Izzy Grace: Sharing a love of fashion on Instagram
Izzy Grace loves three things in life; fashion, design and her rats, Bubble and Squeak. In 2020 whilst the world was the way it was, she took her love over fashion to instagram as a creative outlet. What started off as a side hustle, grew into something more.
Without giving too much away in the introductory paragraph, we spoke to her about her growing instagram following, tips on promotion, and what’s next for her.
What prompted you to start sharing your love of fashion online?
I started my Instagram account during the first lockdown as a means of keeping myself entertained and justifying the constant flow of ASOS parcels arriving on my doorstep seeing as I wouldn’t be able to wear my new wardrobe out anytime soon. I’ve always loved fashion as a means of self-expression and consume a lot of fashion content myself through YouTube and Instagram so I thought, ‘why not give it a go?’ and was instantly hooked.
What do you think has contributed to your 4,000+ following?
I think good timing definitely played a part in helping my page grow so quick. With everyone in lockdown and stuck in the continuous scroll cycle it literally gave me a ’captive’ audience. Coupled with this I was extremely consistent with my posting and made sure I uploaded at the same time every single day and engaged with those following me.
I also took time to research hashtags. I made sure to switch up my hashtags every post including a mix of niche terms coupled with larger reach tags and made sure I tagged all the brands I’d included in my posts. This led to Topshop noticing me and sharing my image on their story as well as some other smaller business’ reposting my images. It’s a win-win really, brands get free advertising and in turn it helps to raise the profile of creators.
What’s the most difficult element to keeping your followers engaged?
Keeping up with the comments for sure. I’m always really grateful when people comment on my pictures and I’m always keen to to connect with my ‘followers’ in order to keep them returning to my content. As I’ve grown it’s become really difficult to keep doing this. At this stage a great deal of my engagement comes from other girls who create similar content to me, and I think to a certain degree people expect you to engage back in return. As I post every day and tend to receive around 250 comments per post, it can be really stressful to keep up with and can be really time consuming.
Talk to me about collaborations. How has that worked for you so far and what do brands usually ask for?
In all honesty I’m yet to actually collaborate with a brand. My page is still in it’s infancy and I know brands like to see longer-term engagement stats before they’re willing to hand over the cash and I’m not keen to pile on that sort of pressure at this stage, it’s more of a hobby/experiment for me. Saying that I have received messages from small brands requesting images with their product in return for the product for free, but nothing has quite felt the right fit yet. My rule is if I wouldn’t pay for it with my own money I wouldn’t post about it. I think it’s important to really genuinely love a product if you’re going to encourage others to go out and spend their hard earned cash on it.
Stories, posts, reels, videos, galleries. What feature do you find most useful to share content?
The thing with social media is you’re at the mercy of the algorithms and the features Instagram want to promote. I know reels is really being pushed at the moment and it can help you gain like crazy if you reach the explore page. Because of this I’ve found the content people are producing for reels is really stale and could easily be done in an image post but they feel pressured to create this form of content to grow. On the flip side I’ve also seen girls really harness the stories feature and use it to really connect with their audience and show a more raw/real-time side of themselves. I’m a massive introvert and anything where I’m required to speak on camera is way out of my comfort zone so it’s a no from me to reels. It’s just not something I enjoy and I’ve accepted that. I think it’s important to stay true to what you enjoy creating as otherwise you just won’t feel inspired and things can feel disingenuous. For me I really enjoy taking photos and the carousel/gallery feature help me to showcase lots of different aspects of an outfit and focus in on the details without compromising on the aesthetic of my page.
If you could develop your own filter or feature on Instagram to help fashion brands and models, what would it be?
That’s a difficult question as there’s so many amazing digital initiatives out there already. Have you heard of Reward Style? It’s an app which allows fashion creators to earn commission if someone clicks a link to something they’re wearing. It definitely has some usability issues and is a bit clunky/geared towards a US audience but the concept of it is great so perhaps some sort of take on this. It can be hard to start out monetising your content and any way of easily helping creators convert their likes into revenue would be great tool to develop.
What would be the ideal situation for you and your account? Where would you like it to take you?
In the future I would love to get my foot in the door with a fashion brand and having no formal education or experience in the field I felt this would be a great way to showcase my understanding and passion for current trends and styling. As a creative person generally, any opportunity to create the content I love is a win for me… if I can monetise my hobby then even better. So in answer to your question I have no idea where I want it to go but I’m excited to see where it takes me.
Are there tips and advice you can share to help anyone starting their own start up brand, fashion or otherwise, on Instagram?
I think it’s key to let go of your ego a little. Don’t be embarrassed to put yourself out there and comment on someones post that inspires you. Chances are they’ll be psyched to have someone loving what they do and will reciprocate. If there’s one thing that surprised me when starting out it’s how supportive people can be if you just reach out and are genuine. It is ‘social’ media after all so be bold and network with creators in a similar field, what’s there to lose?
My other pointer would be to try and get people to save your post. Saves are the new likes in terms of Instagram’s algorithm, so try and give people a reason to do so by providing a service in each post. Be it outfit inspiration or an innovative workout, make people want to revisit your content or share it on their story for others. This will massively increase your reach and ensure Instagram bumps your future posts to the top of peoples feeds and onto the explore page. At the end of the day you never really know what is going to be the next big thing with social media so it’s important to be flexible. The only consistent thing about social media is that it’s inconsistent, the platforms are changing all the time so you have to be willing to flex and change along with it if you really want to succeed with it.
*Since talking to Izzy Grace, she has used what she’s learnt about this side project and now using it to build on her other love, design! The links are below, and we can’t wait to see what comes of her new venture!
