Influencers are powerful. They influence purchasing decisions to inspire us in everyday life. Research shows that many people nowadays prefer to listen to product and service recommendations from their peers rather than celebrities and influencers are viewed somewhat like peers yet also experts at once.
So you want to build your dream influencer career? It can’t be done overnight, but it can be done. Before you go forth influencing millions of people through your lifestyle and advice, you’ll need a solid foundation. This foundation consists of defining your brand, which includes your niche, mission, vision, aesthetic, and brand voice.
Your brand is what makes you unique. It’s your expertise, aesthetic, tone -- everything that you’re offering that most others aren’t.
1. Define Your brand purpose and positioning
Start by introspectively asking yourself fundamental questions about yourself and how you’d like to present yourself.
What’s your niche? Are you a fashion, beauty, travel, or entrepreneurial influencer? It’s essential to have a clear and consistent theme when building your brand. This will be what you’re known for and will set you apart from others in your industry. For example, in the fashion industry, Jenny Cipoletti is known for her very feminine fashion, while Jessica Wang is known for her high-fashion style. Having a crystal clear niche will attract a highly targeted audience and give them the information they’re looking for. A targeted and engaged audience is the key to scaling a viable and sustainable brand.
Once you establish your expertise in a niche, you can slowly add other types of content without completely throwing off your brand. That means you’ll be just fine showing off your delicious banana bread recipe -- if you’ve already been well-defined as a high fashion influencer.
To better determine what content to put out, you’ll have to look at it in terms of value. What value are you providing? Are you presenting in-depth facts about skincare ingredients? Will you be writing detailed travel guides? Do you want to be a source of everyday motivation? Defining your brand’s overall value will further set you apart from others in your niche and offer valuable information. Now more than ever, you need to be more than just a pretty feed.
What type of problems are you trying to solve? Some influencers are trying to fill a gap they’ve noticed. For example, some influencers like Sarah Tripp saw a lack of curvy influencers and wanted to create a space to encourage body positivity in the influencer industry.
2. Define your audience
As previously stated, a targeted and engaged audience is the key to scaling your brand. All successful businesses have a target demographic and archetype. So let's determine yours!
For example, if your ideal collaboration is Dior Beauty, then it's important to curate your content to garner a female audience. Brands look for influencers who can drive not only product awareness, but also conversions. You won't be the best influencer to represent a beauty brand if your audience is 70% men because they're unlikely to buy the beauty product you're promoting.
To help you define your audience, here are some questions to ask yourself:
Who am I trying to inspire and motivate?
What products do I want to work with?
What brands do I want to work with?
Will my personality and tone resonate with this audience?
3. Your visual element
We are naturally drawn to beauty, so your page should look great while being true to yourself. How you visually present your brand is often the first step to turning a new viewer into a follower.
After defining your brand's core values, you'll determine the visuals that align with it, such as the typography, graphics, photos, and color palette. If your brand is bright and happy, consider a bolder type, colorful graphics, and shooting your #ootd during the day. If your brand is more about feminine fashion, then an airy, pastel, or muted color palette would represent that well.
4. Marketing
Now that you have a bomb ass brand, it's time to reach wide and let the world know who you are.
Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate! Reach out to a fellow influencer and do a fun post or giveaway together; that way, your page would be exposed to their followers and vice versa.
If you're ready to be interviewed, you can try reaching out to magazines or podcasts to be featured where you can tell your brand story. Make sure you have an inspiring story to share or valuable input. The more press, the better.
There are some paid routes you can go if you've got the budget for it. Sponsoring your social page is another excellent way to increase your reach. Another is hiring a publicist to increase your brand credibility and visibility.
5. Pitching + Media kit
It does not matter how persuasive your pitch is if you're not conducting outreach to the right department; in other words, don't waste your time sending partnership inquiries to generic emails like info@lulus.com or hello@peachandlily.com. Sure, you may close 1-2 deals out of the hundreds you send out, but that return is too low for all your hard work.
We learned that the hard way back when we first started out as an agency. Seeking out high-quality leads, such as pitching directly to the influencer marketing director in charge of paid partnerships is the SECRET to closing the biggest deal of your career.
If you reach out to us we'll send you five relevant contacts for FREE so that you can start pitching and landing your dream deals ;)
We recommend only working with brands you believe in. The brands should authentically suit you and your audience. Do plenty of research to ensure they align with your values.
What your pitch should consist of:
Your pitch should consist of a brief introduction and describe why you'd like to work with the brand. Think of it as a cover letter while applying to a job. Don't copy and paste a standard canned pitch. If a brand can detect that, you'll come off as not too interested and rather generic. Personalizing every email will show genuine interest and have to stand out among the others pitching influencers. Do plenty of research on the brand and relate your interests and life experiences to them. If they've advocated for a cause you deeply care about, such as animal welfare, mention that. Using your power for social good is a big advantage for many brands.
Your media kit functions as a resume. Just like a resume, it should be professional, easy to read, informative, and well-designed. We'll dive into more details about media kits in our next blog post, so stay tuned!
6. Building Email Lists
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to increase visibility and reach while building a stronger relationship with your network and community. Email marketing is also a budget-friendly way to reach your audience directly while retaining a high ROI. Automation can take some time off your hands and leave you with measurable results.
If you have a blog, encourage your visitors to sign up for your email list so they can be notified via email of all your posts. To encourage subscriptions, you can offer valuable information, discounted services, or exclusive content only subscribers can see.
7. Scaling + income source
Once you’ve established yourself as an influencer, there are various ways to scale your business. Identify which tasks you can outsource and automate so that you can focus on the bigger picture and do what you love.
You can also look into working with a reputable influencer talent management agency to represent you as a talent. Working with a talent manager will free up plenty of time, as they’ll handle the pitching, negotiating, and contracting brand deals on your behalf. They typically take a 15-20% commission from each of your projects and don’t charge an additional fee.
Other ways include creating your own merch, setting up and promoting a Patreon account, selling the free clothes you get from PR agencies or brands on sites like eBay, Poshmark, or ThredUP, and adding an affiliate link on your website, etc.
We also recommend that you work with a good publicist. While it’s a pricey service, your publicist will help your brand gain the publicity you deserve by helping you get access to exclusive events, press conferences, interviews, etc. This can help return more than you paid for.
Images by our in-house photographer Sharon
