How to work with brands with a small following | Micro-influencer without a large following

How to Work with Brands in 7 Easy Steps

From blogging, to vlogging, to social media tiktoking and instagramming, to podcasting, there are so many ways for content creators to monetize doing what they love. And if you’re a beginner content creator, you’ll find that you can work with brands sooner than you think. There will be no gatekeeping in this video. There will be PLENTY of juicy tips that are relevant across all platforms. So make sure to watch this video to the end and save it for later.

In this video, I’m going to assume that you already know how to create high-quality content that informs, entertains, or inspires people because that is the key to your success as a creator. So let’s say you’ve already grown your audience to 1000 followers or subscribers on whichever platform, I’m going to dive straight into how you can work with brands.

Before we get into it, I want to thank Uscreen for sponsoring this video!

[Uscreen mention]

So let’s get started!

1. Define your niche
   1. As much as I’m a believer that you shouldn’t box yourself into a niche, you should, instead, create content that reflects your authentic self. But, ultimately, you’ll find out where your interests lie. So it’s important to know these interests when you approach brands because they are looking to work with creators related to their niche, their values, and their interests. Brands have the opportunity to work with countless creators, so it’s more important to them that they find the right fit. And the right fit is a creator who creates high-quality content, is aligned with their values & interests, has an audience that trusts them, and of course, is professional to work with.
2. Write an email template
   1. Introduce yourself, what platform you publish on, your social proof, and your analytics. And share what content you have coming up: “I have a video coming up that will be perfect for your products.” Share what the titles are.
   2. Keep everything to in 2 paragraphs. Write bullet points if you have to. Brands get emails ALL THE TIME. So you have to make sure your email goes straight to the point, it’s not a large block of text because eh that’s a huge turn off, and address them by THEIR NAME. But how do you find out their name? I’ll get to that in a little bit.
   3. So keep it short, sweet, succinct and end it with an open-ended question and a post-script that mentions that you can always send your media kit. And obviously, don’t forget to link back to your blog, youtube channel, instagram handle, whatever it is you use.
   4. Tip #1: As corny as it sounds, be yourself. Your most authentic self and voice. Brands love that.
3. Find out who to send the emails to
   1. You can try sending your email through the brand’s contact page, especially if they’re a small business, but if they’re not, you need to find someone’s name. And here’s how to do it:
   2. Go to hunter.io and type in the brand’s website. For example, you want to work with Hilton. Type Hilton, and below it’ll show the most common email pattern. Remember that pattern.
   3. Now go to Linkedin, create an account or sign in, and search for employees working at Hilton. You’re looking for people in the marketing department. A position to look out for are
      1. Marketing manager
      2. Influencer relations
      3. Brand specialist
      4. Get an idea of possible positions these people have to do with marketing and write down their names.
4. Send those emails, AND ALWAYS ADDRESS THEM BY THEIR NAME.
   1. If you can, send 10 emails a day
   2. Tip #2: It’s a numbers game. Don’t lose hope and keep doing what you’re doing even if you don’t hear back from people yet.
5. Create your media kit
   1. And in the meantime, while you’re waiting for responses. Create your media kit which is a one-pager that includes a description of you, your content, audience demographics, platform statistics, past collaborations, and contact information. You can purchase templates from Etsy, Creativemarket and even find free templates on Canva. Don’t get distracted by the media kits with multiple pages. Keep it stupid simple. Pop in your information, plug in your stats, and update the colors to your brand.
   2. Tip: #3 You don’t need a lot of followers to work with brands but you need a loyal audience. Don’t be discouraged by the number of your followers. Harness your power as a micro-influencer. A micro-influencer is someone who has 1000-50k followers. If that’s you, your advantage is that you are more likely to have an authentic audience that’s as passionate as you which means you have a higher engagement rate and a stronger connection with your followers. Brands love that.
6. Send media kit and negotiate
   1. So let’s talk about the R word… RATES: Just put a number out there. If they accept easily, make it higher next time. In my experience, brands always negotiate no matter how high. It’s better to start high then negotiate down. Then to start down and try to negotiate up.
   2. If they immediately accept your rate, make it a little higher with the next brand. If they negotiate with you, you might be at the sweet spot. If they say you’re out of their budget, then ask what their budget is and create a packaged service that fits that budget. There are always workarounds.
   3. Tip #4: Take into account the value of what you’re receiving vs. the value of your services when negotiating.
   4. Tip #5: Group your services together as a package where you post about the brand across different platforms. Say you can mention them on your podcast, post about them on Instagram, and your email newsletter. And if it’s a right fit, it’s a right fit.
   5. I’m going to repeat Tip #2 again: It’s a numbers game. And find out what those numbers are. It might take 10 nos to get 1 yes. It might take 70 nos and 4 maybes to get 1 yes. Just know that as you grow your audience and create more content, your yes to no ratio will get smaller and smaller.
7. Do the work, and create the content.
   1. And if the brand doesn’t bring it up first, ask for a contract. It’s a red flag if they say a contract is not needed.
   2. I wrote, filmed and edited an entire video without a contract. I was halfway through the editing stage when the brand ghosted me. It was a lot of work that ended up not getting posted. It was a dedicated video and I was NOT going to give that brand a free recommendation especially after they left me in the dark.
   3. Tip #6: You should be putting more effort into your sponsored content. Try to make it seamless and make it obvious to your viewers that the video they’re watching is sponsored. Obviously, this depends on the FTC guidelines of your country- you’ll be able to find that out with a quick Google search.
   4. After you publish the sponsored content, sometimes brands don’t pay immediately. Make sure this is outlined in your contract. And if they’re late on their payment, there’s nothing wrong with following up to get paid. Keep following up every few days until you get paid.

To wrap up,

Working with brands is a great way for beginner content creators to make money. And you can monetize your content sooner than you can with affiliate marketing and ads. Try out the steps I mentioned and let me know how it worked out for you. Make sure to save this video for later so that you can refer back to this.

It’s a lot of work sending emails in the beginning but once you find that one brand to work with and get paid, it makes all the hard work worth it. And it gets better each time. Soon enough, brands will be approaching YOU to work with THEM. And then YOU get to weed out the brands that don’t refer to YOU by name.

My name is Jojo and I looove sharing my journeys as a content creator, a traveler, an islander, a wife, and a cat momma. If you liked this video and you’re into this sort of stuff, please consider liking my video, subscribing to my channel, and checking out this playlist for videos similar to this one you watched. And don’t forget to check my Etsy store! I sell planners.

Okay, I’ll see you in the next one!! Take care! Bye!!