There are so many brands that want to work with bloggers and they don’t ALL want to work with big, established bloggers. As a new blogger or one with a smaller following you might be under the assumption that brands won’t want to connect with you as you aren’t influential enough and you don’t have a big enough audience. That’s simply not true and I’m going to show you how you can connect with brands and create mutually beneficial collaborations, even if you’re a micro-influencer (a content creator with less than 10k followers). Are you ready? O.k, let’s get stuck in.
All bloggers/content creators should know what they bring to the table, but as a smaller blogger you should ‘own’ and be able to shout from the rooftops what you can offer the brand. What can you do for them, that they can’t do for themselves? It might be that you have a super-engaged Facebook page, thriving Instagram community or a real skill for video content creation. If you have lower stats then you ideally need something to offer instead. At this point if you don’t have anything, you may need to build up your stats, skills and community before reaching out to brands.
If you’re a micro-influencer who has this extra skill or attractive factor, then you’re hot property! Brands are becoming more and more interested in the power of smaller influencers and are keen to collaborate with them.
CHECK OUT MY FREE WEBINAR – 5 STEPS TO WORKING WITH BRANDS AS A BLOGGER
Why are micro-influencers desirable to brands?
- Your audience believes you. Unlike celebrities, who are also paid to endorse things, your audience are more connected to you. So they will believe that you’re coming from a good place and not just in it for the money.
- Micro-influencers can often benefit from more organic reach than higher level influencers/celebrities. This translates to more eyeballs on on your content and more exposure for the brand.
- Micro-influencers tend to have a narrower niche. Narrow niches help specific groups of people solve a problem. So, you can become more of an authority within this narrow niche than you would achieve within a wider niche.
What do brands look for when choosing bloggers?
PERSONALITY
Brands want to work with bloggers who stand out in some way, so it’s important that you show your personality through your blog. No-one wants to work with ‘Beige-Bev! Showing your personality will connect your true fans to you and trust will develop. These people will become regular readers and this engagement is what the brand is looking for.
Think about showing your personality, but with professionalism. If a brand checked your social media channels, would you be worried? Make sure your ‘About Me’ page is a true reflection of yourself and that it includes a photo of you.
RELEVANCE
It’s important to show brands how your audience matches the demographic the brand wants to tap into. Show the company how you fit with their brand and how your audience does too. Why would your audience be interested in their particular brand?
CHECK OUT MY FREE WEBINAR – 5 STEPS TO WORKING WITH BRANDS AS A BLOGGER
STATS
Stats are important to most brands, BUT they aren’t the most important thing in most cases. When you’re a new blogger your stats might not be huge, however there are newer brands that are small themselves who may be a perfect fit for you. Even larger brands may love what you do and want to partner with you. Just be confident about your stats. You could show the brand how your stats are growing % each month and you could even include a testimonial from a brand you have previously worked with.
Stats don’t always give the whole picture and so it’s really important to focus on engagement and producing quality content.
GREAT QUALITY CONTENT
When we contact a brand, the representative will probably click the links you provide to get an overview (their first thoughts) of you blog. Try to avoid too many sponsored/review posts. Instead try to mix your sponsored work with organic content. Also try to avoid lots of short posts (under 400 words). These don’t really give much value to your audience and they’re bad for SEO too. Poor graphics, a lack of disclosure and bad spelling and grammar will all be off-putting to brands.
Instead try to focus on substantial posts, which are useful to your audience. Work on your post layout and graphics. Making sure you link to and showcase other relevant posts you have.
VISIBILITY
Brands often have the people and finances to make a lot of things happen for their business. However, what they need us bloggers for primarily is exposure to a certain demographic. This means knowing who your readers are is really important. You will need to know how many page views, unique users, where your audience live, their gender and age brackets. Possibly even their education and/or income levels (although these two are less commonly required).
ENGAGEMENT
With changing algorithms engagement, in many cases, has suffered. Personally where I used to get 500 likes on a picture with 10k followers, I now only get around 100-160 per picture with 17k followers. A lot of my friends comment that they never see my pictures in their feed and my analytics show that my images are shown to around 300 people in my audience! I have never bought followers, but I do not have hours upon hours each day to spend engaging on Instagram in order to increase the likes on my pictures. So, as you can see engagement can be difficult for many reasons. There is a lot of talk around 1-3% being the engagement ratio that brands are looking for on Instagram to work with you. However, this is not set in stone, I often have less and brands still work with me.
Brands will also be looking at the comments and will be assessing whether they think you can influence your audience.
GOOD QUALITY VIDEO/PHOTOGRAPHY
You might have got into blogging to write and may think photos are not too important. However, to brands good quality original imagery (and video if relevant) are really important. They want to be associated with a quality blog, and if they are sending you products they want to know you will take good pictures of them.
A MEDIA KIT
A media kit is a CV for your blog. In this one/two page document you can outline the elevator pitch for your blog, the demographics of your audience, your blogging achievements, the collaborations you offer, followers and traffic numbers. You might not always be asked for one, but they’re important when pitching and it does make you look more prepared and professional.
You don’t have to put rates on your media kit and I would advise against it. Each campaign will have subtle differences in the deliverables required and so it’s a better idea to give a custom price for each campaign.
A CLEAR PITCH
The most important factors of a pitch is that is it clear, concise and relevant. Brands do not need war and peace. Be clear on what you want and what you offer in return. Don’t make the brand try to figure out where you could fit into their marketing plan, do that for them. Show them how the demographic of your readers fits their desired audience.
So, as you can see there is so much you can do as a new blogger to stand out and attract brand collaborations. Will you take the plunge and pitch a brand?
CHECK OUT MY FREE WEBINAR – 5 STEPS TO WORKING WITH BRANDS AS A BLOGGER
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