Welcome to the second instalment of our new series! We have been lucky enough to get in contact with a few instagram 'influencers', providing us with great insights into the business aspect of managing blogs, instagram pages, and some tips and tricks to get started! Keep reading on to learn from our second influencer, Dominique!
A bit about Dominique...
Dominique is a Freelance Brand Manager with an instagram following of over 13,000 people! She focuses on working with a select group of clients and creates inspiring content that resonates with her following. Dom's account has an interesting mix of fashion and business, and has extremely interesting insights into the backends of instagram and content. Read more to find out all about her account and experience with instagram!
Some of Dom's content:
Via: Instagram @dom.overseas - https://www.instagram.com/dom.overseas/?hl=en
In your fashion and styling base content, why do you believe that people would prefer to follow you over someone with a larger following? I personally follow accounts not because of their (large) following but because of their inspirational content. A fitness blogger might have 500K followers but a print magazine fashion editor I adore and look up to only 10K! Therefore I hope that people follow me for inspiring outfits and an honest approach rather than me showing every aspect of my life from breakfast to dinner!
What encouraged you to get started on instagram? I quit my job in the fashion industry in Germany to go travelling and work abroad - and created the account to keep my friends and family up-to-date! I am so grateful that over the past 3.5 years it has allowed me to work with amazing brands who like my photography work.
Do you work with brands? If so, how was your experience? I work with brands on a daily basis. Whether it is my work as a brand manager (I manage Social Media accounts, newsletter campaigns, marketing campaigns and beyond for a handful of small, amazing brands) or photography work for global brands such as i.e. Levi's, Bobbi Brown and Verge Girl, most of the time it is a pleasant and professional experience. I have a detailed media kit which I sent to brands for them to browse before moving forward to working with me. I have also learnt to trust my instinct and decline working with brands where I don't see a fit or personally feel the people representing or working for the brand are not professional.
What would you recommend to someone who was just starting on instagram? Try to not care. I love creating beautiful content and consider it as my job - I don't get upset if a photo doesn't get many likes (the Instagram algorithm favours people in photos over products therefore flat-lays usually perform not as great) or if my followers decline or grow slowly. Life is too beautiful to have your happiness depend on a single app that could disappear tomorrow. I would recommend searching for inspiration of the content you'd love to create and just put it out there, seeing it as a creative outlet rather than a potential job. I have a Bachelor in Business Administration with a major in marketing and worked in publishing and PR for five years before going freelance and wouldn't want to miss this experience!
What do you like the most of being an influencer? I wouldn't call myself an influencer - more a product photographer and brand manager as this is what I work on most of the day. Posting the content I create for brands on my personal account is just something I enjoy doing but I rarely engage with other accounts in order to grow mine (who has the time for this!). If someone purchases a piece because they have seen it on my account I am excited to have inspired someone, rather than influenced!
So... what can we take from Dominique's great advice?
Inspirational content over numbers
An honest approach translates with your followers, we know the saying - quality over quantity. Don't be discouraged or compare yourself to larger pages. Everyone's content is unique and uniquely entertaining to their audience. An audience of any size should be valued!
Be prepared when working with brands!
Just as Dominique suggested, a media kit is extremely useful for you to prepare, so brands know what to expect from you, there is extreme transparency, and they can choose to accept or decline. Go with what feel right, your gut is telling you something for a reason!
Work with brands that fit you...
Brand content fit is so important! Your audience will recognise when you work for a brand that you don't 100% love or support, and this can make rapport between you and your audience diminish. You need to want to work with brands that fit you, represent you and you are comfortable promoting to people.
Ignore the algorithm!
It's easy to get caught up in the endeavour of likes, follows and engagement in your posts, but remember what is at the core of instagram... content! Just create content you are inspired by and proud of, and ignore if it doesn't perform as well as you would have liked. Instagram's algorithm is often at fault, not you!
Thank you so much to Dominique for taking the time to answer some of these questions for us!
How are you liking this series? Let us know who you'd like to hear from next!
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