Once you’ve shot your SG set, you will likely find yourself waiting a good few months until anyone can see it. This will also depend on the speed your photographer works at (hopefully you’ve been communicating about this so there are no unpleasant surprises or hold ups!) but once the set has been submitted, accepted and queued by Suicide Girls staff you will still have a wait of around four months. This can seem like the worst thing ever when you’re excited for everyone to see your set and want to show it off, but you can use this to your benefit!
Use this time to start getting to know the website, the members and the other girls. Lots of these promotional techniques also work before your set is out, as it enables you to create some hype around the day it’s finally going to hit everyones screens! You can post sneak peeks and behind the scenes up until the big day and here are my six steps to getting your set noticed:
1 – …ACTUALLY TRY.
First things first, it might sound obvious but just try your best to shoot a good set! Not a quick set, or a little test-the-water set – make every set a good set, or preferably a great one! Your set should be something you are proud of and something that makes you feel beautiful. Yes, you can remove your set from the Suicide Girls website later on but that doesn’t necessarily remove it from the internet and definitely doesn’t wipe the fact it ever happened so do your best to make images that you don’t regret. Wherever possible, shoot with a professional, consider how your outfit and make-up shows off your personality and choose a suitable location – don’t think too much about what SG want from you, SG want you to be you. If your set is low quality with badly edited blurry images, bad composition, unflattering angles or you just doesn’t look like you’re having a good time, members are very likely to get bored of spending their time viewing the set and go onto something else. Getting all these components correct makes a good set that holds attention and something completely kick-ass is going to make leaving comments irresistible. I’d also advise against shooting and submitting loads of sets ‘just because’ as they often end up as ‘filler sets’. Remember: quality over quantity! This also goes for the images themselves. If someone has clicked your set excited to take a look and then sees that there are multiple shots in a row that look the same with the same post, it doesn’t really make it look like you’ve made much effort. It just makes the set drag and they’re very likely to give up clicking through to the end. Try and remember to leave a couple of months between your sets as it’s great to have some feedback on your previous set before you shoot the next one. Enjoy yourself, it will show through. Being enthusiastic and friendly will help you a lot throughout the entire process in general but most importantly it will make your journey an exciting one for others to follow.
2 – CHOOSE A GOOD COVER PHOTO.
This is more important than I think people realise. When you visit the SG site and click the photos tab, if it’s been a couple days since you were last active then there are SO many new sets that a member is very unlikely to properly look through each one. Instead, what we tend to do is browse the most recent sets and then choose which ones to look at judging them only by their cover photo. Pick a shot that shows off the set as well as yourself and make sure to pick something with good eye contact to catch peoples attention as they scroll through. Don’t sell yourself short by not bothering to customise this aspect of your set, it’s so easy and takes no time at all. I would recommend a well-lit shot with a cheeky, flirty feel to it – something enticing rather than looking down nonchalantly. Maybe even a nice smiley shot! Make it something that nobody can scroll past and ignore! Most of the members are going to be checking if anyone they know has a new set first and then, if not, does the thumbnail look high quality and make them want to view the full set? You can change your cover photo whenever you like. When your set is out in Member Review, you could even change it regularly to catch more attention from people who might have skipped past your last choice.
3 – EASY ACCESS
Sorry to say it but…Humans are lazy. If you want people to actually take the time out of their day to look at your set (let alone bother to leave love and comments) then you’re going to have to make it really easy for them and remind your followers how cheap an SG membership is. Make sure you are regularly posting about your new set on all the social media platforms you use, using any relevant hashtags (#SG, #SGUK, #SGHopeful #HopefulSuicideGirls, #SGH etc)as well as tagging your photographer and Suicide Girls. You can also use the ‘swipe up’ feature on Instagram if you account allows to directly link people to your set, as I’ve found recently that people are actually engaging more with stories than they are the general feed. Most importantly, make sure you post about the set on Suicide Girls itself! As only the members there will be able to view, like and comment on your set. That’s the whole point of Members Only, so your Instagram following for example might not help as much as you’d think. If any fellow Hopefuls or Suicide Girls leave some love on your set, why not return the favour? You can even do the same with members that have Blogs or other content posted on their profile, a little like can go a long way! It makes them realise that there’s a real person on the other end and a friendly one at that.
4 – BE ACTIVE.
