You’ve done the hard work. The planning, editing, posting, and mastering your niche. You’ve built up an audience. You’re continuing to refine your personal brand and growing your influence.

It’s time to reap the benefits and leverage your talent by working with brands.

No matter what your follower count, brands are seeing the value and huge potential of working with influencers of all sizes. If fact, many brands are seeing higher engagement and better targeting for their campaigns with micro and nano influencers.

What brands love most about working with influencers like you is the authenticity and unique style you bring to their campaigns. The value you provide is instrumental for brands and peer-to-peer marketing takes precedence over ads. They’re actively seeking out your help in reaching the right audience.

So how do you go about connecting with brands you want to work with? Here’s a few tips from our partnership directors and managers on how to stand out, provide value, and work with top brands.

Double down on your niche:

Brands are looking to work with influencers who are creating niche content and have an authentic, well-loved style they can leverage for their campaigns. Most of the time, that’s why your followers are following you in the first place! You earn followers through consistent content. If you have a niche and a style that is your own, really own that. If you’re a designer, are you a nordic minimalist or an eclectic mix of modern and traditional? If you’re a lifestyle blogger, are you a kitchen and food expert or are you focused on more decor and entertainment? Making sure your own personal brand is apparent throughout your content and profile helps you fill out that “niche” and helps brands know if you are the right fit. You will also be able to sell your style and use it to create unique campaigns and collaborations when you’re so identifiable. We actually use keywords and phrases like this to identify our influencers’ style within our platform so brands can find the best match.

Know your audience:

Brands’ biggest focus when choosing to work with you is who you are influencing. They want to know about your audience. You will want to have a really good understanding of your audience, their demographics, their interests, and what they engage with the most on your profile. This helps brands determine a good fit for a collaboration and helps you guide them on how to best reach your audience. It’s good practice to take inventory, so to speak, on your insights on your Instagram, Instagram Stories, Facebook, Pinterest, and your website (if you have a blog) frequently so you know your audience and can position yourself as the influencer to reach your niche. We use insights from our influencers to pair them with the right campaigns.

Put together a portfolio of your best:

Show them what you can do! Have a portfolio ready of your top posts and top content. Many of our brand clients are interested in receiving UGC - user generated content. They want to use uniquely styled photos, using their products, from influencers like you throughout their own social, websites and ads. This is a big perk that they get from working with you and why they’re willing to pay a premium. Showing brands what you’re capable of creating helps paint a picture of what’s possible when working with you! It’s also good practice to include some of the stats from your top posts with your creative work. We include a few top images and stats from influencers when we present to brands in their media kits.

Have you previously worked with brands? Great. Brands love to see that. It shows you know how to manage and deliver in a collaboration. If you can include stats or insights on your #sponsored posts, even better.

Have a work email and number readily available:

Don’t be difficult to get in touch with! Make sure to list the appropriate contact information in your social bio and your website. Brands do not like searching for emails or filling out general website forms. It’s also nice to have a look of professionalism and organization to your collaboration process. Instead of “soccermom123@gmail.com” as your contact email, have a professional website domain name like “collaborations@influencer.com”. Having a website also helps. Even if you don’t have a blog, a website is a great place to display your previous collaborations and share more about brand. We use information from our influencers bios and websites to create complete profiles in our platform.

Tag brands and mention products that you love:

A great way to build credibility and be authentic with your followers when introducing products is to regularly share products you do, in fact, truly love. Don’t just review brands for the purpose of getting their attention, be genuine in your recommendations and reviews. This way, your audience will trust you will make the right paid sponsorships choices when the time comes and you won’t lose authenticity in the process. We also recommend tagging brands in your posts as you never know who is watching and who may want to explore more opportunities with you. However, with the same caveat that you should only be tagging brands you are a fan of and want to recommend to your audience, not for the purpose of paid collaborations.

These are just a few ways to help make you more approachable and more visible to your dream brands! If you’re interested in working with home brands, be sure to join our platform so we can match you with awesome campaign opportunities. Sign up here!