Whether you’re a micro- or macro-influencer, brand collaborations can really help elevate your personal brand. Finding and getting brand collaborations, on the other hand, can be a bit tricky.
Many factors come into play when it comes to succeeding with Instagram brand collaborations. And, as an influencer, you need to be able to show brands that you’re the right one for the job.
In this complete guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about finding brand collaborations. You’ll also get our top notch tips on how to succeed with them.
Table of Contents
What are brand collaborations on Instagram?
A brand collaboration is simply when a brand and an influencer join forces. They do this to create unique, exclusive content about the brand and their product or service.
Influencers use their strengths to ensure the brand benefits from the collaboration, aka a win-win situation! This can take many forms, ranging from just a simple shout out to a dedicated post, and anything in between.
Brand collaborations on Instagram are all about building relationships with brands you love. But it doesn’t stop there. They can also help you expand your reach, engage your audience, earn money, and so much more!
How do you find brand collaborations?
There’s a couple of ways to find brand collaborations. Below, you’ll find 3 common ways:
Reach out to brands who follow and engage with you
Reaching out to brands who already follow you is probably the easiest way to get brand collaborations.
Since these brands follow you, you can be sure they’re already interested in the type of content you create.
Check your followers, likes, and comments to identify any brands that engage with you regularly. Also, check your DMs to make sure you’re aware of any brands that might’ve tried to contact you.
List out brands you already love
You probably already have a mental list of brands you love! This makes it easy to identify potential brands you can partner up with. Plus, since you’re already a fan of the brand, your inquiry to collaborate will be 100% genuine.
Just remember to make sure you have similar audiences, and that your niche compliments the brand you’re reaching out to. That way, any collaboration you do will be extremely valuable to both you and the brand.
You can reach out to the brand to show them your previous work and let them know you’re interested in working with them.
You’ll find some tips on how to reach out to brands below.
Check out other influencers’ Instagram profiles
Another great way to find brand collaborations is to check out other influencers’ Instagram profiles. This will give you a good feel for which brands are actively collaborating with influencers and more open to partnering up.
Take a look at their social media profiles to see if they’ve worked with any brands recently. You can save their posts or take note of any brands you’d be interested in reaching out to.
Always look for profiles that are similar to yours. That way, you’ll have a greater chance at finding brands that fit your profile!
How to reach out to brands for collaborations
When you’ve narrowed down what brands you’re interested in working with, you’ll first need to break the ice!
You can do this by reaching out to brands via social media, their website contact form, or an email address you can find on their site. Some brands even have a dedicated page for influencers interested in collaborations.
As for your pitch, it’s important you present yourself as a professional. Remember, this is your chance to make a stellar first impression. Keep your pitch short and personal, yet descriptive, and make sure you share your unique offering to them.
Standing out from the crowd might seem hard when pitching to brands, but a media kit should do the trick!
A media kit is a portfolio and digital business card rolled into one. It’s an easy-to-read professional document that you can use to introduce yourself to brands. It tells brands everything they need to know about you and your influencer status.
From details about your social media channels, to information about your goals and audience demographic, media kits include everything about who you are and what you offer.
Don’t have a media kit? You can create one with inzpire.me. By signing up for a free account, your profile can be used as your media kit. It’ll show all the metrics and insights brands are looking for.
Best part – it’s first-party data! Meaning the data comes directly from your social media channels and updates automatically every day.
How to do a successful collaboration
You’ve nailed your pitch and got a collaboration request. Congratulations! Here’s our best insights on how to successfully execute a brand collaboration – from start to finish. Learn what results brands expect in collaborations.
Go through the campaign brief carefully
When you’re starting to prepare for your collaborations, the first and most important step is to carefully read through the campaign brief to understand the brand’s wishes. This is when you’ll want to ask any questions you may have.
Be sure to review the goals of the campaign, as well as any delivery deadlines or resources that might be helpful to you. You can also take note of the most important details and tasks you need to complete. This’ll help you stay on track throughout the collaboration.
