When you feel like you’re ready to start taking on collaborations, where do you even start? Where do you find brands that want to collaborate with you? How do you find brands that want to collaborate? This is probably one of my favorite topics to teach, so let’s get into it!

Where to find brands?

Your Home Town: This one makes me feel like I’m selling Girl Scout Cookies again because it’s more of a “go door-to-door” method. Grab a notebook and start researching local companies you’d want to partnership. One, you get to support local businesses! Two, you already know you have something in common, where you’re from!

Your current followers: If you’ve been on social media for a while and been pumping out content left and right but feel like no one is seeing. You might actually be wrong! Check your current followers. I’m sure you have dozens of eager companies that already follow you and love your stuff,.

On social media: I know this might be a little vague and I’m going to talk more about the step-by-step for HOW to find them on social media but this needs to be said. When you’re looking for brands to collaborate with, the first thing you want to do is make sure they’re active on social media. Are they currently utilizing Influencer Marketing? What kind of Influencers are they collaborating with? Do your research on the company first!

Third Party Platforms ⁣That Connect You With Brands: With Influencer Marketing growing more and more every day, these “agencies” and platforms are growing too! I used these when I first started and they were great for finding “trade for post” collaborations. Simply start a Google search and type “Influencer Marketing Platform” and you’ll be hit with at least 10!

How do I find the brands?

In addition to some of the tips above, I have a few extra tips for you.

Other Influencers: Look at other Influencers within your niche and see who they are partnering with. Save these photos in a “Partner” folder on Instagram or write them down somewhere to pitch to later

Think “on the shelf” brands: When people think of “collaborations” they often go to big name brands first: Target, Starbucks, Michaels etc. Instead of starting with the big guns, think more “on the shelf”. When you walk into Target, what brands are THEY selling? Who are they partnered with, that might be lesser known, that you could pitch to?

Use the “suggested” feature on Instagram: If the world hits a huge pandemic, we’re all trapped indoors again, and you CAN’T go to a grocery story for inspiration. Try finding the brand on Instagram, and when you click the down arrow next to their “follow” button, Instagram will give you a ton of suggested Instagram accounts, mostly other businesses, based on that one.

Search the hashtag #sponsored or #ad: This one can be a hit or miss because these tags are highly saturated. However, when you look up these hashtags on Instagram it is literally providing you with all the Influencers who have landed collaborations. You can search through those photos and find brands that fit within your niche!

I KNOW at least one of these tips blew your mind. Take a picture, or screenshot, your favorite tip, share the photo to your Instagram stories while tagging me (@itsmodernmillie) so I can give you a shoutout!