Checklist For Influencers To Get a Brands Attention

Within the past decade, we have seen a huge shift in the commercial advertising arena. As social media continues to grow at an exponential rate, many brands are transforming their marketing strategies by collaborating with creators. 

As a content creator, brand sponsorships can be a huge source of revenue for you and it is important to know exactly how you can leverage yourself in this space. In this article, I will outline five key ways to put yourself out there and hopefully land some awesome partnerships! 

• Easy to find email address: When brands are seeking out potential influencers to collaborate with, the most common method of outreach is via email. Because of this, it is important that your email address is easy to find. Having no email address present on your social media account makes it much harder for brands to reach out to you, which could significantly lessen your number of potential sponsorship opportunities. On this same note, make sure that you are regularly checking your email for messages from brands that want to work with you. Sometimes brands are capped at how many influencers they can work with for a given campaign, so replying back in a timely manner will go a long way in securing your partnership. 

• Professional and brand safe image: A creator who collaborates with a brand is essentially an extension of that brand. This is especially true in our current day and age where content creators wield a lot of power and influence when it comes to shaping public opinion. As the famous saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility.” In order to uphold a positive representation of the brand and its core values, brands will only partner with creators who share their same code of ethics. Maintaining a professional public image and avoiding controversy are the two main ways to ensure that your platform remains brand safe. 

• Consistent posting schedule: Consistency is the ultimate key to success in this space. The more you post engaging and relevant content, the faster that you can grow your platform and garner a devoted audience. Over time, this hard work and consistency will trickle down into new and exciting sponsorship opportunities as brands inevitably start to take notice. Posting at least once a week is a good place to start but posting at least once a month is absolutely imperative. Keep in mind that brands look to work with creators who are routinely engaging with their audience, as this leads to the most genuine and well-performing integrations.

• High and consistent engagement: Brands want to work with influencers who have an engaged audience. A common baseline in the industry is an account with over 10,000 followers. However, this baseline is just an estimate and there are other factors at play when it comes to determining overall engagement. At InfluenceLogic, we work with many YouTube content creators and this route of collaboration remains one of our favorites. With YouTube channels, it is crucial to note that views are much more important than subscribers. Your average view count is the best indicator of audience engagement, so brands will focus on this number over subscriber count. Brands also utilize view count statistics to determine monetary payouts for collaborations. 

• Appropriate demographics: Every brand is unique when it comes to what they look for in terms of audience demographics and it can greatly vary depending on the campaign. Generally, many brands will look to work with creators who have an audience that is over 18 years of age. This is because most brands are trying to sell a product or service that is targeted towards the adult population who has some level of disposable income. Another common restriction is targeting based on geography. Certain brands will have products that only ship to certain countries so they will look to work with influencers who have an audience that fits this demographic. All in all, demographics are something to keep in mind as an influencer, but it is not something to worry too much about.