A Memoir for Content Creators and Influencers
The Realisation of Content as Currency
The following are some thoughts and reflections I've had about the influencer/content creation world and my experience in it for the past 10+ years. This isn't necessarily a 'how-to' guide, more of a 'here are my observations and learnings about this weird space'.
You don't need to have a ton of followers to work for the brands you love (although that will definitely help). What you 100% do need is a clear idea on what skill(s) you have, or what offering you can provide clients that differentiates you from everyone else out there. Can you take great photos? Fantastic, let's use that. Are you a dedicated athlete that is on track to hopefully make a name for yourself? We can use that. A creative videographer? A magician? You get the idea - identify what helps you stand out, and learn to pitch and leverage this skill.
For over a decade now, I have been fortunate enough to partner with a very wide range of brands through creating content for social media. My first deal was with a local gym apparel brand who sent me a $30 gym singlet in exchange for a post - I was so damn excited! From that point, I realised that there was some value in the content I was producing, however, I had no idea what it was, what it equated to as a dollar figure, and how to leverage these opportunities. Fast forward through those 10+ years and I have now been able to work with brands such as Coca Cola on a 3 month Summer campaign, Hilton Hotels, Pullman Hotels, Porsche, EHPLabs and many many more.
During this time, I also completed a psychology degree which helped me quite a bit in understanding how to persuade and appeal to people in different ways, as well as worked for an ecommerce fashion label where I looked after the digital marketing/influencer marketing side of things. By being exposed to the flip side of influencer marketing (i.e. being the person creatives reach out to) it gave me a holistic view of how brand partnerships from both sides of the coin - if there's one major thing to share from this experience it's that what may seem as a big ask from you (for example asking for $700 worth of product) is actually quite a small investment on their end (like, $100 for the brand). And if you think about it, brands are constantly needing content in the world we live in today, and they can't be organising regular photoshoots to keep the flow of content consistent as it would get waaaay too expensive:
Photographer for half a day minimum - $1500+
Model(s) - $200ish per hour per model
Makeup Artist - $300
Location - ~$500-1000
Creative Director - $?
This quickly adds up, so it is easily in their best interest to give free products to many different creators to handle all of the points above, instead of organising it on their own dime. Let's do some quick maths with the above costings: a half day photoshoot with all of the above would be around $3500...for this amount in contra product (at cost price, the $100 as used in the example above), the brand could get 35 pieces of UGC (user generated content) shared across multiple social media platforms, to a variety of audiences, with zero effort on the brand's part.
I have tried many different ways to approach brands such as:
Cold emailing a brand's customer service email
Creating a one page pdf media kit that I would email brands
Paying thousands of dollars for my own publicist for a couple of years to help me secure deals
Did they work? Well, sort of. On the odd occasion I would get a positive response and secure a deal, but the conversion rate for the amount of emails I sent vs replies I got was atrociously small.
It wasn't until I focussed on how to best position myself, what I do, and what I can offer potential clients that I started seeing more positive results. That, coupled in with understanding the concepts of social proofing and the power of constant leverage, helped me come up with a system/workflow that is incredibly efficient, and helps me secure much bigger clients (which, in turn means I received greater monetary/asset value per partnership) than I thought I would be able to. Now, instead of creating content for a $30 gym singlet, I'm trading that for either cash, or products/experiences up to the value of $5000.
Screenshot of the Collaboration Deck for Pullman
Here are some of the key points I'd love to get across:
You focus too much on your following rather than your offering
"It is quality rather than quantity that matters" - Seneca
The biggest excuse I see a lot of people using as to why they aren't getting brand deals is that "I don't have heaps of followers". Wrong. Reframe your mind and place your value on the content you create, your uniqueness, and your passion for what you do rather than the arbitrary number on your profile. Fun fact, I am receiving significantly more deals, with much larger brands now at around 20K followers than when I had 30K (not sure what happened, probably a bunch of fake accounts or something). And even crazier, is I don't even mention my following when I approach brands.
