How to succeed as a fashion influencer
As a PR agency we work closely with influencers on the daily. From mums to celebs, fashion to food, there’s a niche for all. We’ve picked up a few tips along our collective 25+ yrs experience on how to succeed in this industry as an influencer.
- Find your niche
Finding your niche is key in an industry as saturated as fashion, it allows you to follow what you are truly passionate about and reach a target audience more clearly. So, what are your passions and interests? It is street style, lots of colour or simple and polished? Narrow it down and allow that to be your voice.
- Engagement,
The good old algorithm…. ever-changing but ever important. Ensure to check your insights to see when your audience is most active and engaging, as this will differ for everyone. Common times are often weekdays during 10am-1pm when people are on their work breaks, or 7pm-9pm when they are unwinding, but feel free to experiment to see what type of content resonates well at what times.
- Contra vs paid collabs
As the social media industry continues to boom, it’s important to understand when to do contra campaigns and when to request payment. In all instances you should be passionate about the product as authenticity in what you are promoting is key in 2022. Its then up to you to weigh up the product value vs. your excitement to wear/promote it. I mean, if someone were offering me the new Prada bag for a contra deal, I would probably just take it! Keep in mind you can negotiate payment up/down if you really love the product. Everyone has their own definition, but once you have over 50k followers you are often classed as a mid-range influencer and able to start charging for posts – pending your engagement rates are above 1-2%.
- Know your worth
Knowing your worth can covers many facets, including deciding how much to charge based off your audience and engagement. Factors in the market include your follower count, audience engagement, ROI, ratio of sponsored to non-sponsored posts.
- In general, your follower count isn’t always the most crucial factor. You can have 2,000 or 1 million and still have the same impression on your audience.
- Audience engagement is the percentage of followers who engage with your posts and is the most key factor in assessing your market value. It also tells you how trusted you are within your social media audience and who sees your content.
- A successful influencer will keep track on their ROI when promoting products, so they can assess the success of your content and use this to drive further campaign deals.
- Many people may think that having a lot of sponsored content is good as it shows you are reputable, but in fact it does the opposite. Having balance allows the sponsored post to be more powerful and authentic and can therefore create better engagement with your audience. A rule of thumb is no more than one paid post every 4 days.
- High quality content
Creating high quality content is arguably the most important step to flourish in the fashion industry. Utilise good lighting, natural or no filters, fun or simple backgrounds, get creative and use the right captions and hashtags. And of course, reels. Fashion is all about expression, one of the most key avenues you can express who you truly are to the world so you should be taking advantage of that. As visual platform brands often want to work with influencers who can save them money on advertising shoots, instead able to repurpose the content for their own channels.
- Don’t take yourself too seriously!
Fashion is fun! So go all in and don’t worry about what others think, know your worth and where you belong, and you will succeed.
By Grace Drummond – PR & Influencer Coordinator at InsideOut PR and #AsSeenOn
