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Blogging Tips to Kickstart Your Career as a Fashion Influencer
Got an impeccable sense of style? Love expressing yourself through the clothes you wear? If you live and breathe fashion, you’d made a great fashion influencer! Being a fashion influencer allows you to experiment with different styles and possibly earn a decent income online. Moreover, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to work with top fashion brands as you gain more followers.
What is a fashion influencer, and how to become one through blogging? More importantly, how can you turn your passion for fashion into a side hustle? Read on to find out!
What is a Fashion Influencer?
A fashion influencer is a personality that creates fashion and style-related content online on platforms with a large following, like through a website or on social media sites like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook.
Influencers, in general, have a knack for “influencing” the opinions of their audiences, which also alters their purchasing behaviour. That’s because their audience trusts them. Fashion brands are always looking for fashion influencers to collab with. By becoming “insta-famous” as a style guru, you could attend exclusive fashion parties, sign up for brand endorsement, create your own products and eventually gain more fans.
Becoming a fashion influencer can be profitable once you’ve gained many followers on your blog and social media. And as your audience grows, your chances of collab opportunities from top brands also increase. The content may vary in lifestyle, fitness, and travel, but it mainly shows an influencer’s unique style and personality to grow their audience and attract brands for collab opportunities.
How Fashion Influencers Earn Money Online?
Fashion influencers earn money through content creation, sponsored content and affiliate marketing. The terms for sponsored content and affiliate marketing will vary between brands and influencers, but usually, the setup is cost-per-post. This means you’ll earn a profit with every blog post you publish featuring the brand you’re collaborating with. Most times, the duration for which the post will be live is stipulated in the agreement.
Besides earning money through branded, original and/or exclusive content, influencers enjoy a bit of fame within their niche industry. Just like traditional celebrities, influencers have hordes of admirers, and they form a tight bond with them. Being famous will open more moneymaking opportunities. The growth of social media added to the many profitable ventures of influencers.
How to Kickstart Your Career as a Fashion Influencer
Define Your Personal Style
Are you into boho fashion or maxi-minimalist? Are your fashion influences come from grunge music, or do you prefer a sleek, contemporary style? Defining your personal style is the first step to becoming a successful style influencer because it enables you to target your core audience. Your style may be your own, but it will inspire others with similar fashion tastes.
It’s tempting to chase the latest fashion, but timeless pieces will get a lot of use as you build a name for yourself in the fashion world. You can experiment with new pieces but invest in key pieces of clothing that will stand the test of time.
Once you’ve defined your personal style, start planning your looks for content creation. Be sure your personal style is consistent with the design aesthetic of whatever platform you use. For example, if you’re into minimalist styles with a love for neutrals, your blog site design should be clean and sleek with a neutral colour scheme.
Take Fashion Shots
After planning your looks, you’re ready to take fashion shots. You don’t have to stage a professional photoshoot for this unless you have the budget for it. This can be done on your own using a good camera + a plain, bright background. Put together an outfit and arrange it in flat lays, for starters. You can take street-style shots with a friend or opt for colour-coded images.
Whatever kind of photos you take of yourself wearing an outfit or presenting pieces on a flat lay arrangement, be sure that there’s one key aspect that ties the look together – like eye-catching accessories or a specific colour.
After taking fashion shots, do bits of editing to enhance the visuals. You can use free photo editing tools like Canva to do this. Curate your best photos and start planning your blog and/or photo upload schedules. You must post new images regularly to engage your followers and gain a wider audience.
Join Fashion Events and Communities
Making the right connection is critical to your success as a style influencer. You must brush up on your networking skills to build meaningful connections and meet like-minded fashionistas. You can score side hustles, collabs, and major products with top brands through networking.
Start by connecting with industry leaders in your niche industry and leaving positive comments on their blog sites or social media. Get influential personalities to get likes and follows. You can also check for their contact details and propose a collab project via email. Gradually, build a community of bloggers, stylists, fashion designers and PR friends.
From there, invites for fashion events will start pouring in. Join these fashion events and make your presence familiar to PR connections and fellow bloggers. Eventually, you’ll start building your popularity in the fashion circuit.
Take your friendship with fellow fashionistas offline. Go out, have fun with your new friends and don’t forget to take lots of tastefully styled pictures for future promotions – with consent, of course. Once your friendship deepens, you can start proposing guest posting opportunities and cross-promotional projects.
Accept Fashion-Related Collaborations
When your name starts ringing a bell in the local fashion scene, you’ll receive event invites and collab offers. Most times, the collab offers a mix of artistic directions. Choose only those that match your followers’ interests.
Before deciding on a collab project, consider how your followers will perceive the partnership. The product or project must match your unique style. Don’t force unrelated products because this will affect your image. Straying from your personal brand will also confuse your core audience. Forced posts stand out like a sore thumb, and followers will quickly question your choices. Eventually, those who do not see the kinds of content they want could unfollow you.
Brand Out for Variety
There’s nothing wrong with branching out to non-fashion posts as long as something links to your signature aesthetic. For example, you can feature makeup, accessories, bags, skincare, skincare tools, and even technology, travel, home decor, and fitness. These topics add value to your brand, and many will enjoy seeing what brands you use, what lifestyle tips you share, or what life advice you may have for specific situations (love advice, motherhood, etc.)
The key here is to find a balance between blending non-fashion posts with fashion-related posts. Do not stray too far away from fashion so you won’t confuse or put off followers.
And there you have it, our top tips to launch your career as a fashion influencer! Is a fashion influencer a smart career choice? If your passion has everything to do with fashion and lifestyle, it makes sense to turn your passion into profits. Apart from doing something you love and making money off it, you inspire entire communities with your sense of style!
It takes commitment to grow an audience. Be patient as you grow your followers and pretty soon, you’ll become a style guru that everyone looks up to.
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