Let’s be honest, getting paid to create content for your favourite brands would be pretty sweet. Here’s how you can do it:
If you’re a full-time fashion creator, a brand ambassador gig probably features pretty highly on your dream career wish-list. The chance to create content for a brand you love and get paid for it is the ultimate goal for many creators, but the path to get you there may seem long and daunting. If that sounds like you, and you’re just starting out, it’s easy to feel defeated and think it’ll never happen for you. In reality, the creator industry is always growing and changing and there’s always room for new faces, and people’s tastes change and develop. Just because you’ve found things hard so far doesn’t mean they’ll remain impossible. Here are five key points you can use to give yourself and your accounts a bit of an audit to make sure you’re standing out from the rest, and delivering on the fronts that brands will look for.
1. Scope out a niche
Identify something that you find particularly interesting or exciting about fashion. Think beyond just liking clothes – do you love vintage shopping, or historical fashion, or avant-garde styles? Maybe you’re a thrift shop champion, a DIY expert or a master of minimalism. Do you love fashion for a particular body shape or do you love dressing with a nod to a particular era? Find your niche and explore it thoroughly. Familiarise yourself with the leading creators in your niche, the hashtags that your audience interact with, and focus on doing your niche really well. It gives people a solid reason to follow you.
2. Network with other creators
This is particularly important with creators in your niche, but it’s also important to get to know other fashion creators across the whole sector. Not only can they be powerful allies for you, it’s also so helpful to have a support network to sound ideas off of, to collaborate with and inspire one another (and to be there when things aren’t going so well, the internet is a rough place sometimes). Take plenty of time to develop and deepen these relationships. Why not start right now by messaging them via the community section in InChief, and start to connect with people you admire.
3. Stay true to yourself
It’s easy to look at the countless other creators who’ve landed ambassadorships and try to emulate their content in yours. This is one approach, sure, but brands and people alike enjoy following creators who are unique. If you’re doing the same thing as everyone else you’ll just be clutter on a feed. Stay true to what you want to post, how you feel, and what your values on. When you get rewards for being yourself they’ll feel even sweeter.
4. Start conversations
Don’t just post cute outfit photos and leave them there. In order to build a really engaged audience (engagement is often more important than follower count – a huge audience that’s disengaged isn’t good to anyone), you need to start conversations with your followers and provide them with a service. What this looks like will be different for every creator, but maybe it’s sharing a bit of the story behind where you got an item, the difficulties you find in trying to dress for a certain event, your passion for the brand or designer where the item comes from, recreating designer style on a budget, or maybe challenging yourself to style one item multiple ways. Think about things that will start a discussion and in turn, help and inspire your audience, rather than just something they’ll absent-mindedly double tap and forget about.
5. Be flexible
This means being ready to adapt and change your plans if they’re not working for you. Make sure you regularly analyse how your content is performing – are longer videos doing better, or shorter IGTVs? Does posting in the morning seem to do well, but evening posts bomb? Do people love your how-tos, but tune out for your hauls? Make sure you keep a flexible mindset and respond to these cues as they come, even if it means changing or even stopping an idea you were sure would do really well. Use your F.I.T.T.Y Index to see how your content is performing vs other posts you have put on socials and vs other people’s posts.
