The COVID-19 Pandemic as taken an effect on many people, businesses, and overall life. While consumers remain online and indulging in more social media than ever, audiences have turned to influencers for comfort and positivity. Well-known digital creator and influencer Macy Mariano (@wanderwithmacy) from Miami, FL is pretty open when it comes to talking about how the pandemic has changed her form of business and personal brand.
Overall, the pandemic has affected her in different ways. Financially, she has started to see things slow down with her ongoing partnerships. Even some existing partnerships are on pause until later in the year due to serious marketing budget constraints. Her usual rates for partnerships have also lowered to accommodate more brands. She states she is doing much more brand outreach than ever before. Mentally, Macy does miss life. She explains, “To be honest, I would be home mostly anyways because I am a huge homebody! Though, I do miss the life around me.” She realizes that now life is on a pause, it’s kind of makes her surroundings feel empty, quiet, and nostalgic. During this uncertain time, Macy’s workdays have been quite the same. She does emails in the morning at home, makes lunch, order groceries, tries to do content outdoors when she can, makes dinner, wines-out, and watches Disney +. This routine has been her experience every day for the past four months.
These uncertain times are also mentally straining for many people. What helps Macy get through the day is trying not to watch the news too much. She does watch for maybe an hour or so just to be in the know, but after that Macy changes the channel. The news can be stressing. Macy tries to keep busy with cleaning, cooking, exercising, and creating. Macy has been a big help to the influencer community, as she released a brand list for aspiring influencers to purchase to help further partnerships, which can be found on her website. From a few months back, when the “stay at home” order was in effect, she moved into a new apartment at the beginning of March, which seems was to have been on the border of when all this happened. She has been focusing on home improvement and décor as she emphasizes, “It’s been keeping me really busy with planning, styling, and the overall look of my apartment. I made an Instagram page of my décor called @macysnook since I received such great feedback on it.” Through it all, she was able to collaborate with many home brands to help her with interior design. Let’s not forget about the new viral app, Tiktok. Macy has been seen active on Tiktok. It’s actually allowed her to expose more of her known goofy side as we can all see. Therefore, Macy been trying to figure out the app as well during this time.
The topic that has changed the most: content. We used to see Macy only outdoors in her favorite areas around Miami. However, now as seen on her Instagram, she has been doing a lot more of indoor mirror selfies and images in order to get her content going. From her stories, she has been exploring with a mask outside to take a quick shot. Being home for Macy has tested her and her creativeness to come up with new ideas and think outside the box. All in all, seems like it could be a good thing for her. People are definitely being more active online. Macy explains she feels like even brands and stores are being more active as well with new launches as online shopping is now more of a necessity. We all know people are looking up to influencers for positivity and inspiration. With not much to do inside, many are bored as well so Tiktok has for sure blown up as it gives creators something to do and get better at. It gives people a chance to grow on another platform. As things start to ease up in different states and a handful of countries, we have not seen Macy travel for the most part. She did, according to some sources, that she had some travel collaborations lined up for summer, so that of course has been put on hold. The best thing to do in this new way of life is to try to stay busy in whatever you choose to do. Macy picks up a new hobby, or even an old one. For many, it’s also a good time to re-start any projects that have been put on the back burner.
Get to know Macy more, follow her platforms:
IG: @wanderwithmacy
Home IG: @macysnook
Tiktok: @thisismacymariano
www.wanderwithmacy.com