We’ve all seen videos, stories, and posts that promote products and services that seemingly come out of left field. Now, these are impressive in their own right, but there certainly is something refreshing, engaging, and impression-making when seeing promotions that fit seamlessly within the content and existing branding of the creator.
The most obvious answer to this question would be, “that depends on the brand.” It’s the right answer, though, because each brand is different. Each brand has different goals, different values, a different mission, a different target demographic for advertising, a different advertising budget and strategy, and different unit economics. Those are a lot of variables at play that all help determine what a brand looks for in an influencer.
If you have been doing sponsored integrations with brands long enough, you’ve probably been through at least one round of unfair edit requests from a brand. Brand managers aren’t content creators, so they often do not know how much work it can be to edit a video or reshoot an element.
It is becoming increasingly popular for brands to leverage influencer generated content for Facebook ads. The trust of an influencer and the distribution of Facebook create a powerful combination that can result in massive sales volume.
The FTC has done an excellent job helping influencers, brands and agencies better understand how to safely promote on social media. However, many brands have yet to rigorously follow these disclosure guidelines as closely as they should.
A few months ago I published an article entitled, “Three Ways to Show Brands You Care.” Having worked with thousands of content creators, I pinpointed three common traits of the content creators that take brand partnerships the most seriously and consistently prove they care about the success of their sponsors.
During pitches from a start-up founder, I often ask the question, “What makes you the right person to build this company?”. During a pitch a few years ago, I had a founder give a unique answer to the question, ”I just needed a job.” While that was refreshingly honest, it was also an answer that left me a little hollow as a potential investor. There was no talk of solving a problem, speaking to a customer base, or even maximizing profit. Needless to say, the startup didn’t get my money.
There’s a lot of information out there about how to become an Influencer, or how to grow your influencer business. But one step you should consider aside from planning your Instagram photo color scheme or editing your YouTube videos is how to protect yourself legally.
As a creator, it is important to show brands that you care by building strong relationships with the ones that support your channel. For one, the income brands offer can help you turn YouTube into a full-time career. Secondly, your fans want to see you promote brands you believe in. I always recommend creators find a handful of brands they truly love, build genuine relationships, and then come to mutually beneficial long-term partnership terms. Jumping from brand to brand causes distrust in your audience and in my experience, that distrust leads to poorer results for brands. It is a negative cycle you want to avoid at all costs.
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