Want to work with brands, but don’t know where to start? Or perhaps you’ve already worked with a few businesses, but you feel like you’ve lost your way?
Find out how to stay true to yourself – and work with brands whose values you share – in this week’s guide, kindly written by Sonya Vajifdar.
How to Work With Ethical Brands
It was a new space for me to work with ethical brands when I started and I think it’s one of the best career moves I’ve made so far! I own my own high fashion ethical brand so I know all the problems that come with dealing with influencers, bloggers and PR companies; how many things have been promised and not met expectations and with all that experience under my belt I decided to take the plunge.
It’s very important to be up-front and transparent with the brand as to what you are offering and how much you can do for them. Big expectations can lead to disappointment on both the brand and the blogger’s sides, so it’s important to agree on a plan of action each time you work together.
Here’s my list of points for all those in the ethical blogging /PR game to keep things fair and make everyone happy.
4 Things to Consider When Working with Brands
Working with brands is a big part of being an Ethical Influencer! We want to represent those brands that care and put time into making sure what they do is true to their own values. When these line up, it’s a perfect opportunity to collaborate. However, there a few things to consider before signing up to work with a brand…
1. Create a Media Kit
Marketing yourself is very important – many bloggers use a media kit to highlight their best stats and collaboration opportunities.
But while it might be tempting to use a fancy media kit to promote yourself to brands and get them on board, the more concise and to the point the media kit is, the better and faster the client will get an idea of what you stand for. They do not want to go through pages of which brands you have worked for.
A simple way of doing it is to provide brands with your key numbers (i.e. followers/readers) and your niche.
It is also extremely important to be absolutely authentic in your media kit, with maybe a great representative picture as well!
2. Pitch Yourself to the Right People
When it comes to pitching to brands, be extremely thoughtful that most ethical brands are small and cannot ship all over the world just for you to have your picture taken in their outfit.
They need a bit more than that – slow fashion and beauty is harder to create and is a more expensive process as well so be mindful that your following should be one that appreciates and actually wants to buy the products.
I usually always do a test run with a brand I approach before I start properly working with them so they know what I can do for them and then decide if they want to work with me.
3. Set Your Pricing Accordingly
Ethical brands understand how difficult it is to work on their passion project and make it into their career, which is very similar to bloggers and influencers. Your pricing may well be scrutinised more by ethical brands, however I definitely do not think influencers need to work for free. Fair trade is as important for the brand as it is for the person making the effort to promote the brand as well!
One thing I recommend is to build up your reputation as an influencer before asking for payments, as the brands do need to see some reach as well.
4. Work on Co-promotions
If payments aren’t an option, you may find a brand is open to providing free products or services in exchange for promotion. If this is the case – and you’re open to creating content in return for free items – you may wish to invite the brand to co-promote the content you create for them. Getting them to share your content and accredit it to you on their own platform provides greater exposure, and their followers may start following you too.
You could also do this with fellow influencers to build your following – co-promote and create content together! The age of competition is behind us and the more we work together, the more we rise together!
About Sonya Vajifdar
