‘you do you’ moment, but to me that seems a little bit icky and not something I would ever recommend doing if you want to create or build a sustainable audience online.

5. Your personal brand doesn’t need a rebrand. Possibly the most important point of this entire article. I don’t know what was in the water at the start of 2026 but all of a sudden, every Tom, Dick and Harry was posting content about ‘this is how I’m rebranding this year’ or ‘10 ways to rebrand yourself’. Since when did evolving and just naturally changing as you grow turn into a marketable trend of ‘rebranding’?! You are fully entitled (and encouraged to) evolve over time and change your mind about things or refine your morals/opinions/values etc, but that doesn’t equate to a rebrand. If anything this again adds a layer of inauthenticity to your online presence, and something that your audience would start to question themselves over who they have been following this entire time - if you’re making a rebrand your entire personality trait, what will be left of the previous you and why would I as a follower, continue to trust you if you could simply do this again and again just to try and chase a trend or lifestyle? Don’t get me wrong, a personal brand is important, especially online, but it’s not found in a font or a colour scheme - it’s in your tone of voice, your likes and dislikes, your ability to share an opinion even if it goes against the grain, and most importantly, your ability to remain yourself amongst the chaos and ever changing landscape of social media.

If you’re still reading this post then I will assume that you are taking yourself seriously when it comes to social media, it’s possibilities, and how you can make it work for you. Either that or you’re just extremely bored and wanted to find the longest possible article ever written on Substack, (probably.) Either way, I hope that you have benefitted from what I’ve said and can apply some or all of this advice to what you’re trying to create online. Please do share this post with a friend if you think it could help them too and let me know what other topics you’d like me to deep dive into on here.

Thanks for reading,

Danielle, The Unfiltered Brief

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I’ve been in what I can only describe as the messy middle of a career shift. And the reason I call it that is because nothing about it is clean, or neat, or linear. There’s no satisfying before-and-after. There’s just… the middle. And I’m in it.

I’ve been sitting with a lot of thoughts about this lately, and I wanted to share three things that have genuinely helped me, or at least made sense of what I’m going through. Because if you’re in your own version of the messy middle right now, I think you’ll recognise some of this.

1. It feels worse before it feels better

Nobody really warns you about this part. When you’re in the thick of a transition, it doesn’t feel like growth, it just feels hard. Confusing. Vulnerable. Like you can’t quite make a decision about anything because everything feels uncertain and nothing feels solid beneath your feet.

I had one of those unexpectedly profound parenting moments recently. I was reading We’re Going on a Bear Hunt to my two-year-old daughter, and there’s this line that appears again and again throughout the book: “We can’t go over it, we can’t go under it. We’ve got to go through it.”

I put the book down and just sat with that for a second. Because that’s exactly it, isn’t it? That’s the messy middle. You can’t shortcut it, you can’t skip to the good bit, you can’t will yourself to the other side. You just have to go through it.

It’s uncomfortable and it’s supposed to be. That doesn’t make it easier, but it does make it feel a little less like something’s gone wrong.

2. Same = safe

I got this phrase from a career coaching call recently and it has stayed with me and helped me at times when I’ve felt such a strong pull back to what I’m familiar with.

My brain and my body are incredibly good at finding comfort in what they’ve known for a long time. Familiar patterns, familiar environments, familiar ways of thinking. It’s probably why I’ve been a victim of several toxic relationships and stayed because it felt strangely comforting. All of those situations feel weirdly safe, even when they’re no longer serving me. And when you’re in the middle of a career shift, that pull towards the familiar is strong. Really strong.

But here’s the thing: in order to actually achieve something different, I have to do something different. And that means sitting with the discomfort of new habits, new ways of showing up, new versions of myself that haven’t been road-tested yet.

It sounds obvious written down. But when your nervous system is doing everything it can to steer you back to what it knows, it helps to have a phrase to anchor to. Same = safe. And safe isn’t always where I need to be right now.

3. I’m not turning my back on what I used to do — I’m honouring it

This one has taken me the longest to get to, and I think it might be the most important.

