I’ve had my art instagram account for 10 years…

At the turn of the year I went hard on content creation.

3 months later I gained 24,000 more followers (all organically).

… and my first paid partnership! This is how I did it…

artistjsong

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Treat the person on the other side of the DM as a human.

(sometimes they are actually bots though… at first)

Core takeaways:

1. Be yourself. Sell yourself.

   • If you love the brand - tell them you do. But tell them why… not just ‘I love your brand’.

2. Be proactive.

   • I told myself I would wait until I reached 20k followers until I started outreaching to brands. But I made a list of the brands I wanted to reach out.

3. Prepare your data and your value

   • I used Beacons Media Kit to track my metrics, compare myself against similar creators and know where I stand. You can see my data here.

4. Make it easy for the brand to understand how you do business and your previous work.

   • I used Passionfroot - their storefront feature is super sleek. And easy to understand. (The data entry is a bit manual!). You can see my storefront here.

5. Find brands you really love.

   • The human on the other side of the DM will feel it. and you will enjoy the process too. at the end of the day its like going to a party where everyone likes the music.

You can see my media kit with Beacons here:

Of course, you need a following and audience to catch the eye of brands in the first place - that starts with making great content! I’ll deep dive on that another time…

💡 If you’re a creator and want to get your first partnership as a creator feel free to send me DM on Instagram - and reference this newsletter.