Influencer marketing is the best way for fashion brands to get new customers, increase followers and gain exposure.

The fashion industry is quite competitive and requires influencers who have some expertise in a fashion niche in order to excel.

Influencers who have developed trust with their audience can easily persuade them to take up a fashion trend.

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How To Position Yourself To Be Noticed By Fashion Brands

For you to be a fashion influencer, you have to position yourself in a way that brands will notice you and want to work with you.

Here are ways in which you can position yourself:

• Select a niche in the fashion industry and stick to it.

The fashion industry is quite huge with the different trends coming up in different seasons.

There are various niches you can focus on. For example, if you decide to focus on fashion apparel, what kind of apparel would you focus on? Suits, underwear, shoes, coats, dresses, or sweaters?  

Find what comes easily for you and go with that. You can go with what most people compliment you for wearing.

Niching down gives a perception that you’re an expert at what you do and brands will want to work with an expert who has gained trust with their audience.

• Be unique.

Any niche you decide to focus on will obviously have other influencers focusing on it. You have to find a way to communicate that is unique to you as a brand. You can choose to use humor in your captions, inspiration quotes, or even bible verses.

Ensure that you have a consistent aesthetic that can be easily recognized as yours. Decide whether you want your aesthetic to be seen as dark, cool, or vibrant, and maintain that throughout your feed.

Also, have an enticing bio and profile that clearly says what you’re about.

• Create relevant content.

Ensure that the content you put out provides value to your audience. It shouldn’t just look nice and has no message to it. 

Focus on evoking emotion from your audience. This could be by making them laugh or inspirational content, leaving them feeling motivated.

This could also help you increase engagement on your posts and this is one of the traits that may inspire brands to work with you.

Create content that shows you can spark up a conversation that could aid in the conversion of viewers to customers. 

• Be flexible.

With the ever-changing fashion trends, you have to keep up and know how you can reinvent your style from time to time.

Always ensure you evolve to keep the brands and your audience interested.

Also, be flexible enough to change up some aspects of your brand image, for example, your feed aesthetic.

Tips To Becoming A Successful Instagram Fashion Influencer In 2021

• Let your bio and profile speak for you.

Your bio is the face of your brand. Ensure that within very few seconds of someone seeing your profile, they know exactly what you are about. Use keywords to highlight what you do. Using bullet points could also help you lay-out easy to read information.

Also, always add a call to action to direct visitors to what you’d want them to do. For example, “subscribe to” “click on”

• Get prepared to cold pitch clients.

This is to reach out to clients who haven’t yet expressed interest in working with an influencer. Especially when starting out as an influencer, you have to initiate connections with brands. This is by sending out emails, and direct messages to the brands you want to work with. 

You can also start by engaging with the content they post by commenting and posting reviews of their products to get on their radar.

• Be consistent

For you to be noticed in the Instagram world you have to consistently post. Pick a scheduling time and stick to it so that people can know what time to expect content from you.

Content batching can also help you be effectively consistent. This is whereby you pick a day or two in a week to shoot content, edit it and schedule it to be posted. 

This will help relieve you of the stress of having to create and post content every day.

• Build your network.

Just like any other industry, networking is very important in the fashion field. You can network with other fashion lovers by attending store appearances, fashion events and joining fashion communities online and offline.

In such events, you get to interact with other people in the fashion industry such as stylists, fashion bloggers, fashion designers, and other fashion influencers. These are the people who can help you push your brand further and be noticed more. 

6 Things Influencers Must Look Out For Before Working With A Fashion Brand 

These are some characteristics that you can see in a brand. These are what will influence you to either work with them or not.

Some of these important characteristics include:

1. Values / mission / vision.

Every brand has its own values that they stand for. Getting a brand that has values that are aligned with yours as an influencer is very important.

Look through their website and social media handles to find out what they stand for. Work with brands that have values compatible with yours. This will also show that you don’t just work with any brand for the money and will attract more brands to work with you.

Also, look out for their stand on social issues and injustices to see if they are aligned to yours.

2. Reviews.

Most brands have a reviews tab on their pages. You can check on this to see what people say about them. You can also go through comments to see if there are any complaints and how they are handled by the brand.

This will clearly show you if this is a brand you should work for.

Also, some sites offer reviews for brands that you can check on for more information.

3. Communication skills.

During the negotiation process, look out for how they communicate. Are they clear about what their expectations are?  As you talk about the price, are they willing to hear you out? Are they flexible in terms of changing their mind about something? Are they willing to give you some creative freedom?

Understanding how they communicate beforehand will help you know what to expect when you start working with them. If they are so rigid, you know how and when to exercise your creativeness.

4. Any scandals they’re involved in.

Your image as an influencer is connected to the brands you work with. If the brand is caught up in a scandal, it may affect your reputation too. Other brands may also cut ties with you after seeing you’re involved with a scandalous brand.

Getting partnerships afterward may also become a challenge and you have to really prove to them that you were not part of the scandal.

This however does not mean that you should never work with a brand involved in a scandal. Some brands may have corrected their ways and rebranded to be better.

5. Authenticity.

Something else you should look out for in a brand is its authenticity. Ensure you work with brands that deal with authentic material. Since you’re promoting them to your audience, ensure you’ve used the products first before promoting to ensure you don’t promote fakes.

Also after promoting a product and you discover it’s not genuine, ensure you inform your followers and detach from any more involvement with the brand.

This will ensure you maintain a level of trust from your audience.

6. Knowledge of influencer marketing.

You will find brands that have never worked with influencers before and you have to explain what it all entails. Some brands may still have the thinking that influencers are only paid through free products/services. It’s important to explain your terms to them.

Some may think that influencers are salespeople and will definitely drive sales up for their fashion items yet that is not the case.

Whatever level of knowledge the brand may be at, always communicate what you as an individual can work with. 

Summary

The fashion industry is ever-growing and will always need influencers to promote its items. Niching down to establish yourself as an expert in a particular fashion field is important. Ensure you build trust with your audience and more brands will start noticing you.

You don’t have to work with every brand that comes along. Knowing your audience, choose to only work with brands with products that will be beneficial to them.