Speaker 1: Hey guys I'm Kate and Mitch and we are Showtime Media and today we're going to

Speaker 2: be talking to you about how to form a brand partnership on social media. Yeah

Speaker 1: so first we're going to start off by explaining what a partnership is. So basically a partnership is when a social media influencer partners up with a brand, a business, another social media influencer to create something together Whether it be they can create content like a video They can showcase each other's products or services on each other's pages

Speaker 2: Yeah, and for those of you that aren't familiar with it the people that are making money on Instagram Partnering with brands when you see like a sponsored post That's what they're doing They're creating a partnership with brands or creating a partnership with businesses where they're actually being paid To post that business's product or service

Speaker 1: Yeah, so basically what it's called is influencer marketing, or social media advertising, social media marketing, um, I can't, I think that's all the terms that I've heard so far.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty, I mean, it's basically called influencer marketing, so, um, you know, why don't you explain a little bit about how you go about developing one of those relationships from an influencer side and from a business side.

Speaker 1: Okay, so we're gonna start off with the influencer side. There's a few scenarios here. So say that you're an influencer just starting out. Maybe you've only posted two blog posts. You wanna start by figuring out what your niche is. So we're gonna use an example as just a fashion blogger. So say you're a fashion blogger that is focusing on affordable clothing. So what I would recommend doing is go through your closet and find all of your affordable clothing that you wear most often. And then go through and follow those brands on social media. You don't want to come at a brand or another influencer without knowing anything about them, because that really makes you look bad. So you want to start engaging with them naturally. Start posting about them. And then once you feel comfortable, you want to reach out to them and say, don't ask for anything. Just reach out and say, hey, I just want to let you know. I love your clothes. Here are a few of the shots that I've styled. Don't ask for anything. Just say, I just wanted to let you know. And then see what they say. If they respond, they do. And then if they don't respond, that's fine too. And then give it a couple more months and then reach out to them again and say, hey, so I've been posting your stuff and this is how it's been doing and this is how my audience is responding. I would love to work something out where we can partner together. Please let me know. Something like that. And that's how I would go about it. And even if you do have a large following, I would go about it that way, too. Yeah.

Speaker 2: The key takeaway from that whole thing is to not ask for their business on the very first contact. It's the same as if I'm reaching out to a company to try and sell our services to them, I'm not cold calling them on the phone and asking them in the first 30 seconds to sign up with us and start working with us for social media marketing. That's just not the way that it works. It's really it's the same as a sales process. It's just on social media So it's been like made into this casual like social thing, but really it's just a sales process So you have to treat it like one you have to treat it very professionally. Yeah

Speaker 1: Yeah So think of it as like door-to-door sales someone comes knocking on your door and they're selling you something that you've never heard of before Most likely you're not gonna buy it But if it's something that you're familiar with and you've seen before then maybe you're going to be more interested in buying it Yeah, yeah, I thought I had another thought but I guess I don't well

Speaker 2: I mean in the other so Now let's take it from the other side like if you're a business and you're looking to use Influencer marketing as a way to get your product out there. That's something that we've done for a client already and something that we believe will be the future of marketing just because of how cost-effective it really is for companies to get their products onto social media. How would you go about forming that relationship or how do you

Speaker 1: go about forming that relationship as a business? Yeah, so I think it's a little bit easier as a business. I think that you find a list of influencers that you you want to work with, I think that you give them a follow as well. You want to look at their content. You want to really understand what their mission is and how that lines up to your mission. And then I would send them an email and just say, hey, I've noticed that you've been doing a great job. I love your work. I love this, this, and this about what you're doing. And this is how it relates to my business. And I would love if we could put something together and work together. Whether it's you send them something in exchange for an Instagram post, send them something and don't I will first I would start off by saying you have a product and you send it to them don't expect anything in return to say hey I would love to send you this product please check it out let me know if you like it and then after that I would proceed with a hey did you like the product I can send you some more and then maybe this time could you post it on your and do an Instagram post or an Instagram story or Facebook post or blog post whatever it whatever it is in the situation but that's how I would go about it again with the don't ask for too much at first you want to build that relationship and that trust

Speaker 2: before you ask it's like what does Gary V say like jab jab right hook yeah yeah it's just just like that. Jab, jab, right hook, yeah. Like Creed. Yeah. One thing that's really important that happens quite a bit that you might not think of is make sure that you're getting all these agreements in writing. Like if you're forming a partnership, even if it's a small one, even if it's not for any money, make sure that there's a written agreement so that, you know, if what you're getting in return is posting to a large audience that you're getting those posts because we've seen it happen where you know somebody gets free product or a discount on product something like that in exchange for posts to their large social media audience but then those posts never happen and you do not want to be that person because then you know you've essentially wasted all the effort that you've put in in this influencer marketing partnership and you don't want

Speaker 1: to be the case. Yeah, yeah you want a written contract and try to make it equally beneficial to both parties. You don't want one person with a million followers posting about a product and then you not paying them for it. I mean that's not fair because they worked hard to get those loyal following. I can't talk today. Get that loyal following. But I think that's it.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that basically covers it. So really like on the influencer side, just make sure that you're building relationships Don't go asking for the business right away and on the business side, you know, same thing But make sure that it's something that's mutually beneficial for the both of you Make sure you're reaching out to people that are in your audience size If you have 500 followers as a business and you get 20 likes on your pictures You might not want to reach out to people with like a million followers They're probably not going to respond. It's not going to work. Reach out to people that are more your size, a little bit bigger. I always say play up a little bit. Try to always play up, because if you continue to keep playing up, you're going to get to a higher level much quicker. But you just have to find that happy medium of, OK, I'm going to play up, but it's still within my reach.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree. And we also did write a blog post about this. So if you go to ShowtimeMediaMGMT.com, you can read that and follow us and Instagram at Showtime Media, MGMT. And don't forget to like this video and subscribe if you wanna see more. Thanks guys.