As an influencer campaign manager, I get this question a lot. To be honest, there’s no solid answer on how exactly to get brands to notice you for a collaboration. However, there are definitely a few things you can do to up your chances at being noticed. In today’s blog post, I’m covering exactly how to work with brands in 2021 and how to get your favorite brands to notice you.
There’s no real formula to getting noticed by brands. Most of the time my peers and I find influencers while scrolling through our own Instagram. We also search hashtags, locations, bio keywords and look at suggested accounts for some of our favorite content creators.
RELATED:
How to Effectively Pitch to Brands
How to get brands to notice you
Create engaging content
We’ve all heard it, content is KING! This couldn’t be more true when it comes to partnering with brands. Truth is, brands and campaign managers DO look at the type of content you produce. Now more than ever, your Instagram feed is your portfolio for brands. With that being said, what you post can greatly affect whether you get chosen for collaboration or not.
This means the content you produce is being looked at more than followers and sometimes even engagement.
To help you crush the content game, I’ve listed some types of content brands love and hate (feedback coming directly from my clients.)
Type of content brands hate
- Mirror images – you know those ootd ones in front of the mirror, yeah a ton of my clients dislike those because of the unoriginality.
- Flat lays – unless asked, companies pay photographers for those and prefer their influencers to avoid this content.
- Over-filtered content – there’s nothing wrong with having an aesthetic, but keep it minimal so a brand can also see how your content will look on their feed.
- Product-holding images – these are boring and show a lack of creativity
Type of content brands love:
- Lifestyle
- Images with movement
- Inspiring images
- Bright and colorful images
- Images where you are using the products/ showing functionality
- Raw videos and underproduced user-generated style content
Organically tag brands you love
The easiest way to get a brand to notice you and work with brands in 2021 is to tag them organically! My clients are always monitoring mentions on stories, and checking recent tags and nine times out of ten, they ask me to reach out to an influencer who’s tagged them organically for a collab.
Full disclosure, this it may take a few organic tags and mentions before you hear anything BUT they will notice.
Use proper Hashtags
While I do have a designated influencer database I use to scout, I find myself searching through hashtags for collaboration prospects more often than not.
Hashtags are a great way to join the conversation, get more eyes on your content (including brands) and increase your chances at being noticed in more ways than one.
If you really want to stand out to brands, I suggest checking what type of hashtags they follow and begin using them. This will increase the odds of them reaching out since they will constantly see your content via their home feed because of hashtags.
Optimize your Bio
I cannot recommend this enough! A little fun fact for those new to the space, there are A TON of influencer platforms that allow campaign managers like myself to search bio keywords.
This means that I can type in “wellness” or “lifestyle blogger” and anyone with those words in their bio will pop up!
Do yourself and your account a favor and optimize it by at least putting 2-3 keywords in your bio. If you do optimize your bio, make sure that the keywords match your content. There is nothing more annoying than finding a great account that mentions wellness but hasn’t posted anything wellness related in over four months.
How to work with brands:
Join Influencer Networks
If you have a small following or are just getting started with your influencer journey, joining influencer networks can help you land some brand deals. I personally love using these for my small brand because:
- You can land a collab no matter your size (depending on network)
- A good way to introduce sponsored posts to your audience
- Also, a good way to start practicing your creativity when it comes to photographing and implementing products in images.
So what is an influencer network? According to Mediakix influencer networks are a third-party platform that seeks to manage influencers and facilitate collaborations between the platform’s influencer database and brands looking to leverage accounts large reach and influential status.
If you’re interested in joining some networks and the pros and cons of them, I broke it all down in this blog post: 47 Influencer Networks to Join.
Pitch yourself
Pitching yourself to brands is a good way to partner with some of your favorite brands and a good way to put yourself on their radar.
If you’re new to pitching here are my top three tips for getting a response. I wrote a more in-depth post also if you are interested in that.
- Find the appropriate contact on LinkedIn or message the brand on Instagram to get the right contact. Keep in mind that nowadays, brands use agencies to run campaigns so your best bet would be to email their marketing team or DM them.
- Write your email and include your intro, your idea and the value you will bring to the brand. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point and once the brand responds, you can elaborate on anything you may have missed.
- Follow up up to 3 times!
Micro-influencer Resources
The Micro Influencer’s Handbook: How to Land Brand Deals and Build Your Personal Brand
Influencer Negotiation Checklist
1:1 Coaching and Account Audit
Got any tips on how to get noticed by brands or any insight on how to work with brands in 2021? Leave a comment below with any tips I may have missed 🙂
