Katrina’s Teen Team Journey...Part 3

February has been a month filled with highs and lows already! 

I hope you guys are off to a great start with getting your model team going and sign ups. Now that I have gotten all of that behind me it’s easy sailing! Ha! Not really now is probably where the hard work really begins. This year I am really going to try to hand-hold my model team month by month just to make sure I keep the excitement going and to make sure they don’t get bored. One way to keep the excitement going is to have a random contest. Contest will keep them wanting to participate. This month's contest I just randomly asked who had posted a picture from their model team photoshoot on their actual Instagram feed. I did this because a lot of the girls will share it to their instagram stories but as we all know those falls off after 24 hours and I want them to be sharing on Instagram stories but also posting on their Instagram feed. Out of 14 girls only 1 girl had posted on their instagram feed. That’s insane because years ago before instagram stories you know everyone would have posted of their instagram feeds. 1 person earned the $5 Starbucks gift card. Not a bad payout for me and it let them see i'm watching them. Since then Almost all the girls have now posted to their IG feeds! 

So I kind of jumped a little ahead. last month was all about our meet and greet and our first model team photoshoot. This year I combined both events into the same day! I did this because it was probably easier on me but also because my team's track record usually everyone can not participate the same day so I would have multiple meet and greets and multiple photoshoots. It could potentially be a nightmare. So doing it this way I still have multiple dates but it’s a one stop shop if you can make that date. What has worked for me in the past with picking dates is looking at my available dates for the month and picking 3 dates. Not that hard! Lol I email the moms and girls and ask them to let me know all the dates that work for them. If only 1 works they would let me know that 1 date, if all 3 dates work then they let me know all 3 dates. I then write down what dates they can attend. Sometimes the groups are completely random but for this one I kept it mostly by age. So everyone had girls close to their age for them to chat with and get to know. I saw two dates that would get everyone in and went with that! With that being said this photoshoot everyone gets so if someone can’t make it I will shoot them a different day but they won’t get that team experience. This year I had my two dates setup and the last date we ended up getting freezing rain and two of my seniors parents didn’t want the girls driving and hour in freezing rain so I did have them come a different day. Which was a bummer that they didn't get to hang out with everyone but their safety is more important. 

I think moving forward I need to remember I need to spend 15-20 minutes hanging with them prior to photographing them. Do an actual meet and greet segment first. Eating, mingling and getting to know each other first would have been awesome and a great ice breaker. I just got right down to business and started shooting and let them hang out but it was an uncertain vibe because everyone was new to the studio and atmosphere. 

I typically do an indoor photoshoot for my first photoshoot for a few different reasons. #1 because I live in Indiana and it’s cold here right now. #2 because indoor isn’t my specialty and what i’m known for. I want to keep the on-location photoshoot special and something they are still looking forward to. This year I tried a lifestyle/instagram content type of style shoot. The girls seemed to have loved the setup. One girl said it was very instagramable and trendy! 

So I know from my Instagram analytics anytime I have a photoshoot I have at least a hundred or so more people that will watch my stories that day so I wanted to make sure I capitalized on that. I made sure to post on Insta stories days prior letting my audience know a shoot would be happening in the next few days. I posted a few pictures of the studio and BTS stuff to prime my audience. I did two different kinds of video’s. The first photo shoot date my daughter wasn't able to be there who is my videographer so I just setup a tripod and turned on my camera video. Nothing fancy! I then took that video into iMovie and sped it up really fast to make it less than 2 minutes. I added copyright free music. I had several people message me saying how cool it was to see the BTS photoshoot happening. It wasn’t my best video because I'm not a videographer but it served the purpose for what I needed. I used that video as insta sneak peeks that night and the next day while I edited the images. I took my sweet time in bleeding out the images. It took 2 weeks for everyone to get their sneak peeks. I have never done it like that! My engagement those 2 weeks was a lot higher because the content was new everyday for a new girl! Since I had brand new images being posted everyday that kept all the girls excited over that 2 weeks span. a lot of them if not all of them did share their images on their insta stories so that was nice I got some new followers throughout those 2 weeks.

This year I have done one team app. Once all of their images were posted on Instagram I shared the album with them. Up until this point each girl has seen one picture of them so this was another way for them to see another picture and to see everyone elses. To keep the excitement going I will add a few pictures at a time over the next few months. This will keep the excitement for everyone including myself. In the past I have edited close to 100 hundred pictures for the team per shoot and not much to show for it so know if they want to work I'm going to work and I feel like it's fair. I had to change my mindset and have to have them work for it because they're part of a model team and referrals is the name of the game. 

I should have lead this article with this month epic high. My epic high this month was my Valentine's day photoshoot with a senior rep Marley and a signed model named Kaesyn from lmodelz. I have been wanting to photograph Kaeysn for while now! It was everything I thought it would be. We literally had a absolute blast. Her mom was also so nice. My glam team was also on board to make all this happen! I had purchased Valentines day Shirts and accessories for this photoshoot. Since this was a creative shoot I picked all the hair and makeup looks with the help from my team. This was a creative shoot and the only thing I wanted from this shoot was to have fun and some content pictures for Valentine’s day! I have found that shooting for myself is so fun and rewarding.  

Now let's talk about the lows. #boo This month I was all geared up to have a studio open house! I have tried setting this up 2 years in a row and both times have been an epic fail. No one RSVP to the event. I’m not sure if it’s hard because my studio isn’t located in town so i’m not getting the traffic and eyes on the information. I might give it another try. If I do I'm going to add my hair stylist, makeup artist and also a clothing boutique so hopefully fingers crossed that works. I have to first see if everyone is on board to do a one day event! I have tried to do it this way years ago and it was an epic fail but I didn’t have a boutique wanting to come to the the event either. I was also doing all the promoting for it and that wasn’t working. I really would like this to work because it would be nice to get more booking this way. Fingers crossed. Another low for this month has been that none of my reps have had any referrals book. I have had several teens and senior inquire but no one has pulled the trigger. 

Thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to follow along my teen journey. Next month we will chat more about numbers and systems I’m using this year to keep ya girl on track! I’m also trying something else new and will tell you all very soon! Need to see some results first.