There’s a version of a career shift where you feel like you’re abandoning everything that came before. Like you’re saying “that didn’t count” or “I’m starting from scratch.” And that felt really unsettling to me, because the years I’ve put in, the things I’ve built, the experiences I’ve had, they’re not nothing.

But I’ve slowly come to see it differently. I’m not turning my back on any of it. I’m bringing all of it with me. My experience, my expertise, the way I think about things and approach problems, it all travels. And actually, it’s precisely that foundation that gives me more confidence and reassurance as I move into this new chapter. I know more than I think I know. I’ve done harder things than I’m giving myself credit for.

It’s not a fresh start. It’s an evolution.

The messy middle is real, and it’s not always pretty. But I’m learning that you don’t have to have it all figured out to keep moving. You just have to keep going through it.

If you’re in your own messy middle right now, I hope something here helped. And if it did, I’d love to hear about it.

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If you’re building a presence online, the title you give yourself matters more than most people realise. Get it wrong and you’ll spend years pitching for the wrong work, attracting the wrong brands, and wondering why your career feels stuck.

Fifteen years ago, when I started on social media, the word “influencer” didn’t exist. No one really knew what to call you if you posted about things you liked online, and it certainly wasn’t taken seriously as a career. Fast forward to 2026 and almost everyone either is a content creator or has a friend who is.

The art of producing content is wildly subjective. There are almost zero rules when it comes to expressing your skill, opinion or creativity online. But for those who want to carve out a serious, long-lasting and reputable career, positioning yourself in such a varied and oversaturated space is imperative. And the first decision you make in that positioning is what to call yourself.

So what’s the difference, and why does it matter?

The formula is as follows:

• Influencers: audience growth + reach = brand deals and partnerships

• Creators: a unique skillset + the ability to leverage it = business models and longevity

The main difference between the two is the value they offer to brands.

Influencers hold value in their audience size, engagement rate, reach and overall ability to create awareness. Alix Earle is one of the most famous influencers working today: she has amassed an engaged audience of several million followers and regularly partners with brands to promote products on her platform. Her followers trust what she says because they’ve bought into her personality, morals and lifestyle. She has gone on to venture into entrepreneurship and built businesses and brands of her own. But at her core, her primary value is that of an influencer.

Creators are different. James “Jimmy” Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, has turned a unique skill for producing highly engaging video content into a multi-million-dollar business empire. The value sits in the work itself, not in his personal taste or lifestyle. Most of his audience would struggle to tell you anything personal about him, and that’s the point.

An influencer’s value is who they are. A creator’s value is what they make.

That distinction is why the label you choose matters. If you call yourself an influencer when your real value is in what you create, you’ll attract short-term product deals when you should be building IP. If you call yourself a creator when your real strength is your audience and personality, you’ll spend years pitching projects that never quite land.

Both paths are legitimate. Both have well-earned places on social media, and both come with pros and cons. But the type of content you create, how you work with brands and where you want to end up will tell you which is more suited to you.

Which is best suited to you?

If you:

• Enjoy reviewing and recommending products

• Are looking to work on several short-term projects rather than one long-term partnership

• Want to build an online presence based on your lifestyle and everyday situations

→ INFLUENCER is the title you should use.

If you:

• Have a unique skill or craft you want to share

• Are willing to pitch yourself constantly in exchange for more creative control

• Help brands push boundaries within partnerships

→ CREATOR is the title you should use.

My take

If you’d asked me a few years ago, I would have said both paths were equally durable. I don’t believe that anymore. Influencer-led brand deals are getting squeezed, partly by AI, but also audience fatigue, and by brands building their own in-house creator teams. The work that’s holding its value is the work that can’t be easily replicated: original formats, original IP, a craft that takes years to build.

Influence is borrowed. Creation is owned. If you’re starting now, my advice would be to build something you own.

Let me know if you found this article helpful, and click here to view the post I published on Instagram.

