I once ate dinner with Edd Kimber, the first winner of The Great British Bake Off.
It was a PR event for the relaunch of a raki, the Turkish aniseed spirit, and between courses Edd told me he had 50,000 followers on Twitter.
I was too embarrassed to tell him I had less than 200.
Imagine, then, how I feel speaking to Florence Stanton, who in November passed the 100,000-follower mark on her hugely successful Instagram account Tasting Thyme.
Me, who at the last count on my – much less successful – Instagram page had 29 followers.
But then, 100,000 is a lot in anyone’s book. The number puts you into the big leagues of Instagram, suddenly on the radar of corporate marketing teams looking for influencers to boost their products.
Granted, it’s not Lewis Capaldi numbers – the singer has nearly six-million followers.
It’s not even Edd Kimber levels. I checked; he’s got 407,000 on Instagram these days. (Good going, Edd.)
But it’s a good chunk, especially when you consider that Florence built it up from her home in Aberdeen in not much more than a year.
A crazy time for Tasting Thyme
The 26-year-old only started posting pics of her baking during lockdown. Slowly at first, she built up a small yet loyal audience before watching the numbers explode exponentially over the past few months.
It has, she says, been a crazy time, with the 100,000 landmark a reward for all the hard work she’s put into Instagram.
And it has been hard work. Every week, Florence posts multiple recipes for cakes and brownies – her stock in trade. Each one takes hours to perfect.
In between, she works as a copy writer for Shell in Aberdeen.
Meanwhile, her newly-acquired Instagram status has won her branding work with confectioner Tony’s Chocolonely and kitchenware giant Le Creuset.
And she somehow found time to fit in a marathon – she did London 2022 in October.
It is a work ethic that would floor most people.
And yet, when I ask Florence what happened when she finally hit the 100,000 follower mark, her answer is a surprise.
For one thing, she didn’t even know she’d crossed the line. Her boyfriend told her when they woke up that morning.
He was excited. This was the validation she been working towards.
But how did she feel, I ask?
There is a pause.
“You know, it’s funny, because it feels almost like an arbitrary thing. It’s sort of almost superficial.”
She quickly adds that, yes, the number did bring validation. It was proof she was doing something right.
“But it was never a specific goal,” she says. “I was working to build a community on social media and the numbers came with it.”
‘A lot of people are purely there to look at a brownie and move on’
Talking to Florence, it is clear she is not your typical Instagram personality. Almost an accidental influencer, she started a blog that blew up and became bigger than she could have imagined.
She talks about work/life balances and eating disorders. The marathon she ran was on behalf of her older sister, who has MS.
She talks openly about the pressure of maintaining a social media presence and the constant content creation it demands.
Sometimes she even sounds as if she would gladly hand back some of those 100,000 followers she’s amassed.
Hitting that number, she believes, has diluted her initial goal of forming a community she could talk to.
“It’s definitely been harder to think of as community as it’s grown,” Florence says. “In the beginning, you feel quite one-on-one and personable with people. As you grow, a lot of people are purely there to look at a brownie and move on.”
She agrees that Instagram can sometimes be more of a megaphone than a conversation.
“Instagram and social media is often a place where I’m speaking to the masses, and I have no idea what I’m hearing back,” she explains. “To me it’s really important to actually hear what people are saying and to reply to every comment and every message and work with people if they’re struggling.”
To that end, Florence has set herself another goal. In the new year, she will set up something she is calling “virtual bake clubs”.
How these clubs will work has yet to be decided, but Florence says they will allow people to “share and to feel” and offer a route into baking that is “really friendly and without barriers”.
After all, that’s how it started with her.
‘She kind of let us run wild’
Florence’s baking teacher was her mother.
Brought up in Wimbledon, South London, Florence and her three sisters would run amok, enjoying the chaos of the kitchen.
“It was just a fun thing to do,” she says now. “[My mum] was never strict about it, she kind of let us run wild. It was whatever activity could keep people occupied for more than five minutes.
But if that was where her love affair with baking started, the relationship was cemented when she moved to Aberdeen three years ago and started up the Instagram page.
“Honestly, it’s been huge to be here,” she says. She also acknowledges the role that Tasting Thyme has played in helping her settle into a new city.
“I have a whole group of friends now as a result of this funny Instagram page,” she continues. “Making friends in any city is pretty hard. And that played a huge role.”
A permanent reminder of Tasting Thyme
The question for her now is what to do next with this “funny Instagram page” that has had such an impact on her life.
It’s a measure of Florence that she is clear-eyed enough to know that she may have to stop doing it one day, if her life changes.
In one sense, however, the Instagram account will always be with her. Earlier this year she had its name tattooed on to her arm.
“I thought it would be funny,” she says, laughing.
“No, it was just a reminder of all the hard work that’s gone into something that actually now means quite a lot to me,” she adds.
“And if I ever do come to the point of dropping it, I know that I gave it a really good run, it was really good fun. No hard feelings.”
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