I have never done any sort of advice posts or general chit chat about blogging before but I have been blogging for three and a half years now so I thought I might share a little insight into my experience of working with brands, from how to work with brands and what its really like from my perspective.
When Should I Start Working With Brands?
You might of not long started your blog or you may have been blogging for a while, regardless your wondering how to you get to work with brands for your blog. First of all, it doesn't happen overnight! You cant start a blog and expect to be working with brands the next day, you need to put time and hard work into your blog. Get people reading it, share it on social media, make it look professional otherwise brands won't get any benefit in working with you.
How Do I Work With Brands?
There is a few ways of doing this, firstly there are simple searches you can do 'bloggers wanted', 'bloggers required' and 'prrequest' on twitter which brands use daily as and outreach when looking for bloggers, they always instruct you to either email or tweet them back.
Outreach Programs- these are great, they basically are a platform where you create a account and numerous brands post when they are looking for bloggers for certain campaigns. One of the most popular would be
Bloggers Required you should take a look at them if you don't already use them.
Apps- Simply there are apps such as Tribe that allow you connect with brands and get paid on your Instagram for posting content specific posts meeting the brands standards. Finally
Buzzole is a online website that you simply sign up to and they contact you if there are campaigns that are suitable for you to work on.
Approaching brands yourself- this is sometimes a controversial topic some agree with it some don't, but I don't see the harm. If you've established yourself quite well on your blog and social media then there is no harm in emailing a brand if your think its suitable to your blog. Make sure your professional and friendly and try to find the correct email.
Pr Agencies- Again this requires emailing them to see if they are looking to promote a particular brand or range from the brand that may fit in with your blog or they may reach out and contact you, these are one of the key players in this industry there job is interact with people like yourself so having a healthy relationship with pr agencies or practitioners can lead to some great collaborations!
My Experience
I have used all of the above methods to contact brands and all have worked for me and I have managed to work with some great brands in the past. Personally the outreach programs are my favourite as you don't have to email first and feel that feeling 'should I email', 'am I good enough?' but then I have worked with some of the best brands from me putting myself out there and emailing them. Once you start working with brands, more brands with contact you and honestly that is a great feeling. Also don't forget we all get knocked back from time to time so if you get knocked back by a brand don't take it too personally you may just not be suitable for them or meet the requirements to be able to work with them, don't forget your probably on the the hundreds of bloggers who email every year.
I hope these few tips help you!