I had a call with a career coach recently, and to be totally honest, I wanted to cancel several times beforehand. Which is probably all you need to know about where my head was at. Not because I didn’t think she’d be able to help me, but because I didn’t think I would be able to open up and share anything with her to help me on my current career shift journey. But I didn’t cancel, and it helped more than I expected. She didn’t gave me a magic answer, but she helped me reflect on something that I hadn’t let myself see: that doubt and capability can exist in the same person at the same time. That feeling like a fraud doesn’t mean you are one. I’ve already recommended her to a number of friends and followers in a similar position to me - so if you’re feeling a little stuck then I highly recommend reaching out to Cristina, you can find her IG profile here.

But a particularly hard thing I’m sitting with right now though is this: the internet is full of loud voices.

People who speak with enormous confidence about things they may or may not actually know deeply. And they get the attention. The engagement, the shares, the comments. Not always because they’re the best at what they do, but because they’ve mastered the art of being heard. And me? I feel like a quiet voice.

Someone who second-guesses before sharing an opinion, who rewrites the Substack several times before feeling brave enough to publish (yes, including this one), and who wonders whether she’s actually earned the right to share what I know about social media despite working in the online space for 15 years!

But here’s what I keep coming back to: loud isn’t the same as right. Confident isn’t the same as qualified. And quiet doesn’t mean wrong.

So I’m trying something. Not because the fear has gone (it definitely hasn’t). Let’s face it, fear never fully leaves us, it is just transferred from one moment to another. Every time I face something that scares me, fear is automatically transferred to the next thing - and then the next thing. You get the point. But this is what I’ve started to do, I’ve started to ask myself what it would actually cost me to show up anyway, to say the thing anyway, to post the piece anyway. And the answer, most of the time, is: not much. The cost of staying quiet, on the other hand, is accumulating.

I don’t have a neat resolution for you and I’m not on the other side of this. But I’m in it, which feels like enough for now.

If you’re a quiet voice too, I see you. I think the world needs more of us willing to speak up, not fewer. The noise is already deafening. What’s missing is nuance, and care, and honesty.

That’s what I’m trying to bring. Even when it’s scary.

Have you ever felt like this? I’d love to know how you navigate it . Reply and tell me, I read every single one.

There’s a narrative doing the rounds at the moment that positions Gen Z creators as some kind of phenomenon. Naturally gifted, algorithmically blessed, effortlessly building audiences and businesses at ages that feel almost unfair.

And there is something true in that observation. Gen Z creators are scaling faster, converting better, and building more coherent brands earlier in their careers than the millennial generation did. But the explanation isn’t always talent, or some innate digital fluency, or even good luck with timing.

The explanation is much more practical than that.

Gen Z grew up watching millennials do this first. They had a decade of free education, a live case study in what works, what doesn’t, and what absolutely destroys your credibility, all playing out in real time, before they ever posted a single piece of content themselves.

The millennial influencer era, (roughly 2010–2020), was the first generation of creators building the rules as they went along. There was no playbook, no one knew what a sustainable creator business looked like because no one had built one yet.

But what emerged was a model built almost entirely on reach and aspiration. Follower counts were currency. Brand deals were the goal. The aesthetic of “perfect” skin, “perfect” homes, “perfect” holidays was the product. Personal branding meant presenting a curated, elevated version of your life and maintaining that illusion with consistency.

And for a while, it worked. Until it didn’t, and anyone paying enough attention could see that and was ready to swoop in and benefit of the parts that were crumbling.

The millennial influencer model had several structural weaknesses. It was platform-dependent in an era when Instagram was changing its algorithm with no warning and no accountability. It was audience-wide rather than audience-deep, optimising for reach over relationship. And critically, it was brand-first: the influencer was the brand, which meant that authenticity was cosplay, often carefully managed, not genuinely expressed.

The burnout was spectacular, well-documented, and extremely public. Some creators who had built audiences of millions found themselves unable to convert those audiences into sustainable income. But more than anything, the authenticity gap was growing; the distance between the curated persona and the real person became increasingly untenable.

Gen Z watched all of this happen before their careers had even started and smartly used it to their advantage.

