Many people aiming for social media stardom see it as a way to achieve financial independence. You can accomplish this through careful planning, regular posting, engaging live streams, or, over time, brand sponsorships.
However, being a new name on popular social media platforms means struggling to find your audience and, in turn, brands interested in collaboration. So, let’s discuss how new influencers can get sponsors, earn more from their platforms, and support their channel growth in other ways.
First Duty: Finding Your Audience
Sponsors want partners that can showcase products to a broad or targeted audience. For example, a makeup brand could choose creators who test new palettes or foundations. But how can you start gathering a following that would attract potential sponsors?
- Optimize your posts to include hashtags and descriptions for the algorithm to categorize your content.
- Follow trends to help people discover your content.
- Make subscribing worthwhile by continuously posting content relevant to your followers.
Prepare Your Channel Or Account To Be Sponsor-Friendly
Influencers know how to keep their followers entertained; it is not about posting similar selfies. Diversity, be it the topic, scenery, angles, format, or other details in your post, is crucial.
Make it enjoyable by showcasing the different types of content you can offer. If needed, take inspiration from successful creators introducing something new with each post.
Don’t Wait For Opportunities
Highly popular channels or accounts can receive multiple offers for collaboration. However, smaller influencers are more incognito for now, meaning brands might not even know about you (or whether you’re interested). You can start hinting at your readiness for a sponsorship by these actions:
- If you make videos or posts about a positive experience with a product or brand, include the company in the hashtag or tag it in the description. If the brand monitors their social media carefully, it should put you on its radar.
- Pitch yourself to brands and show why you are an ideal candidate for a sponsorship. Finding a company’s PR contacts is not too challenging; plenty of templates can help shape the perfect email. Your offer should include your reason (such as loving the company’s products), your statistics (views and followers), and a brief audience description.
- Include your contact information in your account profile to help brands approach you in their preferred way.
What About Gift Options?
As a new influencer, you might be excited if a company offers to send you a product for review. In other words, they pay you in goods instead of money.
While it can be a start, much work goes into preparing and making a post attractive and honest. Thus, always double-check if the brand wants a paid sponsorship instead of sending you a few freebies.
Until Sponsors Arrive
Until you can be proud of your sponsorships, you must generate income in other ways. You can support your channel or account through platform-specific monetization strategies (such as ads).
If you need to invest in props or better equipment, like a professional camera, pick up simple money-earning opportunities. That could include generating free money from affiliate marketing, cashback apps, or unused internet bandwidth sharing. Most of these won’t distract you from your main goal: successful content creation, but still generate some funds to support your venture.
Conclusion
Starting your dream job as an influencer takes time and dedication to prove your content worthy of a follow. You’ll need to aim for unique posts, showing viewers something they haven’t encountered before. In other cases, your personality could be the selling point, attracting more and more members. In time, you should receive sponsorship offers naturally, but until then, take time to pitch yourself and showcase the strength of your channel!