Being an influencer on Social Media is becoming so trendy that many brands are seeing the benefit of investing more of their marketing budget toward Micro-Influencers. If you are actively involved with social media and consider yourself an “Influencer” then you have most likely had your share of lavish watch or handcrafted jewelry companies reach out to you for a TFP (trade for post) agreement. The excitement of your first collaboration is a game changer:
“Someone wants to work with lil ol’ me!?”
“I’m finally on the right track”
“This is it. This is my moment and it’s just the beginning”
But after a just few of those social media successes the excitement starts to die down or brands stop reaching out.
If you’re right there with me and have your hand waving in the air yelling “YES, Millie, this is me” (or even if you haven’t experienced a brand collaboration yet) you will definitely relate to my next question:
“How do I get LEGIT brands to reach out to me with quality products?”
Now, if you want me to answer that question honestly…
you don’t.
If that is your main concern, then let me stop you right there…
your mindset is wrong!
Technically we have no control when it comes to what other brands do. We can’t force them to click on our profile and write an email to us – well we COULD but that might lead us to jail and we wouldn’t want that, there’s not many brand collaborations there 😉
HOWEVER, do not worry! There are still components we DO have control of that will make brands want to reach out to us and those components are what we are going to focus on today.
Now first, we need to shift our mindset and adjust the question we’re asking ourselves:
“How can I make my Instagram ‘Brand Friendly’ so when brands come across my page, they will have the urge to reach out to me!?”
Let’s tackle the answer to that question with 5 simple adjustments:
1. Make your profile “clickable”
Before a brand even scrolls your feed, what is the first thing they notice? Your username and profile picture! If your photo is a selfie or has a snapchat filter with a username like “milliegirl1234”, I’m sorry, honey, but that is not eye-catching or professional enough to intrigue a prospective brand. Have your profile picture and username match your brand and personality
2. Make your profile public!
I cannot tell you how many times I have had someone reach out to me asking how to get brands to notice them and their account is on private! If your account is on private, no one can see your content, or what you create, or what you are even about etc. If you have reservations about showing certain pictures to just anyone and everyone, then try having a personal account that remains private, and a business account that remains public.
3. Make your bio ABOUT YOU
A lot of people don’t know this but there are websites that act as search engines for brands to easily find influencers by looking at keywords from your bio. For example, if a brand is looking for Influencers in “San Diego”, they can search that as a keyword, and if “San Diego” is in your bio, you will pop up on their list of potential Influencers. Your bio has a limited amount of characters so everything a brand should know about you needs to fit in there. Maybe it’s time to put your favorite quote as a caption to a photo instead of taking up important space in your bio.
4. Make your feed/content consistent
This piece of advice is one that I’m sure we have all heard a million times. Although it is the most common advice you hear, it is also the most crucial to growing your account and maintaining a “brand friendly” feed. With consistent coloring and photos focused on your niche, brands will know by a simple glance at your feed what YOU are about, if your style matches their style, and exactly what type of content they can expect from you when working together. Here are two examples:
The first one is an example of an inconsistent feed. Yes, maybe the pictures INDIVIDUALLY look great, but as a whole they are kind of all over the place. Is this a food blogger? Photographer? Just someone posting photos with their friends? It doesn’t give the brand a clear image of what they can expect when working together:
The second feed has consistency in coloring from the highlight covers to each photo. The brand will look at this feed and know exactly what style photo they’ll get in return if they choose to work with them
5. Be on-top of your engagement
It is not about numbers anymore. Well actually, let me rephrase that – It’s not about your number of followers anymore. Brands can spot someone who bought fake followers in a heartbeat, they would rather work with someone who has followers who truly believe in them. What they are looking for are Influencers with a 3%+ engagement. What is engagement? Engagement is the percentage of your followers that are engaging with your photos.
For example, if you have 10,000 followers, on average they are looking for a minimum of 300 likes per post (of course the % of engagement varies per brand).
6. BONUS TIP: Reach out to them!
This is my personal favorite. If you want a brand to notice you, it’s okay to kind of “get in their face”. Turn on their post notifications, engage with their posts, buy their products and post photos using them, tag them etc. Just make sure you don’t come across an overly obsessed and attached ex.
With all that being said, we can make our account as “brand friendly” as possible, but after all those tips are applied, why WAIT for brands to reach out to you? Why not reach out to them yourself!?
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