Taking the time to review the brief can help you save time and avoid making mistakes along the way.
Be relevant and authentic
Being relevant and authentic is the foundation of being a successful influencer. Take the time to look for inspiration and reflect on how you can organically fit the brand into your lifestyle.
You should also brainstorm around what message you want to share with your followers. Storytelling is an important aspect of being authentic.
Always share your personal and honest opinions about the brand. Transparent reviews that relate to your personal life will feel more authentic to your followers.
Remember, your followers like you for your personality and content, so it’s important to keep your communication to them open and personal.
Create high-quality content
When collaborating with brands, it’s important you represent them well. This is because you’re working as an extended arm of the brand.
Brands value high-quality content, so be sure you take the time to create high-quality visuals that align well with the brand’s image. This is especially important if you’ve agreed to let the brand reuse your content.
Publishing clear and high-quality content will help increase the success of the collaboration. It’ll also boost your personal image and credibility. Learn how to tag branded content on Instagram.
Engage with your followers
Building good relationships with your followers is crucial to earning their trust and loyalty. One of the best ways you can do this is by engaging with them regularly.
And for a brand, it’s an important consideration when deciding which influencer to work with. When a brand collaborates with you, they’re leveraging the relationships you’ve built with your followers.
When you actively engage with your followers, they’re more likely to trust you. Doing this will not only increase the value of your collaborations, but also help strengthen your relationships with your followers.
You can engage your followers in a couple different ways, including responding to comments, publishing stories with polls, and asking your followers for feedback and advice.
Be professional
Once you’ve agreed to collaborate with a brand, act professionally and do your best to deliver valuable work.
Be transparent and keep brands informed about any complications or delays. Always stay in close contact with the brand and ask questions well in advance of any deadlines. It’s also important that you’re proactive and respond to messages in a timely manner.
By doing this, you’ll gain a good reputation in the influencer industry. It’ll also help you get more collaboration opportunities in the future. To learn more, read our 5 tips on successful brand collaboration.
Examples of successful brand collaborations
Stadium’s #MoveWithStadium campaign with inzpire.me
In this incredible collaboration, Stadium turned to inzpire.me to work with influencers and scale their content production.
Stadium’s main goal was to create fresh and creative content to reuse on their social media channels. They wanted influencers to inspire their audiences to enjoy an active lifestyle, while also raising awareness about Stadium’s brands.
All the influencers in the campaign aligned naturally with Stadium’s goals, and used their creativity to produce high-quality content for the brand.
The results? A viral campaign that reached 2 million people. The influencers smashed all benchmarks and created 184 more pieces of content than expected!
Because the brand was so relevant for their profiles, the content resonated extremely well with their audience – creating through-the-roof engagement. Talk about a match made in heaven!
Oreo’s #CookieWithACause campaign
When the coronavirus pandemic hit the globe, the Oreo team wanted to bring people together by using the brand’s playfulness.
That’s when they came up with the idea of collaborating with influencers to kickoff the #CookieWithACause campaign on TikTok. Oreo pledged to make a donation to Save the Children once the campaign had generated at least 1 million videos.
Oreo challenged influencers to place a cookie on their forehead and move it down to their mouth, without using your hands. It’s safe to say the influencers absolutely loved the campaign!
By leveraging their creativity, influencers created super fun and clever videos that really engaged their followers.
All-in-all, the campaign was a huge hit! The influencers’ creative and authentic videos generated over 3 billion hashtag views for the campaign. Plus, their videos inspired multiple well-known celebrities to join in on the fun – creating even more engagement.
Even Jimmy Fallon gave it a try on his show with Jared Leto!
Final thoughts
There you have it! An ultimate guide to brand collaborations.
Succeeding with brand collaborations all comes down to being professional and authentic. Collaborate with brands who fit your profile and deliver high-quality work, and you’ll see brands offering you long-term partnerships in no time!