Growing up saturated in online culture doesn’t just mean Gen Z are comfortable online, it means they are extraordinarily good at reading it. They developed what I’d call a cultural literacy about the creator economy that took millennials years, and often public failure, to acquire.

They absorbed the lessons organically:

Aesthetics without substance don’t hold. The perfectly curated feed that millennials built entire brands around became the thing Gen Z actively rejected. Not because they don’t care about visuals (they care just as much, if not more so than millennials) but because they understood, from watching, that an audience can eventually tell the difference between a life being lived and a life being performed. Gen Z defaulted to the version that doesn’t require a set designer and is more relatable to their audience. They understood that when people scroll social media, they don’t want to think ‘I’ll never be able to live that life’ but more so ‘it’s possible for me to achieve that’.

The audience is the asset, not the platform. Platform diversification and owned channels weren’t concepts millennials discovered early, they discovered them after losing a significant portion of their income to algorithm changes they couldn’t control. Gen Z entered the space already understanding this and structured their businesses accordingly: social as discovery, email and owned channels as the relationship.

Being values-clear is non-negotiable. Some millennial influencers learned painfully that appearing to stand for something while actually standing for nothing eventually destroys trust (and rightfully so might I add). Gen Z didn’t need to learn this as it was already built into their expectations of what a creator should be.

Yet despite this abundance of knowledge allowing almost anyone to successfully launch a career on social media, it continues to make the market more valuable rather than just more saturated. The conventional wisdom is that as more people enter the creator economy, it becomes harder to stand out and the market becomes less viable for newcomers. This is wrong, and the Gen Z shift is part of why.

What Gen Z is doing is not flooding the market with more of the same. They are building a fundamentally different kind of creator economy, one built on genuine community, specific expertise, and diversified revenue and that model is significantly more commercially durable than what came before it. Great examples of this are creators such as Mia McGrath, Farron Clark and Sapna Rao (of Sheer Luxe).

And brands are responding to this.

Budget is moving away from mega-influencer campaigns toward sustained partnerships with mid-tier and micro-creators who have strong genuine engagement and audience trust. The creators who are commanding the most valuable brand relationships in 2026 are not the ones with the biggest audiences. They are the ones with the most coherent communities.

That shift benefits everyone building with depth over reach, which doesn’t exclude anyone who isn’t Gen Z, it just confirms that its the how that generation has learned the alternative doesn’t work, and has been building for this renaissance all along.

So, whether you’re a millennial creator recalibrating your strategy or someone just starting out, the Gen Z lesson is not that you need to change who you are. It’s that the rules of what works have already been written, in large part by the public failures and hard-won lessons of the people who built this industry before you.

The niche you think is too small is probably exactly the right size. The opinion you’re scared to commit to is probably the thing your audience most needs you to say. The owned channel you keep putting off building is the infrastructure your business actually needs.

You don’t need to figure any of this out from scratch. The manual exists.

The only question is whether you’re reading it.

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Fifteen years online. More than 3 million followers across platforms. More brand deals than I can count. And I’m still regularly watching people: smart, creative, genuinely talented people, make mistakes on social media that are limiting potential and more importantly, income.

That’s why The Unfiltered Brief exists.

TUB Studios (The Unfiltered Brief was a little too long to write out all the time so I went with the less than professional sounding TUB acronym instead!) is my new creative studio helping brands and individuals nail their online presence through the carefully curated strategy and development. After experiencing every possible stage of social media since having an online platform first existed and experiencing first hand the right (and very wrong) ways of navigating through this space, I’m sharing what I know and quite honestly, silencing all of those so called ‘experts’ with their “this is how you get 100k followers in 3 months” click bait posts. I’M SICK OF THE NOISE!

So it will come as no surprise that this definitely isn’t a page full of tips you’ve already read seventeen times. It’s also not a content calendar or a hook formula or a breakdown of the latest algorithm update. I guess what this is, is an Encyclopedia. From someone (hi 👋 ) who’s been inside this industry long enough to have watched it change completely, more than once. Someone who’s sat in the rooms with the brands, negotiated deals, built (and sometimes lost) an audience, made the mistakes, and quietly started to question whether the way most people are taught to approach social media is actually working for them, or just for the platforms.

