How to Become a Fashion Influencer: 6 Crucial Tips
Over the last decade, the fashion, modeling, and advertising worlds underwent a huge shift. For decades, fashion houses and other brands worked with advertising studios to make TV and print ads. Almost every professional fashion model worked with agencies that helped them get commercial, runway, and editorial gigs.
As social media became part of everyday life, fashion blogging and influencing transformed the modeling industry. Learning how to become a fashion influencer gives models unprecedented control over their work. Success in social media influencing can lead to new career opportunities, massive wealth, and fame.
Becoming a fashion influencer on a blog or social media is a dream job. If you want to get paid for your style obsession, take a look at these must-know insider tips.
1. Blaze a Unique Trail as an Influencer
Table of Contents
Fashion, modeling, and advertising are all creative industries. You have to be one-of-a-kind to make a splash in those worlds. Since influencing is a career path that dabbles in all of those areas, it’s natural that it takes a lot of imagination to succeed.
The average fashion blog or wannabe influencer Instagram account isn’t unique. That’s why most people don’t have success as fashion influencers.
One of the first steps to becoming an influencer is to pick a unique niche for yourself. Nobody needs another boring general fashion blog, so put your own stamp on everything you do. Doing so helps you stand out from the competition and find sponsors that work well with your style.
2. Use Quality Gear for a Professional Look
No brand wants low-quality photos and fuzzy audio representing their products or services. Major brands that make influencers rich don’t tolerate that content at all. You won’t get far if you don’t have professional equipment like proper lighting, an HD camera, a tripod, and a professional workplace.
The more professional your setup looks, the higher the chances are of a luxury brand partnership.
That’s also the start to getting long-term work as an influencer. You might get away with lower-quality pictures for one ad for a brand new label nobody’s ever heard of. The likelihood that you’ll land a full ad campaign without professional equipment is much lower.
3. Learn Some Photography and Videography Tricks
Many influencers take their own pictures and videos, and very few start by hiring a photographer. If you go big-time, you may want to assemble a team to help you get your look together. Whether you do that or not, knowing some basic photography and videography tricks is a must.
It’s not rocket science: The better a picture or video looks, the more people will pay attention. If you can’t afford fancy equipment yet, learning foolproof framing techniques and how to adjust your camera’s settings can help compensate for lower media quality.
If you have time and money to take some classes from a local art center or school, what you’ll learn can take you a long way in influencing. Those with the discipline and patience to direct their studies should scour the web for free courses and advice.
4. Grow a Loyal Army of Followers
Brands don’t pay people to talk about their products and services to their 200 friends and relatives. To become a professional influencer, many brands require tens of thousands of followers.
If that seems like a serious barrier to learning how to become a TikTok influencer, you’re not wrong. Trying to go viral or doing something else major to gain that many followers isn’t easy. Once you have a follower base, you have to retain viewership.
One of the trickiest things after growing a follower base is hanging on to them. Given the massive scale of the task, you might not be surprised to learn there are some shortcuts to get TikTok followers.
There are similar steps to how to become an Instagram influencer or a fashion influencer on Twitter or YouTube. The kind of content you create determines which social media site is best for you. You can’t succeed on TikTok with still photos, and you can’t go viral for life hacks on Instagram and expect as much success as you would on TikTok.
If you pick the right social media site, getting loyal followers who can make you a successful influencer may happen like it’s meant to be.
5. Behave Like Someone You’d Trust
In some ways, influencing is a game of smoke and mirrors like any other type of advertising. What’s ironic is that it also depends on making strong, trusting bonds with your followers. Getting brands to trust you is another must for making money as an influencer.
Doing offensive, crude, and foolish things erodes those trust relationships and ruins your shot at fashion influencing. Make sure all of your public behavior and online presences reflect the character of a person you’d trust. If you wouldn’t want to buy a product recommended by someone from you, why would anyone else?
6. Advertise in Collaborations and by Yourself
Learning to be a fashion influencer is all about learning marketing tricks and growing as an advertiser. You need to learn to market yourself as much as you need to learn how to market others’ products.
One way to market yourself and expand your fanbase is by collaborating with other influencers. Working with big names in the industry promotes your brand as well as theirs. It shows brands and followers that you’re trustworthy and skilled.
You should also advertise on your own, but that doesn’t mean you need to do a traditional commercial. You could do a guest post or video for another fashion blogger or partner with an up-and-coming brand to make both of your names relevant.
How to Become a Fashion Influencer and Other Paths to Female Success
These insider tips gave you the basics of how to become a fashion influencer. There are male influencers, but women rule the fashion world. If you’re reading this, chances are high that you’re a woman striving for success.
If you want more career advice and fashion tips geared towards girls like you, this site is a great resource. Click on another article to dig into more crucial know-how.
