How do I get work with brands?

Whether you’re a model, photographer on influencer, making money and getting work through social media is going to be a key aspect of your job. In this day and age, it’s difficult not to! Obviously being an influencer, you’re main income is going to come from collaborations or work for brands. As a model, growing an Instagram account can be really beneficial, and it will help getting work with both photographers and brands. As a photographer, social media is a chance to showcase your talent to a huge audience, and collaborate with brands to earn more money!

Where do I find brands to work with?

Social media. Easy as anything. Personally, I use Instagram and the wonderful world of google to find my brands. I get quite a lot of sponsored posts on my news feed because of the way I use Instagram, which is hugely beneficial to me as it means I don’t need to go searching too far to find brands to contact! From there, I can find more brands on the suggested tabs. If brands follow me, I always email them and usually I get a reply, which is great!

Just searching on google is another great way to find brands. Searching, for example, ‘top 20 UK clothing brands’ and then finding them on Instagram is a really easy way to find more brands.

How do I go about contacting brands?

Email them. You can’t wait for brands to just contact you, because unless you’ve got over 100,000, realistically they’re not going to come looking for you. Most companies have their contact information on their Instagram page, and if not it will be on their website, so it’s more than easy to find out an email address. Just send them an email explaining who you are and what you offer and hopefully they’ll get back to you!

But no one’s responding to me…

It’s not going to work like clockwork. I email so many brands to get work, and only a very small percentage will get back to me, and then an even smaller percentage will actually say they’re willing to pay to work with me. Offering free services to start your collaboration is a great way to create a working relationship that might lead to them paying you for your services further down the line. I always say that even if a brand doesn’t have a social media budget to spend, I will always post stories on my Instagram in return for them sending over products. If your stories get loads of views, this can be really beneficial for them, and then you’ll probably get a paid collaboration with them in the near future.

All in all, you’ve got to put in the work to find the brands to work with. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve got 5000 or 50000 followers, you can still find work on social media, you’ve just got to go out and get it! If you’ve got any tips on how to find work on social media, let me know in the comments!

How to get photoshoots with photographers

I see a lot of people asking me how I got into modelling, how to go about getting photoshoots or how to contact photographers, and I think, it’s lovely that you came to me to ask, but it’s really not that hard. Once you have a portfolio, it’s amazingly easy to get photoshoots with photographers - although these will mainly be on a tfp (time for photos) basis - and then once you’ve had one with a photographer, it’s even easier to get more.

Portfolios:

The main thing to start out with is having a good portfolio. I understand a lot of people won’t have the budget to make a website, or pay someone to do it for them, so we’ve got to look at the free options. Instagram is the best, I feel, for having a portfolio. With its photo grid format, it’s really easy for someone to scroll through your pictures, see what kind of modelling you do, and decide whether they want to shoot with you.

With that being said, you need to make sure your Instagram (if this is what you’re using for your portfolio), is full of modelling pictures with different photographers, and not full of selfies or pictures of your pets (as cute as they may be). Some kinds of selfies may be okay, for example if an MUA has just done your makeup and the photo is of very high quality. You need to make sure your photos also haven’t got obvious filters on, and all somewhat match. You could do this by putting the same filter on all of them, or displaying similar photos in rows, columns or grids.

You could have a portfolio on purple port for example, but personally I don’t feel that’s very useful. Instead, I would suggest having a facebook page for your modelling, and joining lots of photography and model groups on facebook. I’m part of probably about ten groups on facebook, where I share groups of photos from different shoots which I’ve also posted on my page, suggesting that if anyone wants to shoot with me, they should message me. Facebook groups are also a great chance to find other photographers in your local area you may want to work with.

Contact them:

Another thing I think that is so obvious, yet so many people don’t do, is just message photographers you like on Instagram and see if they’re willing to shoot with you. Once you have a few good photos on your instagram of you modelling, you’re bound to find a few photographers at least who will be happy to do a photoshoot with you, and would suit the style you’re looking for. It also helps to follow the photographer and interact with their posts to show you’re definitely interested in working with them.

You could also contact photographers on Facebook, by commenting on their posts and messaging their facebook pages. Interact with them on facebook groups and they will probably get in contact with you too. I recommend messaging their business pages however rather than their personal facebook account, just to keep things professional and making it easier for them to find work rather than just another friend on facebook.

Ask for recommmendations:

One thing I tend to do every three months or so is put a question on my instagram story along the lines of ‘suggestions of photographers to work with in the South West’, which usually gets a good number of responses. The recent one I posted got about 25 replies of photographers saying they wanted to work with me, and so I’ve got lots of shoots lined up for May and June which I’m very excited about!

One thing I would say, is that make sure you give them the exact dates you’re available, and what you have in mind for a shoot. I’ve had times when a photographer would say they were going to let me know when they’re free for a photoshoot and then never do, and so I never give them the dates I can do photoshoots on. No one would expect you to be free for shoots all the time, but you’ve got to give your available dates so that a shoot can be organised.

If you have any other questions about how to go about getting tfp photoshoots or anything related to modelling, send me a message! I love hearing your thoughts on it all, and answering any questions!