I’ll be getting into things like: why going viral is probably the most overrated thing on social media. The most common mistakes I see every single day, and I’ll also explain what 15+ years of partnerships has taught me about working with brands successfully.

Whether you’re a creator trying to grow, a business owner trying to figure out whether any of this is worth your time, or just someone who’s curious about what’s actually happening behind the accounts you follow, this is for you.

It’s the advice I wish someone had told me earlier, and the things I’m still figuring out and learning in real time. All 100% totally unfiltered, of course.

Glad you’re here.

Danielle x

If you’re interested in working together send me a message and let’s arrange a 1:1 Discovery Briefing.

Every Sunday evening I like to look through my calendar and give myself a rough idea of what I’m doing that week. I try to plan ahead for any particularly busy days and just mentally prepare myself for what’s to come. This week is different though - because this week my daughter will celebrate her 2nd birthday.

I’d like to think that I’m quite organised when it comes to birthdays in general, but especially for Mia’s. Granted she’s only had 1 birthday to celebrate so far (I’m obviously not including her actual day of birth as a ‘birthday’ and if you don’t understand why then I doubt you have ever given birth - trust me, it’s not a day you feel like blowing up balloons or going to the zoo.) We were really organised this year with buying her gifts, I’ve got cute decorations for her playroom and we’re going to spend a really fun day out. But whilst all of that excitement builds towards such a huge milestone for our family, I can’t help but feel consumed by thoughts of ‘she’s growing up so fast, I can’t believe she’s going to be 2, but also, why do I feel no further along in myself than when she was first born?’

Like so many new mums, I had an idea that I might ‘lose myself’ slightly in the early phase of motherhood, but I thought I’d regain it by the time she was 1 and definitely by the time she turned 2. And the thing is, I don’t really know where I expected myself to be, mentally, physically or in any other form - but it wasn’t here.

The routine that kept me sane for so many years doesn’t exist anymore yet I’m still managing to stick to this new routine of life for the sake of our household. I’ve gained an exceptional skill of putting myself last in almost any situation, I eat last, I shower last, I do my work at midnight even though I know I might have to get up several times a night for her and then possibly start my day at 5.30am; and the most frustrating part is that I have no idea how to change any of it to suit what I actually need.

Then throw into the mix the career pivot I’ve decided to take on. Building out a new strand of my business on top of being a content creator is exciting but extremely overwhelming, regardless of any other major life changes. Don’t get me wrong, I am the one who has chosen to take on this additional role, a layer that has always been there through working with and consulting for brands, but I’m just choosing to bring it more to the fore front now. I’m so passionate about it, I have a that fire in my belly that I’ve always heard people talk about before, and I know that I can do it really well. Plus I feel like I should be well into the swing of being a working mum now that it shouldn’t even be a huge deal, but the constant state of overwhelm is something that I genuinely believe may always be present in my life now. Is it just something I have to get used to?! (I also have no idea where I found said ‘fire in my belly’ when I barely even have a well balanced meal in there most days, let alone the ability to start a fire.)

I guess for now I have to accept that my brain is going to feel a little fuzzy and conflicted for the most part, but I hope that as time goes by the fog will clear and I’ll get back to feeling like the person I worked so hard to love and respect before I became a mum and was simply just, Danielle.

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This time last week I launched my own Substack. The use of the word ‘launched’ feels very dramatic for such a menial action, but to me it felt really special. Like I was finally taking control after an underlying shift elsewhere had left me feeling a little bored and somewhat dull. And as someone with a creative mind, the words boring and dull can be detrimental to my career and overall day to day potential.

Because I love to completely overwhelm myself, not only did I launch my own personal Substack, I also created my publication The Unfiltered Brief. A hub for all of the knowledge and expertise I’ve gained over the last 15 years working in social media, finally spilling out into articles that can help individuals and brands find their voice and amplify their authenticity in the online world. It feels so scary to be pivoting my content away from only short form as well as sharing my next venture with the world, but it’s been made a lot less scary after experiencing a platform like Substack for a week.

For me, this was never about gaining a bunch of followers, or even making money from my writing (I don’t even think I have paid subscriptions enabled?!) but a space where I can be a little messy, figure it out publicly, all without an intense pressure of having people expect it to be perfectly refined. I am many things, but ‘refined’ is not one of them, not without a lot of practice and effort anyway!

Over the last week I have been immersing myself in this platform, totally surrendering to what comes my way and (attempting to) engage with as many people and posts as possible. I’m still getting to grips with the way things run over here and may have overcommitted slightly by launching 2 Substacks simultaneously, but by throwing myself into the deep end I’m having to swim just a little bit harder, a challenge I’m excited to take on. I wanted to share some of the things I’ve learned and discovered since joining Substack:

• How engaging it is - I can’t remember the last time I felt so much connection from the get go after joining a platform. It can often feel lonely and almost empty when starting a new account, but this felt like walking into a party that I’d been invited to by everyone who was already in the room.

• The wide variety of content - I think this might change as time goes on, I’ve already noticed a slight shift in the topics of articles the more I’ve ‘restacked’ and saved, but to begin with I was reading articles about topics that I had no idea I was even interested in, and I love it!

• My following/subscribing habits - my natural instinct told me to search for my favourite creators from other apps and platforms. And whilst some of their articles do still resonate with me, I’m making a conscious effort to find accounts that are completely new to me so that I can discover an entirely new community of people.

• Slow paced, more intentional - Whilst I know the number of people joining Substack is growing rapidly, most of what I’m reading still feels very intentional. There’s a slower pace here and people aren’t trying to hook you in within the first 3 seconds like they are in a TikTok video, the slower pace is something I’m welcoming wholeheartedly.

• There are more people ‘hard selling’ than I expected - I think this is down to the fact that when I first joined, I read a couple of articles on ‘how to get started on Substack’ which inevitably lead me to be served those ‘turn your Substack into a $100k a year side hustle - buy my download to find out what I did’ type articles. Look, I appreciate the hustle, but respectfully I’m going to try and navigate away from that algorithm as I see enough of it on other platforms (it gives me the online ick and that’s the only way I can descibe it!)

• Imposter syndrome still exists - I think that I had hoped this would be a place where I can be free to write and write and write etc, but my imposter syndrome has been creeping in trying to convince me that no one will care what I have to say which then makes me ghost my drafts for a day or two. I know this is a mindset issue and I’m doing the most to get out of this uncomfortable place and just write without fear of judgement or consequence.

• Is it harbouring an addiction? - I found myself opening the Substack app on my phone first thing in the morning, craving a new read. The upside is that reading articles is much more stimulating for my brain and overall learning, however, feeling almost addicted so quickly after joining could go on to have a negative effect in so many ways. This is the only time I wondered whether I should quit before I get in too deep - the last thing I want is to replace an unhealthy habit of opening one social media app with another.

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So, what conclusions have I come to about how I can enjoy and nurture my own experience on Substack to its fullest potential?

• I’ll set times that I can scroll and I’ll save articles that I might not have time to read in that moment. This will help calm the recurring thoughts of ‘I must do everything now and all at once’ and help me settle into a slower pace of consuming content.

• I need to log future Notes, articles and general ideas that I have. This way, I can block out time in my day to draft a bunch, it will help maintain my focus when I need to and also help me switch off and disconnect when I need a minute.

I’d love to know whether any of the above resonate with your experience on Substack and how you navigated through it.

Thanks for reading,

Danielle x

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So this is Substack - hi?

My brain has been so wired to create short form content that writing longer pieces feels somewhat alien to me now - my English teacher would be horrified to know that, apologies Ms Turner.

