Brands use blogger influencers to ignite interest in their products, as the driving forces, brands try to jump onto the influencers’ bandwagon using their popularity to increase their own. So finding the influencer best suited to their particular brand is crucial. As a blogger you probably wonder what it is brands actually look for when choosing their influencer. After all, receiving that email from a brand that wants to partner with you, reinforces that, not only is your content great and is sparking their interest but, that your blog is suited to their brand. Depending on the brand you might be asked to try a new product. In return for a blog post or a picture, you most probably will gain extra exposure, earn some extra cash or even get to update your wardrobe with the brand’s new pieces. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, bloggers need to grab a brand’s attention before they’ll be propositioned.  So what do brands actually look out for when choosing their blogger influencer?

 

 

Relevance: The Right Fit

Let’s start off with an obvious one. There are so many great blogs out there, each covering different topics. The main goal for a brand is to find the perfect fit. There are so many niches within each domain, whether it’s fashion, food, fitness or lifestyle, so it’s important for brands to find bloggers that fall into the niche which would reach more potential customers. So in actual fact there needs to be a mutual interest between the blogger and the brand and a link between the bloggers audience and the brands potential customers.

 

 

 

Reach and Resonance

Reach, the number of followers indicates how big the blogger is, however following isn’t the be all and end-all to choosing the right blogger. Yes, having thousands of followers helps get you noticed, but resonance is considered more important. This means that brands favour a blogger who has fewer followers but an audience that is more engaged with the  blog content. Using followers as the sole indicator, doesn’t work for a number of reasons, followers are not only extremely easy to get; but also if all else fails they can literally be bought. Brands are primarily businesses and so the bottom line is the profit that they can make from any collaboration. All and any advertising needs to represent the best return possible on the time, skill and money which brands invest in it, so brands endeavor to ensure that they engage with influencers who can actually generate sales conversations from their social media audience. Brands look for bloggers who can excite their audiences with their content, compel and persuade; making them try out their brand’s products. A passive audience less likely to buy a brand’s products, is not an attractive prospect.

 

 

 

Quality of Content

When brands look at your content, they want to see how persuasive you are, how well written, mesmerising, original and relatable your content is. Whether it be photos, or blog posts, they represent what you will be potentially doing for them. If your content isn’t appealing, what you post of their products won’t be appealing for their potential customers either.

 

 

 

Past Collaborations

Brands want to know which brands you’ve worked with, if you’ve worked with any of their competitors, how similar or different your previous collaborations are to their brand. They want to see that you collaborate well with brands and follow the unwritten rules of brand-influencer collaborations, but they also don’t want to see too many collaborations.

 

 

 

The Cost

Brands will be working on a budget, and so if your pay demands are too high, then you probably won’t even be considered. Compensation typically falls into one or a combination of three categories, these being, pay, products and events. However, you may choose to be compensated, you need to find the right balance, you must be realistic about your worth. So although it’s fine to reach for the stars, mind you don’t ask for the moon!

 

 

 

Easy to Contact

If brands can’t contact you easily then even if you ignite interest they may well go with someone that’s easier to reach. If you’re not readily available to contact, brands won’t bother you at all! Make sure your contact information is up to date and in an obvious place, where brands can find and contact you immediately.

Or even better, like most bloggers, consider creating a media kit which is like a CV for bloggers. Creating one with ZINE automatically updates your social network information, and brands can contact you directly if you’re their perfect fit!