Here's an example, while working for a swimwear label (where I was involved in influencer management) we found that a lot of the bigger influencers took reeeeaally subpar content (basically just a selfie in the clothing…boring) which didn't give us a whole lot of bang for our buck, however, we came across a bunch of people who were into cliff diving into the ocean (doing flips and tricks and whatnot) which looked SO good! We didn't even think about whether or not we were going to reach out to them, despite having less than 10% of the followings of the main influencers we'd been going for. And, no surprises here, but the content we got was so much better than the stock standard influencer content we'd been receiving (which, in turn, has higher engagement when we post it etc).
So, the question is, what can you offer that is so good/different/engaging to a brand that makes them not even think about how many followers you have? To me, that is the goal.
Social Proofing and how to build it
"The principle of social proof says so: The greater the number of people who find any idea correct,
the more the idea will be correct." - Robert B Cialdini
First off, I should give a rough explanation on what social proofing is. Basically, social proof is this psychological concept where people tend to make decisions based on what others are doing. It's like we feel this pressure to fit in and do what society expects of us. Now, when it comes to marketing, social proof is all about showing how popular and useful a brand is to convince people to buy their stuff. It's like saying, "Hey, look how many other people love this brand! You should totally buy from us too!"
Now, applying this to our situations, think of yourself as the brand (which is always how you should view yourself and your offering in relation to content creation) - we want to use the popularity and authority of other brands and businesses we have worked with to evidence why we are worth partnering with. For example, if I wanted to reach out to fancy hotel X to see if they want content in exchange for letting me stay there for free we need to give them a reason and confidence that we are the right person for the job. So, if in our pitch we mention and showcase work we did for fancy hotel Y, hotel X can immediately see the potential value they will get out of the partnership, and also will feel more at ease because of the other fancy hotels I have worked with before.
But what if I am starting from scratch?
Great question! It's easy for me to say all these things because I am fortunate enough to have built a strong portfolio, but for those of you starting out, it can be a bit daunting. What I would recommend is doing whatever you can to start getting some brands in your portfolio - and these don't need to be big brands, start with small brands or even local businesses and then progressively leverage those to go for bigger brands (more about that in a moment). Some ways to go about this would be:
Reaching out to small brands and businesses and ask if you can create content for them completely for free - if they say yes, then you can add them to your portfolio (and if you feel comfortable and they seem to like your work, ask them for a testimonial).
Make content first, and then approach the brand showing what you have created for them - if they like it, see if they would like more made - add them to your portfolio.
Use influencer gifting sites like The Right Fit or #gifted to try and get some contra opportunities
Constant leverage
“We live in an age of infinite leverage, and the economic rewards for genuine intellectual curiosity have never been higher.” - Naval Ravikant
Now this is my favourite and, in my opinion, least understood and under utilised approach to securing partnerships. First off let's quickly define what leverage is - the dictionary defines it as "using a lever to exert force on another object". Leverage is all about utilising what you already have to set yourself up for success and to grow the amount of new opportunities you have.
This plays heavily off the back of social proofing, whereby you constantly use the brands you have worked for and the opportunities you've had (the 'lever') to persuade/sell the idea of you and your content to potential brands (the 'another object'). Done right, this has a snowball-like effect to the quantity and size of brands you get to work with. Here is the very basic way I go about it:
Bundling
This idea/approach is a relatively new discovery for me, but I found that you can leverage multiple brands with a single opportunity. It's a little hard for me to explain, so I will just give you a recent example. I was going on a holiday to Cairns and in the preparation for the holiday, reached out to multiple hotels to see if any of them wanted to work with me. I managed to get two high profile hotels (Hilton and Pullman) to agree to a partnership which was very exciting! Now these hotels became my 'lever' when approaching other businesses to work with on the same trip. I reached out to a car rental business, mentioned that I am working with the Hilton and Pullman, and that I'd like to work with them too - they agreed. Now I had another brand to add to my 'lever', making it three well known companies. I then used the same approach to secure a partnership with a hot air ballooning company while up there. So, instead of just sticking with the initial partnerships, they allowed me to attract a couple of other opportunities that I could do work for at the same time, on the same trip.
Wrapping things up
I’d love to continue sharing my thoughts and strategies about all of this, and to eventually put together a community of creators that help each other by offering feedback on content, assisting in pitching strategies etc. If you’re interested in learning more/to be notified whenever I make another blog post (most likely about how I pitch to brands), sign up below: