Last Updated on May 14, 2021
Stephanie Conroy is a mother of four and the creator of the Steph’s Life, a blog that follows the daily life of what she describes as a typical American family, just a little bigger. Stephanie has partnered with her children to create product reviews and three out of the four have their own YouTube channels. Stephanie and her family love good food, new friends, adventures and animals. Additionally, Stephanie is an Intellifluence top arts and crafts influencer. She says there is so much love in her home, and that keeps her going.
On your blog, you describe your life as slightly off center, way off balance. Can tell us about how you got started as a blogger and describe your approach?
I started I think it was whenever I was trying to get the word out about- I have two children with autism. My son Sam kind of wanted to explain what it was like to have a melt down, he’d had one in the middle of eating in a Mexican food restaurant. So we filmed after the melt down he was trying to talk and he was trying to explain to me what was happening and what was going on in his mind. So we started a page called Sam’s voice, which we don’t do anymore because he kind of feels like he outgrew it, but then I started trying to get people to have more knowledge about meltdowns and things like that. And I started a blog and started to talk about – there were resources in it for people who were in my area. And then I just think that from there, since he’s doing a lot better than he was at that time, and since we’ve grown we’ve just hit different areas but that’s where we started with Autism, and awareness and a meltdown and he doesn’t have those anymore which is awesome.
When did you get started using influencer marketing?
I don’t know how that happened. I got contacted by someone {and} they asked me if I could help them sell blue apron I think it was, the meal kit. And they said if I sold these blue apron meal kits that I would get a certain percentage of the sale and I thought that doesn’t sound right.
I didn’t know who they were so I just said “okay, sure. whatever” and I signed a contract for it. And I thought forever that it was going to be some kind of scam but I had no idea that people did this and it was like two years ago. So then I started getting more offers and things like that but until then I didn’t even know that this was a thing, you know. I had no idea but it was really cool.
I noticed on your Pinterest that you have a lot of DIY pins for arts and crafts. So have you always been interested in crafting or has that kind of been more something now because you have kids and it’s something they like to do?
We started making – years ago we started making soap and candles and then we sold them. And then we kind of quit doing that because, you know, it’s a lot of work so that’s something we do for fun. We’ll occasionally – like if Christmas is coming up I will make soap or candles for people and things like that. But we started doing- we just started painting and we have made a lot of different things with crafts. We started baking and making rainbow cakes and that, which are in the blog, so we tried to incorporate that in the social media as well.
Arts and crafts can be a variety of different things from baking cakes and cookies to pottery and drawing. So what’s your favorite type of arts and craft?
I love baking and this time of the year is the best. We have – over here we have a pumpkin that I’m going to carve and in the kitchen we have a pumpkin that we’re going to bake so there so many different things you can do. But there’s so many scents and so many color and things that go with this time of the year that, you know, it’s really exciting. You know, you can come up with all different kinds of ideas from just a pumpkin. It’s pretty amazing.
What has been your favorite brand partnership to-date?
I’ve had – I really liked the blue apron one because it was my first one and because it opened my eyes to this is actually a thing people do. Yeah that is definitely my favorite.
Have you had any weird influencer requests?
I’ve gotten some really odd ones. I have gotten a lot – I’ve gotten people that ask me to do [an] ad for sex toys and I’m like no people I don’t want to do that. But yes they send me requests, no that’s not – you know I’m pretty family oriented.
What is your favorite social platform to use? Do you prefer longform posts on Facebook, tweets or something more visual-centric such as Instagram?
I love twitter because you can say whatever you want to say and I’m one of the dumb people. I didn’t realize that most people on Twitter don’t use their real name. So I come out here and I have my real name and I just started saying off the wall stuff. And then I’d never really thought about it but then I started noticing, you know, these people not one of them use their real name. So it’s a lot of fun you can say whatever you think of off the top of your head and people respond to it.
It’s kind of crazy. I had – within my first month on Twitter I had two thousand followers and I don’t know how that happened. At the time I was going through a divorce and I was saying crazy things. They were all humorous but it was things that you could relate to about becoming divorced. And that was the first real big flow of followers, was the first month.
Where do you see influencer marketing in five years?
What I see a lot – there’s some negative things that I see. The negative things that I see are the really young people, mostly on Instagram it’s really young people, and they’ll take jobs for five dollars and I think that it drives down, you know, I’ve noticed people offer me you know they’ll say “will you do a shout-out for me” and they want to pay five dollars or something like that. And a few years back, just two or three years back, people were offering to pay a lot more. And there’s a lot of that going on where people – it has completely driven down the cost or the amount of money that we profit. But I’ve seen some positive things too. I mean you have a huge number of people that you can reach and if you can find a way to do it in a positive way or in a positive light then there’s that too. So I’m not sure exactly where it’s going but it seems pretty exciting, it’s just constantly changing. It seems like it’s constantly changing and what I wonder is all of these young people who have, you know, like they have a hundred thousand followers or whatever they’re so young.
Have you used influencer marketing to promotes your own products?
I’ve tried to sell some things online and I used to make a lot of jewelry too. That was one of my phase, I go through these phases and I did do that. I did sell some things online and I’ll probably go back to using the influencer market or the platform in different ways to sell things. If you go back probably a couple of years in the blog I probably was selling things on there. I know I’ve done it on Twitter, you know, promoted something and I’ll probably do it again, yes. I think it’s a good platform to have for that kind of thing.
Note: Intellifluence Influencer Spotlight interviews are edited for time and clarity.
Andrew is the Head of Client Services for Intellifluence and has a background in communications. He is committed to helping brands get the most out of their campaigns and is the co-host of the Influencer Spotlight series.
