Meet Kiana Zhou | Festival lifestyle influencer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kiana Zhou and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kiana, what is the most important factor behind your success?
Being yourself- being genuine has always been a big part of who I am in real life as well as on social platforms. People who have followed me have become my friends, some who are now my best friends, and some who I haven’t met yet in real life but I’m hoping to meet soon. I think people like that I’m real and relatable.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
i would say this would be more about my brand and not my career as I have a career outside of being a social media influencer, but this all kinda started back in 2017 when I had applied to do a Instagram takeover on Ravewonderland’s Instagram stories. I was one of the first people who they had picked to do a takeover. I wanted to put myself out there and step out of my comfort zone and I was so proud of myself for doing it, and it kinda jump started my Instagram following. I then got asked to do a photoshoot with iheartraves and it just kinda took off from there. Looking back I’m very grateful for the opportunities that were given to me, but something I learned is that sometimes you just have to stop and make sure that you are doing is genuine. At times I’ve felt like I couldn’t say/do things on my platform because I was afraid of what people would think, but now I’ve realized that it’s ok to take a break from posting, and it’s ok to be vulnerable and real with your followers. I’ve gotten over that phase and now I just post what I want, when I want and not worry about the numbers, the algorithms, the trends and I’m glad to have my platform where I can speak freely about social injustice issues and things that are on my mind and share them with my followers to make them aware of these social issues. If I can teach one person something about how AAPI hate is affecting our lives then Ive done my job.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
This is a loaded question because I live in Las Vegas so there’s so much to do here, especially since most of my friends are into EDM and the festival scene as well. Most of my friends know that I would definitely take them out to check out one of the nightclubs in town, but other then that we have so many amazing restaurants here that we could check out. There’s always something to do in Las Vegas and there’s so many things to do but I’ll try to list a few that are musts – Bellagio Fountains, the gardens inside bellagio, area 15, the high roller at the linq, secret pizza at Cosmo, downtown Las Vegas. Basically you can just wonder around Las Vegas strip/downtown and there’s so many unique things to do/ see and some of them of free too!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’m so grateful for the brands I’ve worked with in the festival fashion space- iheartraves, rolita couture, ravewonderland. They’ve given me opportunities to come out of my shell and have helped me build a place in the community where I could express myself and make friends along the way. Also to my boyfriend who have been there for me along this whole journey – he’s the one that introduced me to the festival scene back in 2015 and been supporting me through all of this since.

Instagram: Www.Instagram.com/kianas.gram