Reaching Out to Influencers for a Collab Project

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A collaboration with an influencer is beneficial to you and your co-collaborator. This partnership enables both parties to promote your respective businesses to audiences that were out of reach before. The first step in launching a successful collab is reaching out to an influencer or market leader and presenting a proposal. How to do it? This guide will walk you through the entire process.

How to Reach Out to Influencers for a Collab Project

Step 1: Look for potential collaborators

The first step is the most important because audiences will lose interest in a project if it’s irrelevant. You need to look for market leaders or collaborators that your target audience would find interesting or helpful. 

You can use many platforms to look for potential collaborators, but the easiest and most popular way to do this is by looking at social media sites. Pay close attention to personalities and brands that your clients think highly of. Go to social media sites like Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, or TikTok to check out influencers with brand collaborations. You’re likely to find similar profiles of potential collaborators this way. 

Don’t forget to check micro-influencers because these personalities have a sizable following too. They may not be as big as insta-famous influencers, but you’d be surprised how much attention you’ll attract by teaming up with micro-personalities. 

You can also ask your audience which personalities or brands they want to see on a project. Go to your own social media and post a shoutout, asking, “which brands would you like me to collaborate with next?”

Step 2: Write Your Creative Brief

Once you have a list of potential collaborators, it’s time to brainstorm project ideas and list them in your creative brief. 

A creative brief outlines the scope of the project and its general infos. The creative brief doesn’t have to be formal or highly detailed – it’s just a general guide to ensure you and your co-collaborator are on the same page. 

Would you like to offer a podcasting guest spot, branded content, a collab product, or other offers? How long will the project last? What marketing strategies will you implement to cross-promote the collab project and vice versa? 

The scope of the collab will include your expectations for the partnership, what goals you hope to achieve with a collab project, and what kinds of products or content you will offer in the partnership. You must figure out what content you will create for a project. 

Step 3: Conduct Content Mapping

It’s equally important to list all the tasks needed to develop the content and achieve your marketing goals. If you already have a process in place, implement that; otherwise, figure out what task comes after the next. Ex: brainstorming, choosing a topic, researching, writing the copy, creating the visuals, formatting, and uploading on the blog – in this order.

Write the content you’d like to create as part of the collab, like a series of branded blog posts. Collab content has a lot of moving parts, so list down all the details to complete the blog series, like blog topics, design ideas, images to use, links, and recommended tools. If you’re a podcaster and you are laying out the collab episode, outline the topics you’ll cover, what questions you’ll ask, and visuals for marketing. 

Part of content planning is figuring out what responsibilities you’re willing to share with your collaborator. The exclusive partnership can be simple or complex, depending on the project or your personal preference. But what’s important is to develop branded content that everyone will be involved in 100%, which should benefit everyone. The quality of the content should also match the content quality your brand is known for. 

Once you’ve planned your content, start working on each task. If you have a team, delegate some tasks to your team members. Give everyone a deadline, including yourself, to ensure every task will be completed on time. The more detailed the content planning is, the smoother the process will be. Giving realistic deadlines ensures that everyone involved understands their roles in the project. 

Step 4: Start Pitching

After mapping out the content creation, you’re ready to start pitching to potential collaborators. This is a big moment so take your time writing the copy. In your pitch, include these infos:

• Business introduction
• Audience demographics
• What content to create
• What you love about the potential collaborator’s brand 
• Why do you want to work with them
• What collab project you’d like to begin with the potential collaborator

Your pitch should also include essential details about your online presence, such as your website, your social media channels, how many followers you have, your site traffic, and conversions. 

Be as descriptive as possible but make the pitch concise and easy to read. Use bullet points to make the pitch short yet detailed. 

Send the pitch via email and wait until you’ve received a response. If you receive a response, propose a date for the initial meeting, and from there, you can start determining the other essential details like what product to offer, how to create the content and visuals, the date to launch the collab project, and how/what platforms to market the collab. 

Reaching out to brands and working with influencers on a collab project is exciting and will benefit your business greatly. However, it’s best to choose a brand or personality you respect and/or enjoy working with professionally to make the project click. It’s also important to get fair compensation to make the partnership successful!

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