Before I get into introducing myself and giving you the elevator pitch on why you should follow/subscribe to my page (I still don’t really understand the difference between subscribing and following on here, but we’ll save that admin for later) I wanted to refer to my first Note that I posted on here less than 24hrs ago. I asked for advice on how to find ‘my people’ on this platform, to which the most common answer was (I’m paraphrasing here) - ‘just be authentically you and your people will find you’. If that’s the ‘formula’ then I think I’ll be just fine - unfortunately, being authentic isn’t always the priority on other platforms, but that’s a conversation for another day. In that same Note just mentioned, I also admitted to feeling both liberated and embarrassed at my lack of followers/subscribers on here in comparison to my other platforms, but I felt free from any form of trolling. To which one response, ironically from a troll, suggested I ‘stay off Substack and work on other projects like finding a husband, cooking him dinner and having his children.’ A comment which I think caveats perfectly into my introduction…

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Born and raised in London, I’m a 37 year old former professional dancer, turned content creator and strategy consultant. I originally trained in classical ballet, yet decided that wasn’t the route for me and pivoted to pursue a career as a backup dancer (there’s a pivoting theme throughout my life). I’m ‘mummy’ to my nearly 2 year old daughter, the role I hold myself to the highest standard. (I also live with my partner and we share the cooking in our household but that’s more for the troll to know because honestly, who else cares?!)

I should also add that I’m an introvert and the idea of introducing myself to even 1 person let alone a bunch of strangers on the internet is one of the most uncomfortable things I could think of doing. I’ve never particularly enjoyed talking about myself, which doesn’t bode well considering my job as a creator is to pretty much show face and talk about myself every day. Sure I enjoy talking about things I like, how I feel, and am surprisingly good at sharing vulnerabilities, but ‘bigging myself up’ has never been my style. To be honest I kind of fell into social media back in 2011 and whilst it wasn’t something I necessarily set out to do, at the time it felt right to step away from my dance career - I thought to myself ‘why not see what I can make of this social media thing?’ Bear in mind this was at a time where the title ‘Influencer’ didn’t exist and the Valencia filter was putting in some serious leg work on Instagram.

Fast forward 15 years and I have over 1.2 million followers across platforms. What started unintentionally definitely crossed over into a strategic business plan at some point but looking back I think that the driver of it all has been authenticity at its core. Authenticity, but sometimes with restriction - which leads me back to why I’m drawn to Substack. My aim on here is to express my feelings and (somewhat random) thoughts without it having anything to do with the aesthetics or pressure of being viewed by a mass audience in the way I’m used to. Of course I’d like to grow this audience - let’s not pretend I’d be happy sharing to 2 subscribers for the rest of time, but one thing I’ve learned about having a large audience is that it doesn’t necessarily translate to value.

Another response to my Note was ‘why don’t you just ask your 1 million Instagram followers to follow you on here?’ but I’ve quickly discovered from reading through comments and posts on Substack that it isn’t necessarily a numbers game. It’s a case of adding value, to the reader who wants to be entertained, enlightened or related to in some way, but also to add value to myself - which I think we all owe to ourselves in whatever we do. I have the big numbers elsewhere, and although it has helped me live a life I’m so grateful for, it doesn’t necessarily equate to success or respect. It does however, give a broader opinion and a level of expertise. All of us have started from zero when it comes to online profiles, but not all of us know what it’s like to have a bunch of followers, all with differing opinions on how you should show up online to suit them. And the expertise is what I plan on sharing through The Unfiltered Brief. I’ve been consulting with brands and businesses over the last few years, and whilst it’s great for getting you invited to the cool events or recognised in the inboxes of CEOs and CMOs - sharing my learnings with individuals and those who are hungry to build from 0 is what ignites a different type of excitement. There’s a post over on The Unfiltered Brief (TUB) explaining exactly my intention with that part of my Substack - so if it’s your thing I’d love to see you there.

If not then I’d like to think that my words/thoughts/feelings and more on this part of my profile is something you’re into, whether that be from a relatable point of view or you’re just curious and enjoy reading about things that are the complete opposite to the life you’re living.

To summarise, thanks for welcoming me onto Substack - so far I’m loving it on this side of the internet and am excited to express myself in a way I haven’t felt able to online for as long as I can remember.

For someone who doesn’t like talking about themselves much that was one hell of a long introductory post.

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