How to Start your Career as an Instagram Fashion Influencer?

If you’re someone who regularly checks their Instagram feed, you’ve probably been flooded with fashion bloggers striking a pose, advertising a gazillion products, sharing their gastronomic journey, documenting their luxurious travels, or simply doing a makeup tutorial. 

As millennials in 2020, we’ve seen it all. Suddenly, everybody on Instagram seems to be a fashion influencer. Well, becoming an influencer on Instagram is no mean feat. 

To get there and establish a large fanbase, it requires tonnes of effort. It’s not just only about wearing an outfit and clicking a picture. In reality, there is a lot more to it. 

What Does a Fashion Influencer Do?

A typical day in the life of a fashion blogger/influencer can be pretty stressful. They don’t just have to juggle between many roles and outfit changes but also interact enough with their followers, attend fashion-related events, and most importantly devise a strategy to manage their partnerships and collaborations. 

A fashion influencer career requires a person to style, shoot and edit their photos, find visually-stunning locations, write content, manage the backend of their page, design a layout for their feed, implement an SEO strategy, find appropriate hashtags, and much more. The list is indeed a long one. Besides this, full-time blogging also requires one to stock up on professional equipment such as cameras, lighting, tripods and more. Hence, if you want to take the plunge and become a fashion influencer, remember, you don’t just need to put in time and effort but financial resources too.

However, don’t be intimidated by what we say. A fashion influencer career can be an absolute jackpot for someone who enjoys dressing up, experimenting with new trends, and loves shopping. The profession does of course come with a lot of perks. You’ll have brands approach you for advertisements, promotions and paid collaborations. Also, you often get freebies such as clothes, makeup and beauty products to review. So cool, right?

Well, if there are so many perks, you’ve got to work hard. As they say ‘nothing comes easy’. 

If the world of fashion has always intrigued you and you want to start your career as an Instagram fashion influencer, we have you covered with our ultimate guide. 

From tips and tricks to industry secrets, we are here to spill the beans and make your journey to becoming an influencer a smooth and successful one. 

Tips to Become a Fashion Influencer

If you’re looking for tips on creating unique and beautiful content, we have you sorted: 

1. Pick a Niche

The first step to becoming an influencer in the world of fashion is choosing a niche. The word fashion in itself is a broad subject that entails many spheres including handbags, footwear, luxury clothing, contemporary, vintage, avant-garde, plus-size, maternity, high-street, DIY, travel fashion and so on. Even before setting up a full-fledged fashion career, choose what you’re good at and what you will enjoy doing even in the future. Once you pick a niche, make sure you stick to it. It should be something that reflects your own personality and style. This way, your career will seem more like a hobby than a job and you’re less likely to get bored with time. 

2. Find your USP

As a fashion influencer, if you want to make it big, you’ve got to be stylish and produce unique content. If you follow some of the well-known influencers on Instagram, you’ve probably noticed that each one has their own style and taste. Therefore, it’s very important to find your unique selling point. Create content that reflects your personal taste. If you truly want to connect with your target audience, your clothes should be a reflection of who you really are. 

If you are just starting out, the best way to find your USP is by looking at profiles of other successful influencers. See why people follow them, what you would like to pick up from them and get inspired. With the right vision and creative streak, you can go places. 

3. Manage the Backend

The life of an Instagram influencer can be extremely overwhelming. There are many aspiring bloggers who start off well but give-up in the middle of the journey owing to a lack of readiness, resources and pep. Therefore, even before you get out there and make a splash, get some things clear in your head. 

Remember, the goal is to produce high-quality content that will garner attention, followers and engagement. You can’t post a high-quality image one day, and post a shabby, unflattering image the next. If you want big brands to approach you for collabs, your feed should be pretty-darn good looking. 

As a potential fashion influencer, you should be well-versed with editing, handling camera equipment, lighting, photography and other technical nuances. If you can’t manage it yourself, you can always hire a skilled professional. Also remember, initially no brand may send you a bunch of free clothes or beauty products. Only when you prove your mettle, you can expect freebies. 

Since the fashion blogging space is really saturated, you will have to work hard and earn those followers and partnerships. 

4. Stay Abreast of Trends

You’re about to set up a fashion influencer career and people are going to view you as an opinion leader in the field. If you’re not aware of the latest trends, you won’t go anywhere. Keep your eyes and ears open to what’s trending, international fashion and runway styles. Knowing what’s in and what’s out is an important aspect of producing content. When you become a thought leader, interacting with your audience and addressing their queries becomes much easier. 

5. Reach out to Brands

Once you have at least two thousand followers under your belt, you can start reaching out to brands. Don’t be hesitant to do so. If you’re good at your work, they will definitely want to associate themselves with you. When you post pictures, make sure you tag them. This will definitely put your account under their radar. They may also reshare it on their story or feed. Maybe you can direct message them or contact them via email too. 

Once you get a hang of paid partnerships and collaborations, you will have brands reaching out to you. Till then, you’ve just got to be patient and keep trying.

