Mimosas and Manhattan | Working with Brands

Recently we asked on Instagram Stories for any questions you all had pertaining to Blogging. We had a lot of answers about how to turn posts of products into posts for compensation, how we landed our first brand deal, and how to work with PR agencies. We are going to narrow that all down to you guys through this post! Please feel free to reach out with any additional questions in the comment section below.

To start from the beginning we will walk you through our first brand partnership. To begin we started our website back in July of 2013, 5 years ago today. We launched our Instagram 2 years later in the Summer of 2015. We received our first brand partnership (involving money) about a six months later in December of 2016. These things take time (well they take time if you grow a following in an authentic way). So do not think that because you are not making money from blogging in your first year that you are doing something wrong. You must first build & grow that follower base that will get the brands wanting to work with you the ROI that they are expecting.

You should also always ensure that you are starting your website/IG channel for the right reasons. Many PR companies and brands are easily able to spot the influencers/bloggers who are purely out for money and all the wrong reasons (i.e gifts, free clothes, invites to events, etc).

The company that gave us our first brand partnership deal was True Lipz Lipgloss! I was actually able to dig up the post (it looks a little wonky because it was copied over from our Blogspot platform) you can read it HERE. We were able to land this partnership through connections, which would be my first tip. When Kelly & I first moved to the city, we went to about every event that we could get our hands on. Some were invites we would receive via DM, some via email, or some from Kelly working in the NYC PR field. From these events we were connected with the True Lipz team and were able to negotiate a deal for a blog post and 1 IG post via email. I will never forget when we got that check in the mail! Kelly ran into my room and we were just so giddy. Given at that time we knew absolutely nothing about the legalities of W9’s, contracts, had a TAX ID #, really anything business related, but we knew we were onto something! From that moment forward we knew if we continued to create beautiful content we could continue to monetize that content. Which is where Mimosas and Manhattan LLC was born!

In terms of the question to how to land that deal, as I stated above it can start with connections, it can also start with something as simple as a pitch email from you. There is no shame in reaching out to PR companies and sending over your media kit. You can easily research “example: New York City fashion PR firms” and search to find an email address. From there you can send an introduction of who you are and that you are interested in partnerning with xyz brand for an upcoming influencer campaign, attached you will find my media kit, as an example. There is no specific # of followers you need to have to land a monetarily compensated deal. A lot of it depends on the quality of content you produce, how engaged your following is, and what social channels you feel are your strongest. If you would like to learn more about this subject, you can book me for a 1 on 1 consultation via this LINK.

In the case that you are already working with PR agencies and brands but only getting paid via product there are many ways to turn that conversation into $. To start, it is not a bad thing to begin a relationship with a brand via product posts, if you are new to the blogging scene. It is an easier way to blossom into a potential paid partnership and you can always ensure you get exposure out of it (not just free product) by asking them, within the ground of your deal, to repost on their social channels. This would be a major win especially if they have a larger following than you.

However if you feel like you are creating and spending too much money on developing these posts for brands and receiving no ROI for yourself and your blog, you can definitely bring forth the question of partnering on a compensation basis. A way we word this question is. “At this time the Mimosas and Manhattan team is focusing on developing and creating our highest quality content and our only taking on brand partnerships that are monetarily compensating in return…. xyz“. We always make sure to end with, “It would be a pleasure to work with you if not now but in the future and here is a gauge of our rates…xyz.” Making sure that being polite & kind is always the number one thing you are driving home!  If you would also like to learn more about this subject, you can book me for a 1 on 1 consultation via this LINK.

 

Posted By: mimosasandmanhattan · In: Blogging 101