Instagram Influencer Spotlight On: Maria @thedonutfeed

1) Tell us a little about yourself. What are you doing now and where do you come from?

I’m Maria and I own Maria Carras Creative, a creative copywriting and virtual assistance agency. I specialise in helping coaches, educators and creatives thrive online by creating copy that captivates and helping them to manage their wildly successful online businesses.

I’m a mix of cultures! I was born in New York to Greek parents who decided to move back to Greece when I was 11. I went to an international school in Athens and then went off to study Media Arts in London, UK. That’s where I met my geologist (and aspiring author) husband who I convinced to move back to Athens with me where we got married. We now live by the sea in Greece with our two gorgeous little boys, running our company on the weekdays and spending our time on the beach on the weekends.

2) What are your topics of interest? What do you post on Instagram the most?

I have two accounts. My main/personal/business account is @carrascreative where I’ve cultivated a wonderful community of like-minded creative entrepreneurs. But I can’t shake my obsession with donuts so I created @thedonutfeed account where I share pictures of beautifully styled donuts every day. I curate the feed with pics from other donut lovers. I’m very selective about the pictures I choose to share: they must be very high quality and tend to be of the flatlay variety.

3) How did your Instagram name come about?

I liked the idea of my instagram name telling you exactly what it does on the tin. It’s quite literally a feed about donuts so I thought that @thedonutfeed made the most sense!

4) What are some apps you use to edit your photos? Share with us your photo-editing routine!

I don’t edit photos for @thedonutfeed because it’s a curated account. But I do love to use apps for my own personal account @carrascreative. I use the Afterlight app where I adjust for sharpness, brightness and contrast. I then apply the Russ filter to get that faded desaturated look. I then sometimes apply the Clarendon filter in Instagram to really make the image brighter and make the colours pop that little bit more.

I love downloading Instagram apps and have also played with A Colour Story and VSCO but Afterlight is the one that’s stuck!

5) Any Instagrammers whom you really like? Which Instagrammer inspires you the most?

Instagram is my favourite most inspiring social platform. There are so many people I adore following. For donuts and generally bright and happy photos I like to follow: @runnerkimhall, @candyminimal, @studiodiy. For foodie photos, I can’t get enough of @anneauchocolat @izyhossack and @talinegabriel.

6) If there’s one thing your fellow Instagrammers just gotta try now, what’s it gonna be?

Hmmmm, that’s a tough one! I think that the scheduling app Later is an absolute game changer! I think success on Instagram comes with publishing consistently as well as engaging with your followers. Later makes it super easy to create an Instagram strategy and to help you plan out and schedule your content for the month. It takes away the stress of having to come up with new things to publish every day.

I think the second tool would be Iconosquare for tracking stats and engagement.

7) What’s your favorite part about being an influencer?

I just love engaging with people and collaborating with others for mutual success. I love it when someone reaches out to me to say they gained this many followers or this many likes or this many sales because of something I did. It makes it all worth it!

8) What are some of your top tips to brands for running campaigns? How do you maintain authenticity?

Always connect with other brands or influencers that are a natural extension of your own brand or product. And always work with brands that you would use yourself. Always speak in your own voice, otherwise you will be found out and will come across as disingenuous and lose the loyalty of your followers. I think when you do a promoted post you should do everything in your power to make it look like all your non-promoted posts before it. It should blend in in a very natural way.

9) What would your advice be on the importance of quality and original content?

Quality is everything! It says so much about your own brand when you’re very selective about the pictures you post. It shows that you take time to create quality images that meet your high standards. It shows that you’re serious. I feel the same way about curating images. I’m so selective about the images I choose to share @thedonutfeed because I want to maintain an image of professionalism and quality. I get so many requests to share images that simply don’t meet my standards so I have to say ‘no’ quite a lot.

Quality and consistency within your captions is also super important! I believe captions should aim to either educate, amuse or inspire and I always try to stick to one of those three things when writing captions. I think captions truly do make the difference for those people who keep coming back.

I also believe in quality when it comes to engaging with your followers. I think your comments and discussions should always have substance and not just be a generic comment, or even worse, an emoji.

10) What do you like best about partnering with brands?

I love creating strategies and plans and coming up with really creative ideas. It can often be challenging to create a strategy that fits in with your own brand, but that’s where the fun comes in!