After 4 years of content creation and blogging, I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks when it comes to brand partnerships. Below are my tips for providing consistent, quality content to all of your partners during each brand partnership:
Make sure the brand partnership is a good fit for your brand
Make sure your brand aligns with the brand you are partnering with! Any time I work with a brand, I make sure to vet them and their products. I read reviews and ensure the brand is real and that there is no sort of scam involved with their products. I want to make sure my content is ALWAYS relevant to my community. Taking the extra step to research gives me confidence to know I am promoting a REAL brand.
Another important part of the vetting process when considering a partnership with a brand is reviewing the brand to ensure their products and branding align with your audience. I also do a deep dive on the brand’s values to ensure they align with my own. I do this with the products I purchase as a consumer, so it is important to me that the products I promote come from upstanding companies.
Bottom line: I would not promote a product if I did not agree with the brand’s values. I also would not promote a product that I can’t stand behind. I test everything before creating content to ensure I actually would use and enjoy the product before accepting any brand collaboration opportunities.
Work to integrate the branded content into your feed
This tip goes hand-in-hand with the last. When choosing which brands to partner with for collaborations, only choose ones that align with you, your personal brand, and your following. You know your audience and brand best. Think – how can I organically integrate the branded content into my feed? In the past, I would share branded partnership posts that were very clearly sponsored and product-focused. My goal now is to find a balance between my personal brand and sharing the product in a genuine, organic way.
Occasionally, brands come in with a really specific idea of what they want for the images. When this happens and that concept is not on brand for me, I push back on the brand and present another concept that will fit in more organically with my feed and content. If we cannot come to an agreement, I typically decline the collaboration opportunity.
Let me show you some examples of my past branded content. These posts did not organically fit into my feed. It is very obvious even without the arrows which posts were sponsored.
Now, let’s explore some better examples of branded content. These are more recent posts I’ve created with the goal of the content fitting into my feed more organically.
See how this content feels a lot more natural? It’s because I accepted each of these campaigns knowing that the product or service featured was something that would appeal to my audience. My focus was to bring in my personal branding and colors to ensure a more natural fit. I remember in years past, my branded posts would not perform well. I think it was because the content didn’t fit in naturally with my feed and audience. My branded content now consistently performs stronger with my audience. Luckily, I’m also able to bring stronger analytics and numbers to my branded partners and ultimately, maintain longer-term relationships with brands due to the stronger results I’m providing.
Ask for content samples/mood board
If the brand does not provide content samples during the brand partnership negotiation, ASK FOR THEM! This helps you to align on content inspiration to drive your planning when shooting and writing caption copy. If the brand does not provide these samples or a moodboard, I’ll often head over to Pinterest to create one myself! I’ll even sometimes pull examples of some of my own past posts to give an idea of the type of content I can create for the brand. Providing samples or asking for them helps you to align on the goals or inspiration for the collaboration!
Come up with concepts and get them approved prior to shooting
Lately, when I’ve been working on brand partnerships, many of the brands have asked for a concept in advance. I honestly PREFER this. Having a concept in advance almost guarantees you won’t need to reshoot. When the brand has the concept in advance, they can approve it PRIOR to you shooting content. Providing a concept helps to ensure you and the brand are not wasting any time as you’re on the same page for the collaboration opportunity. Pitch a concept and ask for the brand’s sign off before shooting!
Negotiate ample time for you to create quality content
Have you ever felt really rushed to create content? I know I have. Unfortunately, when that has been the case, I’ve had to rush around to shoot and the content isn’t as top-notch as I’d prefer. When the brand requests a super quick turnaround, I have personally asked for additional payment via a rush fee OR an extension. Having the extra time helps me to ensure I am providing the highest quality content to the brand that I can.
Review guidelines & contracts immediately prior to shooting
Familiarizing yourself with the brand contract when working on a brand partnership is incredibly important, for every single campaign. There are always topics in the contract you’ll want to review before AGREEING to any campaign – see my tips here!
Once you’ve agreed to the campaign, your contract will be your best friend! Reading your contract carefully allows you to familiarize yourself with the brand’s goals for the campaign and any requirements of your content. Many contracts will contain a creative brief or a list of content requirements. You will want to refer to this before SHOOTING your content! Brands often ask for a re-shoot if the content does not match what was outlined in the contract. Familiarizing yourself with every detail of the contract almost guarantees you don’t have to create content twice.
You’ll also want to reference the contract when writing your caption or blog post. This allows you to make note of any required campaign hashtags, brand tags, or talking points.
Take extra shots *just in case*
When I shoot content for a brand partnership, I like to take a few extra shots from different angles *just in case* my proposed concept and shots don’t work for the brand. I only do this if I have time, but it is a nice extra step that helps to cover you in the event the brand requests a re-shoot.
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