Make use of the full site! Allow your personality to shine through in your Blog posts and updates and feel free to post images as much as you like. Selfies and sneaky peeks at upcoming sets are great but the members and other girls also want to get to know you so pictures of you cat, dinner or favourite cocktail are also very much welcome. Be interesting, grab attention with post titles and pictures but remember that the website is very much about give and take, so the more activity you put out onto other peoples profiles the more you are likely to receive back. Commenting on other girls sets or Blogs will often prompt them to follow you back and probably interact with your content if you have any! Don’t be someone that has a blank profile. A simple way to help this along if you’re struggling when starting on the website is to link your Instagram to your SG profile – that way, anything you #SG will show up there automatically so you don’t have to remember to post every time! I’d recommend posting additional SG-only content though rather than *just* linking your Instagram as you’ll get better results with original posts. We are all busy but these little things take no time at all and you can even do them from your phone, if you’re serious about SG then you’ll need to put the time in. You wouldn’t make a brand new Instagram account under a different name, post no content on there and expect your follower count to sky rocket in days – SG is no different! It works the same as any other social media site.
5 – BE MEMORABLE.
The biggest thing that’s going to work in your favour is being active on the website so the way people remember you is really important. Choose a memorable SG name, something short is generally easier to remember but anything that people will begin to recognise. If you want to use your own name that’s perfect but if you want to make something up and come up with something you can keep separate from ‘real life’ then spend some time thinking about it. There are a lot of girls on the website so this might take you a little bit of time to come up with something original and that’s fine. If you’ve come up with a name you love but it’s already taken you can try and spell it differently or alter it slightly without having to come up with a whole new name. It just needs to be something instantly recognisable. Do the same with your profile picture – pick something that shows your face and is instantly recognisable as you. A close up of your butt doesn’t really do your whole self justice no matter how great it is and a full length, zoomed out picture could easily be confused for someone else. If you want to take it really seriously, it’s a good idea to have the same name and profile photo on all your social platforms to make it cohesive and easily found.
6 – USE GROUPS.
If you don’t use the actual website itself you’re basically invisible to all the other members until the day you start posting, especially in the months leading up to your first set. The groups on Suicide Girls are the best way to start, there are different ones for almost everything. Being active and posting content on your page is great but if you’re not active around the site it’s unlikely that people will even find your page and read your blogs unless they already follow you – and if you’re new you probably don’t have many followers yet! A great place to start is the SG Hopefuls group. Make sure you read the rules thread of each group before you start spamming and annoying people, they’re pretty much there to stop you looking silly and to let you know the best way to navigate that group before someone tells you off for posting the wrong content in the wrong place! However, there are SO many groups about all sorts of things. You can talk about dating, yoga, cooking, animals, podcasts and there are a lot of groups that are specifically great for posting your set once it’s live and gaining followers who are going to love you for you. For example, you could post you images in either Itty Bitty Titty Committee or Big Boob Appreciation depending on where you best fit in, or there’s even All Boobs Great and Small if you’re not sure or somewhere in between! These are niche groups that are going to make it easy for you to find your specific audience who are likely to enjoy your sets most. There are groups about butts, thin girls and pretty much everything else you can imagine but, maybe most importantly, there are also groups for critique on your sets as well as Girls Only and Hopefuls Only which are great for a little more privacy. There are lots of open groups (anyone can view or join) but there are also many private ones where you have to apply to join and be accepted, making the content within those groups only viewable to the members of that group and not everyone on SG and outside. Within the private groups you’ll find a lot more sensitive and serious groups about health and past experiences filled with conversation between likeminded individuals who might be there to seek advice or just vent but private groups are also where information about upcoming Shootfests will sit. This makes sure that as many of the details as possible are kept quiet for safety purposes!
The ‘Blog Homework‘ thread is also a really great opportunity to produce prompted content when you’re unable to think of anything good to post. Each week the staff will come up with a topic or question for you to answer and write about and you can do as many or few as you like! This could be about anything, some of the recent ones include writing about how you define respect, your best birthday ever and who you reach out to when you’re feeling down so the topics are very varied.
There you have it! A six step guide to using the Suicide Girls website and beyond to promote your set without getting spammy – any further questions or tips please leave them in the comments below!
Other Blogs in this series:
How Can I Become a Suicide Girl? Pros and Cons.
Models: Five Steps to Becoming a Hopeful Suicide Girl.
Models: Preparing For Your First Nude Photoshoot
ItsGemmaEdwards 