Q: At what stage should I approach brands, as I still have under 1K followers?
A: People often ask me how many followers I had before I started reaching out to brands. In my case with Top Flight Family, I waited until I hit 10K followers on Instagram before doing any outreach.
Does that mean you shouldn't reach out to brands until you hit at least 10K followers on Instagram?
Not necessarily!
Travel creators often get really hung up on the size of their audience. And of course, your reach is one factor that brands will take into account when they decide whether or not to work with you.
But remember that a big reason brands do influencer marketing is that it's an easy and inexpensive way for them to get quality images that they can use in their own marketing.
Take hotels, for instance.
It's easy for a hotel to get shots of its amenities, its food and its decor. They can hire one photographer and get the job done.
But if the hotel wants "lifestyle photos," aka photos that show people enjoying those amenities, eating that food, admiring that decor, that gets a lot more complicated and expensive.
If they did it the traditional way, they'd need to hire models, provide hair and make-up, hire a stylist to pull wardrobe options, hire a creative director, and more.
And if it's a video shoot rather than just photos, it gets even more expensive. Now you need a director of photography, lighting guys, audio guys, production assistants, the list goes on.
As you can imagine, traditional production costs can easily run into 5 or 6 figures for even the most simple projects.
But if they hire an influencer or creator, that one person performs all those roles themselves. They do their own hair, their own make-up, they select and provide their own wardrobe, they take their own photos.
So if you have a small audience, but you've got incredibly high quality photos, and an extremely refined personal aesthetic, brands may still be interested in working with you despite your smaller numbers! Because the value you bring to the table is the quality of your imagery.
Now, if you have small numbers and your photos suck? Then no, don't do any outreach yet! 😅
Keep honing your craft and invest either the time to get better at taking your own photos or video, or invest the money to hire professional photographers or videographers to shoot for you. Hiring a photographer is not as expensive as you might think. There are lots of companies like
SweetEscape or
Flytographer that specialize in providing photographers in popular vacation destinations.
Ultimately, the quality of your content is the number 1 factor in how successful you'll be as a creator. So keep working on that, and don't stress the numbers so much. That will come as your quality increases.
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Take care,
Carmen Sognonvi
