Lauren Trzaska poses by the iconic Chessie’s train car inside the Ice House Mall in downtown Barrington.
Influencers have been around forever, displaying their unique take on personal style, approach, conquests, and attitudes for others to observe. Platforms for influencers started 73,000 years ago with rocky inner cave walls. Fast forward to modern times, and platforms were still limited to in-person audiences, television, print media, and movies—all which have controlled and somewhat finite distribution channels. And then came the internet and social media.
The first social media to reach a million monthly active users was MySpace, in 2004. By September 2016 with the launch of TikTok, a short-form video sharing app, its audience gathered half a billion users by 2018. Today, the app has 800 million followers. Facebook has 1.82 billion daily active users, and Instagram, one billion. In virtually limitless social cyberspace, how does one person make an impression? We found a local influencer to help answer that question.
Lauren Decraene Trzaska’s family moved to Barrington when she was 2. A Barrington High School alumna, Lauren has lived here except for her four years at Indiana University and five years in Chicago for work. Today, she combines her career experience, a love of fashion, and well-honed marketing smarts to build her social media influence (reaching 16,000 followers) and to help others who want to grow their brand and presence online. We caught up with Lauren before the holidays to learn more.
Read the Q&A here.