Why are brand collaborations between influencers and businesses important?

Brand collaborations are important for content creators on social media because they offer a way for creators to monetize their content and turn their passion into a sustainable career. By partnering with brands to advertise their products or create content for them to use on their pages and marketing, content creators can earn an incredible income and other bonuses, like free products or experiences, in exchange for promoting the brand’s products or services to their audience.

Secondly, brand collaborations can help content creators grow their audience and increase their reach. By partnering with a brand, a content creator may be able to tap into the brand’s audience and gain exposure to new followers. Additionally, working with a reputable brand can lend credibility to a content creator’s personal brand and help them establish themselves as an authority in their niche.

On the other hand, brand collaborations can also benefit the brand itself. By partnering with a content creator, a brand can tap into the creator’s audience and gain exposure to potential customers who may not have been aware of the brand before. Additionally, working with a content creator can help a brand create more authentic and relatable content that resonates with their target audience. It is also a lot more cost efficient to work with content creators than hiring out a full production to shoot content. Customers want more relatable content now and creators are the best way to do that.

What do brand collaborations look like?

Some examples of successful brand collaborations with content creators on social media include fashion and beauty brands partnering with influencers to promote their products, food and beverage companies partnering with food bloggers to create recipes featuring their products, and travel brands partnering with travel bloggers to showcase their destinations. These collaborations have resulted in increased sales, brand awareness, and engagement for both the creators and the brands.

Overall, brand collaborations can be win-win situation for content creators and brands alike. By working together, they can create authentic and engaging content that resonates with their audience and helps them achieve their respective goals.

Why you should become a creator and work with brands

So, imagine what your week will look like receiving free products you’re excited to use, and having that extra cash each month just from creating some videos or photos about something you already use or are excited to use.

I call this lifestyle income – when you can make money just from living your desired lifestyle. It’s pretty awesome!

If you want to start a side-hustle as a content & UGC creator or you’re frustrated why your influencer business isn’t growing and landing the types of collaborations you see others on social media doing, you’ll want to make sure to do these 3 things to attract and land brand collaborations. Working with brands is the bread and butter of content creators and influencers.

So let’s dive into the 3 tactics below to land more collaborations with brands & businesses.

3 ways to attract more brand collaborations

1. Organically share about & engage with the brand

Nowadays, we really need to get a brand’s attention directly and the best way of course is directly USING social media. THEY also want to work with creators that are a “natural” fit – someone who is already a customer or a fan of them and their products.

Here are some ideas for organically interacting with brands to attract future collaborations:

• like and comment on the brand’s recent posts
• respond to the brand’s stories with emojis or comments
• share a post of the brand to your story
• share something in your stories you have of the brand’s and tag them
• share something on “your wishlist” or “in your cart this week” of the brand’s and tag them
• tag the brand in a recent post where you mention them in the caption or they are visually shown

2. Introduce yourself to PR agencies that manage influencer campaigns

A lot of bigger brands and businesses have PR agencies that manage the creators for their marketing campaigns. So if a brand is already spending money on hiring an agency, that’s a good sign they have a bigger budget to include for creator collaborations and sponsorships.

Brands that have agencies managing these campaigns will regularly reach out to creators and influencers in their network or someone they’ve already worked with when a new campaign comes up. It’s beneficial to the brand and the agency if they already know creators to work with that are reliable and have great content & results.

They also start “pre-seeding” new products and campaigns through gifted campaigns (basically, the agency will send out the product as gifts to creators with no pressure to post in hopes of them sharing and a way to start building a relationship and warming up their audience before a campaign). This is both beneficial to the brand and creator: it starts building a relationship with them, it starts to introduce your audience to a brand or product which would make a full campaign collaboration more organic feeling, and it starts getting more exposure for the brand to gauge a response.

So send an introductory email to a PR agency and introduce yourself and your social pages/content portfolio. Something along the lines of..

“Hi___(include their name if you can, otherwise, ”agency name” team can work)!

I’m your name and I’m a content creator/influencer/blogger on Instagram and TIktok (include your social linked in the text). I share a lot about mention the topics you post about/create about. (optional to add this if you can see their brand roster) I’m already a huge fan of mention brands they represent.  I wanted to make the introduction in case you have any upcoming campaigns where my audience and content might be a match. I’d love it if you kept me in mind for anything I’d be a fit for!

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Your name

@your social media links “

3. Post content aligned with brands you want to work with

Posting content that aligns with the values and products of the brands you want to work with is important because it shows that you are a natural fit for their brand.

Want to work with a few fashion brands? They are going to look for posts that show off clothes like a get ready with me, a fashion haul, a carousel of looks, and that you already tag and mention brands.  If you want to work with a software product or app, you’ll want to be sharing about tools you use. In general, it needs to be an overall fit and they can see you can post about them in a natural way (that also sells).

Mostly, you need to be in the mindset of attracting these collaborations through your content, and direct and passive outreach. The key is to create content that shows you can organically promote their products in a way that resonates with your audience.

Brands need to know you can and will produce the kind of content they need. They also need to know it will land with your audience – if you never share about a certain topic and suddenly you are promoting a brand for it, your audience won’t be ready to make a purchase and act on it (you need to see something 8-15 times before you decide to buy or act!). So if you’re regularly sharing links to your outfits, or talking about latest sustainable skincare, your audience expects it and is more likely to take action on your recommendations and promotions (further benefiting you and the brand). Sharing about these more builds trust with your audience and the brands.

So be honest with yourself. Have you been doing these things (or have you been too caught up with how many views or followers you’re getting…?) If not, which ones can you work on? I’m here cheering you on!

Ready to grow your audience on autopilot? I dive into this even more in depth in my 60-minute FREE Instagram Masterclass Training – so sign up below and i’ll walk you through exactly how to implement this strategy. And if you’re feeling lost exactly about what your niche is – we cover exactly how to narrow this down in the training too! If you want to see follower growth and grow your account using reels (and not just get the eyeballs on your page!), nailing your niche is really going to be a big part of it, but we’ll cover this in the training. Click here to sign up for the FREE Instagram training!

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