In Ask an Influencer, Business of Home explores the creator economy. This week, we spoke with Lexi Poer, the content creator behind Strolling in the Suburbs.
When Lexi Poer left her corporate marketing job in Atlanta and moved outside of the city to start a family, her daily life changed dramatically. She began posting on social media in 2016—a way to pass the time, but also a crucial source of connection.
“Suddenly we were living in the suburbs, driving the minivan, all the cliches,” says Poer. “When I decided to stay at home with our oldest, finding this online community was my creative outlet. Sharing that journey resonated with a lot of women, and that was where my initial growth [online] came from.”
Over time, Poer’s content came to encapsulate her entire life experience: her travels; her relationships with her mother, husband and children; and before long, their home. Growing up, she had watched her mom carry out a number of renovations, and had inherited her love of interior design. When her own family purchased a home eight years ago, she knew not only that she wanted to embark on a similar project, but that she wanted her mom to be part of the household as well—prompting a redesign process that’s unfolded over the last two years.
“In early childhood I’d always imagined it—[I was like] ‘Mom, I want to live on a piece of land and have three houses: one for me, one for you and one for my best friend,” says Poer. “As we got older, my mom had a house that was probably only 20 minutes away from us, but even that was enough of an inconvenience where we were like, ‘Why are we doing this?’ My husband and her get along so well. She’s amazing with our kids. How can we make a better plan for the future?”
In the period that followed, the experience shaped Poer’s online presence, which now centers on design and daily life for multigenerational living. Even more than her city-to-suburb transition, that unique focus has kept her audience engaged and growing, now numbering 48,500 followers on TikTok and 108,000 on Instagram.
Ahead, Poer shares the value of finding a niche, technical tips for reaching your audience, and how to break through the noise to establish relationships with brands.
Finding a niche that resonates
The decision to include a space for her mother in the new home involved no shortage of logistics and design decisions—including consulting an architect to land on a concept that would offer independence even as she became part of the daily family unit. It was a complicated process at times, but, as Poer would soon learn, not as rare as she had thought.
“With my mom being Jamaican, it’s way more common in other cultures to live in a multigenerational home unit,” she says. “Once we figured out, ‘How can we actually do this?’— we started sharing that, and there was a huge reciprocation of that concept. [People were] asking all the questions that come with it, like, ‘We have three generations under one roof, but how do we make it look like you’ve made it look?’”
With additional research, Poer came to realize she had hit upon a trend in the U.S.: A growing number of families were embracing multigenerational households as a response to a tight housing market, high costs of living, and the desire to spend more time with loved ones. Recognizing that the topic was connecting with viewers, she tapped into her marketing background to place the messaging at the forefront of her design content through hashtags and captions on posts, voice-overs on videos, and descriptive text in the bio of her accounts.
“There are so many creators who are sharing design and home. How can we be slightly different? What can we do that makes us stick out from that?” says Poer. “Keeping that element very visible is my biggest strategy as far as making sure it’s clear what we’re trying to showcase.”
Technical tips
One of the social media strategies that has been the most helpful to Poer’s growth is to remain consistent and visible—which means posting frequently and making sure she puts herself in front of the camera. In order to keep up with this fast pace of posting, she has found it helpful to have the right tools and processes in place, especially to ensure that the quality of her content doesn’t slip.
When it comes to filming and photography, she keeps it simple. In most cases, her iPhone will suffice, though she also recommends the Osmo Mini for capturing video content that’s a bit more professional. “It’s a handheld, tiny vlog-style camera that is easy to use. It keeps the image stable, and it’s really high-quality,” she says. As for editing, she taps into a variety of fonts and brand assets created with the help of a graphic designer, and she customizes her content with editing apps like Videoleap and CapCut.
She has also used online tools to help build the brand partnerships aspect of her business—in particular, third-party platforms designed to help connect brands with creators based on subject matter, budget and audience demographics.
“That is a benefit that has developed over the last several years of being members of these platforms that have the software to funnel down the creator pool to exactly what brands are looking for, whether that’s a family with kids in the Atlanta area or whatever demographics the brand’s trying to reach in a campaign,” says Poer.
Finding potential partnerships in the right places
Though Poer now works with management, she still does some pitching herself—though she’s not swimming in the same pool as creators on third-party applications. Instead, she’s taking a page out of her marketing book and tapping another social media site: LinkedIn.
“That’s something from my corporate world that I use a lot and that I don’t think most creators are using to their advantage,” she says. “I’ve been able to connect with [businesses] and get the right contacts, which is usually the biggest hurdle with a lot of brands that I’ve been interested in partnering with.”
Oftentimes, Poer narrows her search for a specific contact at a large company by scanning for relevant social-media-related terms on their profile: head of brand partnerships, for example, or creator manager. “Usually if a brand is going to have a budget to work with creators, they will have a specific person who’s managing that process,” she says. “If I struggle to find someone with a title that fits, typically that means they haven’t quite budgeted or put a plan in place to work with creators just yet.”
If she does find a contact, Poer plans her next steps carefully. She’ll send a message introducing herself and her family (“because for us, that’s a big part of it”), sharing her background, her brand, how her journey started and where it is today. To top it all off, she includes some of her social media analytics, and is clear about the type of partnership and compensation she’s looking for.
“The more you can remove the back-and-forth, the better—especially for people who are likely very busy in their roles,” says Poer. “I’ve had several brand partnership managers reply, ‘Wow, I’ve never been reached out to on LinkedIn from a creator—kudos.’ I think that shows, ‘I’m willing to put my skin in the game, and I’m willing to show up,’ which is a big thing in our industry. Not everyone is always willing to follow through with what they’re claiming they can provide, so that level of professionalism and reliability actually gets to them, whereas sometimes DMs get lost in the pool.”
