Brands are using Influencers and Content Creators to help advertise their products, gain brand awareness, and foster a relationship with the audience you’ve painstakingly grown over a number of years.

While it can be a tiring job to get your profile in front of your favourite brand or hope that you become discovered, there are a few ways to increase your chances of a fruitful Influencer-brand partnership.

Your Profile:

• Post your best, most interesting photos and video on your feed
• Stories are a perfect place to put your less edited updates
• Do you keep up with trends, like more video content, using relevent music?
• Is your content a variety of story-building or life-sharing updates or is it all based on selfies and poses?

Criteria from the Brand:

Most brands (should) look at your following and engagement metrics as an afterthought. The real value when working with a content creator is their voice and quality of content, especially if they’re planning to use your images and video as an ad or a post on their own profiles.

When looking through an endless list of people to work with, they look through your images for a few things:

• Voice – is it in line with the brand and their values?
• Are they promoting anything that goes against brand/community values?
• Do they post your best content that they would be happy to post on their own channel?
• Are they just going to hold your product and pose or actually share how it impacts their life?

The best partnerships are genuine. As a Content Creator, I only work with brands that I actually use and products that I like. I’ve had the opportunity to work with a few companies that I either don’t think would fit with my lifestyle, or where I think my opinion doesn’t matter. It’s really easy to tell where the brand has paid someone to hold a product and they take a bite or do a quick smile and put it down. It doesn’t benefit anyone.

How To Make Yourself Discoverable

There are plenty of brand-influencer platforms that match you up or allow you to apply for product programs and these are a great place to start.

• IZEA
• Hashtag Paid
• Popular Pays

Tag the brands you use/wear/feature in your social posts and get on their radar. Don’t spam them, but give them a taste of what you could do as a soft intro. Brands are more likely to pay someone they know already loves and uses them.

Use their hashtags. Where appropriate, and not too often, try and use a couple of their hashtags to appear on their searches and for brands like them.

Be an ‘easy sell’

Often it’s not the decision-maker who will see your content or suggest the brand works with you. The Social Media Specialist will have to get approval from the Manager or Director to send money or product your way. Make it really easy for the in-house person who’s going to try to convince their boss that you’re worth it:

• Give a couple of clear reasons why you’re a great partner
• Share some insights or successes from previous (similar) collaborations
• Provide a quick timeline of when you’d like to post and how many engagements and impressions you think you’ll get.

Stand out from the rest

There’s nothing more boring than scrolling through ‘Influencers’ who look the same, hold the product in the same way, or for some reason use their rear end as a personality trait.

• Show your real life and how the products you use fit into your lifestyle.
• Talk to your niche.
• Find an editing style or visual aesthetic and stick to it to give a common thread through your work.
• Be approachable and a positive influence. Answer questions and respond to messages (and delete the junk).

There, I hope that helps. Got questions? Just ask in the comments.

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