Influencer marketing has been on the rise for sometime now. However, the influencer marketing landscape has gradually evolved with time and brands are now seeing the value of micro influencers. Similar to getting a recommendation from a trusted friend, influencers have the same effect on their followers. If you’re not yet familiar, micro influencers are people with a following of around 1,000 to 100,000 followers.
With many talented content creators in the market, the competition for brand collaborations is higher than ever. If you’re a micro influencer looking to get more brand collaborations, here are some tips to help you pitch and get noticed by brands.
1. Find Your Niche
One of the most crucial things to establish as a micro influencer is your personal niche. Are you looking to create fashion content or do you post more food related content? Your niche is what creates your unique personal brand and sets you apart from other micro influencers. In fact, a well defined niche helps to improve your engagement rate as you are providing something specific that your followers are interested in. A strong personal brand also indicates your ability to connect with your followers in a meaningful way – and that is exactly what brands want you to help them with.
You might be wondering, how do I find a niche? To identify your niche, choose something you are passionate or have expertise in. It could be in food if you love cooking or fashion if you have a knack for putting killer outfits together. Some examples of creators with a well-defined niche include @phobymo who specialises in photography and @stuffbeneats who is a food instagrammer.
With a well-defined niche, the content they produce is consistent and aligned to a specific interest. In turn, this would attract followers who share the same interests as them. This helps you to stand out as an obvious choice for brands to reach the specific audience who are enthusiastic about your niche. For example, a restaurant is more likely to collaborate with Ben from @stuffbeneats in order to reach enthusiasts compared to a beauty micro influencer.
2. Don’t Work With Every Brand
While this may sound counter-productive to getting more brand collaborations, it isn’t. Instead of working with all sorts of brands, you want to find the right brand that suits your niche and personal brand as a micro influencer. Some things to consider if a brand is a good fit are whether you share the same audience as the brand, do you share a similar aesthetic and style and can you create content for them that is also relevant to your audience?
Collaborating with compatible brands, will also help you to better establish your personal branding and give companies a good idea of what your profile works best with. These collaborations that align with your personal branding will enable you to deliver more relevant and value-added content to your audience. In the long run, this could help you attract and increase your chances with other similar brands that align with your style.
3. Build a Relationship with Brands You Love
Get the attention of brands you want to work with by building a relationship with them. You can do so by following them and commenting on their content. If there is a product you had a good experience using and want to work with the brand, create organic content and share it on your feed.
Olga from @fashionreflexion shares where each item of her ootd is from by tagging the respective brands for her audience.
Not only does this get the brand’s attention, it also shows them what kind of content you can create for them if they were to collaborate with you. Some brands might even reshare your content on their social media feed and gauge follower’s reactions.
Chloe from @skin.lumi regularly posts stunning sunkissed product pictures of her favourite skincare products. Her photos have been noticed by several brands such as @herbivorebotanicals who have reshared her photo on their feed.
Having a good relationship with brands helps you to be at the top of their mind the next time they have a new campaign. When creating organic content, they should be genuine and done because you really recommend their product to your audience. Creating organic content just to get a collaboration is not recommended.
4. Understand Your Audience
As mentioned earlier, this is what brands are ultimately looking for, to connect with your follower base. A good understanding of who your audience is and what they are looking for will help you create content that is interesting and relevant to them. This may also improve your engagement rate and help you identify what brands you could collaborate with in the future.
Curious to find out more about your audience? Avenue is a platform for influencers that provides you with insights to your audience and your profile’s performance. Designed to help influencers find brand collaborations, Avenue shows your compatibility with a particular brand based on your audience statistics. Download Avenue on the App Store/Play Store to start connecting with the brands you love.