Pro Tip: Before accepting a collab request, think if it fits your brand image. Don’t do it just for the sake of doing it. It should be relevant to the niche you are promoting. A collab offer can be tempting but it is also important to be mindful of your decision. For example: If your niche is primarily street-style, doing a collab with a brand that is into luxury clothing won’t seem fitting enough. Forced posts and dishonest content can be easily spotted by your followers. 

6. Write Quirky Captions & Choose Relevant Hashtags

The real secret to engage with your followers on Instagram is writing interesting captions. In your initial days, determine your brand voice. How do you want your followers to view your content? If it’s something that is fun and chill, write captions that are quirky and relatable. A study reveals that most millennials follow an Instagram account when the language and tone of the content are quirky. 

Another prerequisite is choosing the right hashtags. Posts with specific hashtags gain 12.6 percent more engagement. Your post should ideally have 10-15 hashtags. Choose the ones that are most relevant to that particular post. 

7. Create Winning Content Relevant to your Niche

Every day billions of users spend millions of hours scrolling through Instagram. They aren’t just looking for visually-stunning pictures but are also searching for experiences that will interest them. Thus, make sure your content is unique and beautiful. Here are our tried-and-tested tips:

• Share a personal experience
• Discover your audience and tailor content that will appeal to them
• Leverage on the art of storytelling
• Appeal to audience emotion
• Do something for a good cause
• Host giveaways/contests
• Post on your story often
• Go live at least once a month

As an aspiring fashion influencer, the above tips will definitely help you kickstart. When you set your foot into the industry and start creating and posting relevant content, you’ll tend to get more familiar with it. At first, it can seem quite intimidating but believe us, if your vision, ideas and dreams are strong, you will get better with it. 

Now that you know how to start a fashion career, let’s shortlist our favourite fashion influencers to follow on Instagram. 

Top 5 Fashion Influencers you must follow for Wardrobe Inspiration

Though fashion is subjective, we all do need a little inspiration and advice here and there. To understand fashion better and stay abreast of the latest trends, following a fashion influencer is imperative. With the space being so crowded, finding the best ones can seem like quite a challenge. 

Hence, we’ve shortlisted our favourite Instagram influencers who are killing it right now with their oomph and style quotient.

1. Komal Pandey

Komal Pandey (@komalpandeyofficial) is literally every millennial’s fashion icon. She makes fashion look like therapy. We love how she always gets creative with her looks and shows how versatile every piece of clothing can be. She’s never hesitant to experiment with her style. In fact, she always goes the extra mile with her creative outfits and combinations, and that’s what we love about her. 

2. Juhi Godambe

If you’re looking for some street-style fashion inspiration, hit the ‘follow’ button on Juhi Godambe’s (@juhigodambe) profile right now. She has an amazing sense of style. She can easily pass off as a runway model. She’s all about couture, high-street and athleisure fashion. We’d describe her feed as eccentric yet contemporary. 

3. Kritika Khurana 

If we’re talking about trending fashion influencers, we can’t miss Kritika Khurana (@thatbohogirl). We’d describe her fashion as easy, breezy and practical. True to her Instagram handle username, she makes fashion look fun. We love how she revamps old and boring clothes into something trendy and quirky to give it a new lease of life. Follow her for some Bohemian fashion inspiration. 

4. Priyanka MC

Though being a fashion influencer is a full-time job, there are many girls out there who are doing it as a hobby, and Priyanka MC (@priyankamc) is one of them. Based in Bangalore, this young girl wears many hats. She’s an architect by profession and runs her own company (@mazeconcept.design). Girl boss, indeed! We checked out her profile and absolutely loved how she’s made fashionable appearances at different events. She’s also collaborated with budding designers and looked like a vision on her wedding day. Check her feed for some contemporary and traditional outfit inspiration. 

5. Megha Kapoor 

Blogger, vlogger and stylist, Megha Kapoor (@meghakapoor.7) is a sight to sore eyes. She’s not just a fashion influencer but a fitness enthusiast and founder of her own clothing line (@meghakapoorlabel) as well. With close to 16k followers, we love how her colorful feed is full of experimental looks from her holidays and outings. Whether you want styling tips or some chic outfit ideas, head over to her profile.

As you embark on this journey of becoming a fashion influencer, follow our tips and these amazing girls for some real-time inspiration!

FAQs-

Q1. How to start a fashion blog on Instagram?

To start off your own fashion blog on instagram, you need to first find your USP and then strategise your content. You need to maintain your feed and add an element of your own to make it stand out in the crowd. Stay abreast with trends and learn to add relevant hashtags to your captions.

Q2. How to become a social media influencer?

To become a social media influencer, you need to first decide upon a niche and work on building content around it. Make sure to add a personal touch to your work to make your content more relatable for the audience. Remain consistent and maintain a good and pleasing feed. 

Q3. Who is a fashion influencer?

A social media content creator who has a decent number of followers and creates content revolving around fashion, styling and trends can be called a fashion influencer.