If you’re ready to take your blog to the next level and increase your income while providing value to your audience, now may be the perfect time to become a brand ambassador.
Not only does being a brand ambassador open up a whole new way to increase your revenue, but it is also a fun way to generate more traffic to your blog, build new partnerships and provide useful content and products to your readers.
A brand ambassador, sometimes called a brand or marketing influencer, is responsible for sharing and marketing a product or service to a public audience.
In exchange for representing a company’s product or service and spreading the word, you will be paid by the company and often also given the opportunity to test free items and services.
There are a wide variety of ways to establish yourself as a brand ambassador. Firstly, you will need to find a company you want to create a partnership with.
Next, you need to find the right point of contact within the company to get the ball rolling. Also, you’ll have to create a great marketing pitch and iron out the details of contracts and agreements.
Once you have secured the new brand, you then need to implement the unique campaign by creating a sponsored post and typically, sharing the post on your social media accounts.
Here are some important tips and tricks to setting yourself up to be a successful brand ambassador.
Grow Your Blog and Engage with Your Audience
The single most important step to gaining partnerships with brands is to build an audience of engaged followers. It’s also beneficial to have an established record of consistent website traffic.
Many new bloggers want to skip this step and jump right into contacting companies for a potential partnership. For the best results, I recommend taking the time increase your traffic and grow a loyal audience
Companies will look for engaging comments from both you and your audience. They will want to see that you consistently provide your readers with value and captivating content.
I believe that engaging with your audience is as important as monthly traffic and page views.
Before you reach out to brands, I recommend that you have a minimum of 5,000 unique views to your blog each month.
If you can increase the traffic to 15,000 views each month, you stand a significantly higher chance of securing a brand partnership.
In some cases, you can get away with having less traffic if you have a highly-targeted niche blog with a very engaged audience.
Recommendation: Make sure you check out the course Making Sense of Sponsored Posts, where course creators Alexis and Michelle Schroeder share exactly what they do to make thousands of dollars per month from sponsored posts. I think you’ll find it really helpful.
Create A Media Kit + Sign Up with a Brand Network Site
A media kit is essentially like a job application for your website. It contains everything a brand representative or sponsor would need to know about your site.
The media kit should contain basic components like your blog’s general overview of topics, statistics, and previous collaborations as well as a sales pitch that outlines how you intend to market the brand and why the partnership is beneficial to all parties involved.
Free Resource: Free Media Kit Template for Bloggers
Once you have a solid media kit, you can start signing up with a variety of brand network websites.
You typically begin by creating an influencer profile, uploading information about your social media presence, and blog statistics.
These sites make it easy to connect with brands and allow you to skip the step of making the first contact with a brand.
If you’re interested in monetizing your blog by publishing sponsored posts, here are a few places you can look:
Start Small
Instead of going for the heavy hitters with a well-established brand and online presence, reach out to small businesses and startups for a faster return.
Smaller companies are usually eager to increase their brand exposure and will typically respond much faster than a large corporation.
There are less hoops to jump through in securing marketing contracts with small businesses; you are also often paid much faster than with larger corporations.
Keep your communications factual, short and to the point.
Introduce yourself and your website, let the company know why you enjoy their products or services, tell them that you would like to engage in a collaboration, and show them ways you plan to increase their brand exposure through sponsored posts.
Include your blog media kit, and you will demonstrate expertise and professionalism.
Avoid the Sales Pitch to Your Readers
Once you have secured a new partnership with a brand, you need to present it to your followers in a way that does not seem overly pushy.
Transparency is often the key to maintaining your audience and increasing brand exposure.
Let your audience know that the content is sponsored. Provide an honest and positive review of the company and how their services or products have benefited you or improved your life.
A call-to-action can be seen as a blatant sales pitch to readers. If you tell a story or paint a vivid picture of how the product or service has positively impacted your life, your readers are much more likely to sign up or purchase.
While most brands will respond to your email within a week, some may take much longer or not respond at all. It is perfectly acceptable to send a follow-up email to a potential sponsor.
Do not take it personally if a brand is simply not interested in a collaboration.
The opinions and budgets vary greatly from company to company. The key to securing the perfect brand partnership is persistence and perseverance. Do not be afraid to reach out to new companies until you find the right fit.
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