From blogger to Singapore's top influencer: Naomi Neo celebrates 1m Instagram followers after 14 years

Fourteen years ago, Naomi Neo started out as a humble blogger. 

And just a few days ago, the local content creator hit 1 million followers on Instagram. 

Naomi ecstatically shared the news in an emotional Instagram post on July 3.

"In today's world, 1 million may not mean much — where a single viral moment can make anyone famous overnight," she wrote. 

"But to someone like me, who's been here for 14 years and started with 10,000 on May 27, 2012… who's shared, overshared, held back, grown up, broken down and rebuilt publicly — this number means everything."

The 29-year-old said that the achievement is "not just a milestone", but "a timeline of phases, faces, mistakes, growth and everything in between". 

"From a girl with a big voice who wrote as a nobody online, to a mom raising two children while building brands, to the woman I'm still becoming.

"Whether you've followed me since my thin-eyebrows era (please never bring this trend back) or just joined — thank you," she wrote. 

Naomi also urged others like her to not give up. 

"To every aspiring creator, dreamer, or just anyone figuring it out: May you be brave enough to begin, find the space to grow and the strength to start over again - as many times as it takes," she wrote. 

Naomi started blogging in 2009, writing about fashion, beauty and more personal thoughts on her blog. Her last post there was on May 22, 2017. 

She uploaded her first YouTube video on Sept 15, 2012, and has around 49,000 subscribers on the platform. 

On TikTok, she has about 1.9 million followers and posted her first video on Jan 8, 2020. 

Amongst her fellow local influencers, Naomi has one of the highest following counts on Instagram. 

Jianhao Tan, who entered the industry around the same time as Naomi, has around 738,000 followers on Instagram, while Xiaxue, also one of Singapore's popular bloggers, has about 572,000 followers on the platform. 

In December last year, Naomi emerged as Singapore's top influencer once again, according to a report by media intelligence and data analytics firm Meltwater. 

At that point, Naomi had around 930,000 followers on Instagram and around 450,000 on YouTube.

melissateo@asiaone.com

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