Creator and Founder of Soulcialmate Kristen Bousquet shares 4 steps to attract solid, long-term brand deals.
- Whether it's TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, or YouTube, when it comes to working with brands, all of these platforms have the same four steps to get to brand deals.
- The goal is to create relationships with brands that put you on top of their mind when they have new projects going on.
I. Purpose and mission statement
- This step takes a lot of trial and error before it's perfect.
- It's okay to tweak it along the way.
- Find the content pillars you'll be sharing with your audience. Content pillars are:
- Things you and your audience are passionate about.
- Things you could talk about all day long.
- Things you can consider yourself an expert at.
- Limit yourself to 3-5 content pillars (e.g. fitness, mental health, travel, etc.).
- Find the purpose behind your content pillars. It should answer "Why am I creating this content? Why am I taking all this time and energy to share my love for fashion for instance, with other people?"
- Mush the purpose of your content pillars together and you get your mission statement.
- Those purposes and that mission statement is where you'll get your niche.
When you're creating any piece of content, you wanna be able to go to your mission statement and ask yourself, "is this piece of content that I'm creating going to contribute to my mission." If it's not, it's something that your audience might not really see the value in.
II. Consistency in branding
- Branding is how you're going to show that mission to the world.
- Consistency is what makes a brand a very well branded company.
- You'll want to be consistent with:
- Your visuals
- Your values
- Your personality
- Be consistent throughout your whole page, in the way you write your captions, talk in your stories, etc.
- Consistency does not mean frequency. Don't ask yourself "Can I come up with enough content that I can have, you know, seven days of posting this week?"
- Instead, to get a consistent posting schedule, ask yourself:
- What is sustainable for me to create?
- What's the best time for my audience to see that content?
- What content do brands like the most?
III. Building a loyal community
- Your community is truly the most valuable thing you have.
- Brands love to look at:
- The quality of your interactions.
- Whether your audience is genuinely interested in what you're creating.
- Be more mindful about slowly growing a high-quality community versus quickly growing a big follower account.
- You should go ahead and initiate interactions with your audience. Put the work into creating meaningful relationships with your audience.
- Set 20 minutes a day to sit and grab your phone, and just interact with new people that might be interested in what you do. Maybe you interact with the followers of a profile similar to yours.
- Quality over quantity: Build five to seven high-quality relationships every day, Monday through Friday.
- When those people come into my community, they're going to actually be interacting and staying.
- Follow them back. Let's not do the whole "I'm not gonna follow you, but I'm gonna comment on all your stuff thing." That feels weird for everyone.
- Build genuine connections, and nurture your community.
- Make sure you're responding to every comment, anyone who comments on your content, go and comment on their content.
IV. Positioning yourself as a brand BFF
- Stand out in a sea of creators:
- Make sure you're visually consistent.
- Your bio and headline are a great outline of what you do.
- Put your email in your bio.
- If a brand is paying you thousands of dollars, they wanna know what they're gonna get. If you're visually all over the place, how is a brand supposed to look at that and say, "this is exactly what this creator is gonna give us If we hire them"?
- Remember, you're not going to be the right person for everyone, and that's fine.
- Your professionalism is so important. Not everyone pays attention to details (email, punctuation, full sentences). That could set you apart.
- Warm up the brand:
- Don't just use the emails you find on Createur right off the bat.
- You wanna spend time with the brand before you pitch to them.
- Cold outreach rarely works. Show your face first. Make sure the brand recognizes your name the day you reach out.
- Follow them, respond to them, comment, DM, and interact with them.
- Use the anti-pitch method
- When you're sending a pitch to a brand, you should not be selling yourself.
- The pitch is for you to create a connection with the brand.
- Make it about the brand.
- Instead of saying: "Hi, I'm Kristin, I'm a creator based in Charlotte. Here are my stats. My audience really loves these things..."
- Try this: "Hey, I'm super excited about like what you guys are working on. I saw that you did this, this, and this. I would love to hop on a 15-minute call in the next few weeks if you guys have, uh, you know, any time, I'm just curious to hear about what you're working on."
- When I send out a pitch like that, my success rates are much higher than cold outreach.
- The brands that I have those types of connections with are the brands that are rehiring me time after.
More on Kristen and her amazing work:
