Longtime radio host navigating a new world of online influencer
By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on January 14, 2025.
Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman
Former radio host Erin Lucas is now a local content creator who helps promote local businesses, organizations and individuals on social media.LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com
Whoever thinks influencers are just young people on social media doing makeup tutorials or unboxing things, probably have yet to hear from local radio personality turned influencer Erin Lucas.
After graduating from broadcasting school in Saskatoon in 2001 and a short stint in her home province of Saskatchewan, Lucas came to Lethbridge to work in radio. She spent six years at The River 107.7 before getting fired.
But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“People in radio say you’ve never made it until you get fired.,” says Lucas. “So, I guess I made it.”
She “made it” not just once but twice, which resulted in a pivotal moment for her career. After nearly 15 years as a morning host on CJOC radio, Lucas found herself being fired once again. at Christmas time in 2023. She found herself jobless with twin toddlers and no idea what to do next.
Luckily for her, a former colleague learned about her new-found freedom and reached out to her with an offer that helped her make the career leap that led to her new role within the community. But it was something entirely new that would push Lucas out of her shell and into the world of online influencers.
“I felt like maybe this is the right career step for me,” she says. “Maybe this is something that I should be doing. So, I moved into what I’m doing now, which is social media influencer marketing.”
That’s the title the sales representative of the company that she works for has given her, but she still prefers the term content creator (“It sounds more grown-up.”)
“We have our niche audience, so we put out content for them, but we also work with clients, with companies and businesses and individuals and we do ads for them.”
Instead of doing things other influencers do, like a makeup tutorial, they focus more on quick video ads for a client which will hopefully come across in people’s social media feed as just her naturally talking to someone in the community.
“Here in Lethbridge, I have the advantage of knowing the community, knowing the people that live here,” says Lucas.”In terms of age, I think the younger generation creates the trends, but don’t use them in the same way as I do,” says Lucas.
 She has seen young influencers start a trend but not with a specific goal in mind. If they get money out of it, great. If they get fame out of it, great. And if they don’t, they just don’t and they move on to the next trend and so forth.
“But I use the trend to my advantage,” she says. “In a better way for financial gain, whereas they use a trend like a flash in the pan. They just throw something on the Internet and it’s like spaghetti, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.”
Working in a radio booth day in and day out for more than 15 years kept her in the dark about her surroundings, to the point that after decades of living in Lethbridge, she’d never visited the Galt Museum and Archives until recently. Now she feels like she has the opportunity to discover the hidden gems of the city she calls home.
But being out of the radio booth and “into the outside world” came with a small, yet big, challenge for Lucas.
“Something I had to get used to was showing my face in my videos,” she says. “My boss kept saying ‘Erin we need to see your face, it can’t be just your voice, this is not radio.’ So I had to come out of my shell and start putting my face on the screen.”
Being able to create local content for various local businesses has helped her grow her following organically. Even though she had followers from her time in radio who remained loyal to her, some have drifted away, making room for new ones. She hopes the numbers continue to increase, as it would eventually influence the amount of money she could potentially earn.
“I have a YouTube now and I have over 200 subscribers,” she says. “I have no idea if that’s good or bad, but I didn’t have that before, so I’m very happy with that.”
Lucas says the dream is to increase her following and go viral enough to make a living out of social media. The dream, of course, is to go viral enough that she has a huge following and the money is pouring in.
“You do get internal money from Facebook and YouTube, but not with 200 subscribers,” she says with a giggle.
22-21
I’ll partially blame my old age for not understanding the influencer/content creator as a job but the Kardashians have made a good living from being famous without doing anything productive.