After the questions about what kind of camera I use, this is probably the question I get asked the most:

“How did you land your first collaboration with a brand?”

One of my goals this year was to use this blog to answer questions you all send me on Instagram. I honestly LOVE sharing blogging/photography tips with you guys. And if I can empower someone else with the little bit of knowledge I have, then woot!!!  There is no secret formula here, but after two years of pitching myself to brands, I’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. I hope this post gives you the confidence to reach out to a brand for your first collaboration.

Establish Your Voice

Before you’re ready to reach out you have to know your niche. Are you a bookstagrammer? Do you focus on personal style or cooking? Maybe both? Once you figure out your angle, it makes it much easier to find brands that align with your values. Keep in mind that developing your voice on social media won’t necessarily happen overnight. It’s something that comes along with experimenting with the type of content you post and the story you choose to share. Be patient with yourself. You’ll know when it’s right.

Do Your Homework

If you don’t want to pay for an influencer marketing tool like PeopleMap, there’s a little trick I like to do by clicking the “suggested” button next to companies I would like to work with. Instagram does a great job of showing you similar brands with a varying amount of followers. For example, It would be a dream to create content for Sezane, but with over 1M followers it’s a little unrealistic for me to expect a reply from them. I’d be much better off with building up my portfolio by working with smaller but similar brands.

Create Your Media Kit

Creating your own media kit is THE key to landing your first brand collaboration.

A media kit is a simple, one-page visual resume. Its primary purpose is to provide media and brands a quick summary of who you are and what you can do for them. It usually includes a photo of you, a bio (that relates to your blog or Insta handle) Instagram/blog statistics and a list of brands that you’ve worked with in the past. If you don’t have any brands yet don’t worry! Instead, use that space on your media kit to link to blog or Instagram posts that have performed well. 

There have been brands that have said, we usually say no to someone with a smaller following, but because of your media kit, we’ll give it a go! If you’re not keen on photoshop or InDesign, it’s worth the investment of having a graphic designer help you out or checking these sites out:

Canva
Free Media Kit Template

Pitch Perfect

Think about how many emails brands receive per day. A LOT. Which means that when you reach out, you need to make it count. Keep the email informative without being too wordy, and try your best to find the perfect balance between professionalism and letting your personality shine through.

I often start my email pitch with a quick intro of my blog. Then I share a little bit of what I love about their brand and how I incorporate their products into my everyday life. It’s then a matter of proposing what you’d like to create for the brand in exchange for their product. Will you be providing high-quality photos? 3 permanent Instagram posts? Shooting video for Instagram stories with swipe-up links? Whatever you propose, be sure to make your terms clear.

I thought people were joking when they said they get emails that literally just say:

I have an Instagram with a lot of followers, give me a free product and I’ll promote it.

It’s true, PEOPLE ACTUALLY DO THIS. Please don’t be that person. This brand doesn’t owe you anything. You gotta work for it.

Quick tips:

• In the contact section of the brand’s website, there is usually an email dedicated to press, that’s the one you want. If their email is not listed, you can usually find an email by checking the brand’s Instagram bio.
• Avoid emailing brands on Fridays. Chances are they’ve already mentally clocked out and your email will get lost in the flood of inbox clutter over the weekend.

Content creation

Okay, this is the fun part. The brand has agreed to send you their product in exchange for content that you’ll create for them. Remember to be yourself. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in what you think they might like best, but remember that they agreed to this collaboration after scrolling through your feed and your blog. They like your style, and they want your personality to shine through!

Keep in touch!

After posting, It makes a great impression when you send your post analytics to the brand. Not only does it display professionalism, it shows that you care! 

Was this post helpful? Let me know if you’d like to see more “how to” posts from me in the future. I really like answering your questions about blogging and influencer marketing.

The post How to Land Your First Collaboration With A Brand appeared first on Ink & Fable.

There are so many great new reads to add to my TBR stack this spring! This winter has been BRUTAL so I’m willing to do anything to speed up the arrival of springtime.  I’ve listed 5 of my most anticipated reads below:

1. The Weight of A Piano by Chris Cander

I love stories that link two separate narratives together from different time periods. The Weight of A Piano is at the top of my list for this month.

From the publisher:

A tour-de-force about two women and the piano that inexorably ties their lives together through time and across continents, for better and for worse.

In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, built at the turn of the century in Germany, on which she discovers everything that she herself can do with music and what music, in turn, does for her. Yet after marrying, she emigrates with her young family from Russia to America, at her husband’s frantic insistence, and her piano is lost in the shuffle.
In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy loses another boyfriend and again has to find a new apartment, which is complicated by the gift her father had given her for her twelfth birthday, shortly before he and her mother died in a fire that burned their house down: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Orphaned, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, who in his car-repair shop trained her to become a first-rate mechanic, much to the surprise of her subsequent customers. But this work, her true mainstay in a scattered life, is put on hold when her hand gets broken while the piano’s being moved–and in sudden frustration she chooses to sell it. And what becomes crucial is who the most interested party turns out to be. . .

2. The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison

From the publisher:

The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison’s inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer for the dead of 9/11; the second by a searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., and the last by a heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. In the writings and speeches included here, Morrison takes on contested social issues: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” and human rights. She looks at enduring matters of culture: the role of the artist in society, the literary imagination, the Afro-American presence in American literature, and in her Nobel lecture, the power of language itself. And here too is piercing commentary on her own work (including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, and Paradise) and that of others, among them, painter and collagist Romare Bearden, author Toni Cade Bambara, and theater director Peter Sellars. In all, The Source of Self-Regard is a luminous and essential addition to Toni Morrison’s oeuvre.

3. Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

This novel just so happens to be the Dear Reader Book Club pick for March. If it’s on your TBR list, you should consider joining us to read and discuss this action-packed, African Game of Thrones.

From the publisher:

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: “He has a nose,” people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

As Tracker follows the boy’s scent–from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers–he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

4. The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

I received The Dreamers back in December but still haven’t gotten around to reading it. It was Belletrist’s book of the month for January so it has to be good. Maybe this month I’ll finally have the time?

From the publisher:

One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster.

Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

5. The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

From the publisher:

King has tenderly staked out a territory for his wife and three daughters, Grace, Lia, and Sky. He has lain the barbed wire; he has anchored the buoys in the water; he has marked out a clear message: Do not enter. Or viewed from another angle: Not safe to leave. Here women are protected from the chaos and violence of men on the mainland. The cult-like rituals and therapies they endure fortify them from the spreading toxicity of a degrading world.

     But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day two men and a boy wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?

Do you think any of these reads would make it on your TBR list? Anything I should add? Be sure to let me know in the comments!

The post 5 New Books I’m Excited to Read This Spring appeared first on Ink & Fable.