3 Keys to Building a Sustainable Influencer Career

1. 3 Keys to Building a Sustainable Influencer Career 1. HAVE A BUSINESS PLAN As an Influencer and/or personal brand it’s vitally and I mean VI-TAL-LY important we treat it like a business. Since a personal brand is essentially an extension of our personality the work can and should be fun and creative. However, the more intention we put behind our brands the more they will flourish in size and revenue. If we look at a perso nal bran d like Sarah ’s Day, an Austr alian YouT uber with over 1M subscribers and 700K on Instagram, whose brand voice and vibe is carefree, down to earth and relatable it’s important to understand that every move is still calculated. Every you tube video published first asks, ‘What is our ROI on making this?” Is it high in demand content from the audience? Click bait for growth? Opening up an opportunity to sell something? Her brand is super fun but it would be naive to think that every piece of content isn’t part of a bigger plan. Strategically keeping details out of Instagram stories to keep them exclusive to the vlog while keeping up appearances. Including her son just enough but not too much to scare away her original audience that came to her for health recipes and fitness tips. Creating full content series out of new life events like buying a house and getting engaged. It seems as simple as

2. documenting day to day life but everything is much more calculated and part of a bigger plan. If you’re an Influencer and you don’t have a business plan Module 1 of Monetize Your Influence (the course for Influencers) walks you through it and instead of sitting down with a flashing cursor and a blank document you instead work through 10 questions to build out the details of your personal brand. So having a business plan is step 1 of having a Personal brand marketingand being an Influencer. Second, you want to make sure you’re tracking brand partnerships. This is important for a couple of reasons. Come tax time it’s going to make it super easy to have all your invoices and documents in order. On top of that tracking these collaborations will help you to understand your business in numbers. Numbers that you can use when re-negotiating with brands you’ve already worked with or pitching new brands for partnerships. 2. TRACK DATA AND NUMBERS FROM PAST BRAND PARTNERSHIPS As Influencer marketing evolves and brands start to redirect KPIs (key performance metrics) from awareness and reach to focus more on conversions and click through rates it becomes more important that your content efforts are focused on selling and creating those conversions. The secret to selling is collaborating with brands that your audience will be excited about not just brands that pay the bills.

3. Tracking your numbers is as simple as creating a Google sheet and including the following columns: •Brand name •Contact - note if this was a PR agency contact or someone directly within the company. Maybe you have multiple contacts to list here. Building relationships with PR reps can open up opportunities for more brand deals since they likely work with multiple brands. Having an inside contact directly from the brand ensures you are reaching out the right person when you want to talk about working together again. •Deliverables - List the frequency and spacing between your deliverables. Ie. 3 static posts over 3 months. •Price •KPIs - You can use these numbers to take back to the brand in the future or create case studies for pitching to other brands. •Clicks •Conversions •Reach •Engagement Notes - Here you might want to add details from the negotiations or whether you’d want to work with them again or not and why. When it’s a year from now you might not remember the details of every partner you’ve worked with so you might as well make your notes while the experience is fresh in your mind As we move through 2020 one of my Biggest Predictions for Influencers in 2020 was that brands and Influencers need to both move in the direction of

4. long term partnerships. When then is conversions or a clear return on investment it’s a no brainer for both parties to work this way. It’s much clearer to your audience when you can enthusiastically announce a 6 month or year long partnership so they know what’s coming down the line. Talking about a product once and never again will lead to no sales for the brand and they should know better, and it looks sketchy to your audience when you jump from brand to brand in the same industry. However, chances are a brand isn’t going to sign a year long partnership with you if they haven’t already experienced working together unless you can provide some serious data to back up your pitch. Need pitching tips. Module 4 of Monetize Your Influence teaches you how and how to negotiate with screenshots straight out of Claire Guentz’s inbox. Keeping track of past brand collaborations should be an obvious habit if you’re acting as a legitimized business. This data also helps create a seamless way to maintain relationships with brands, plus you’re giving yourself opportunities to create detailed case studies for the future. 3. BUILD AND MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS WITH BRANDS As an Influencer you are likely a team of one, maybe 2. You are the CEO, the creator, the face of the brand and the PR person. Public relations are incredibly important for you because you are the product. This means as the Influencer

5. you need to be building actual relationships with the marketing and PR representatives you meet from brands you are working with. Building rapport happens all throughout a partnership and is just as important after the partnership finishes. Start by emailing them personally, even if you have an agent or manager you should be touching base with the contact to let them know you’re excited about the opportunity. Second, don’t be afraid to get on a call. These discussions humanize both parties and communication is likely much more clear when you can hear someones tone of voice and also make friendly conversation with them, 2 things that wouldn’t happen through email. After campaig ns are finished it’s worth the extra effort to follow up with a thank-you email. Further, at the end of the year I ALWAYS recommend sending holiday cards to every brand rep you’ve worked with. This extra effort that you could outsource to an assistant definitely goes a long way and could be the difference between them considering you as they do their planning for the next year or not. Rapport and relationships are incredibly important. Something as simple as writing down a note or setting a reminder in your phone about someone’s personal life and reaching out to them to wish them well on an up coming trip they mentioned to you a month ago will keep you front of mind and continue to nurture the relationship. This is sales babe! Creating and maintaining this rapport takes time and effort but in this industry sometimes all you have to do is leave a comment on someone’s Instagram post and we all have time for that. In order to create and maintain your personal brand as a sustainable business and source of income as a Influencer it’s crucial to have a business plan to provide direction, client rapport skills to build connections, and a metric

6. tracking system to observe your numbers and calculate relevant averages and values. Tracking your goals and brand collabs is your responsibility as an Influencer. Do not skip these important steps! Source: https://www.johannaadriaansen.com/my-blog/3-keys-to-building-a- sustainable-influencer-career