As a creator, finding new revenue opportunities and dealing with business partners can be awkward vs. dealing with your community and living your passion.
Businesses are a very different audience than your community: they are varied, with brands, platforms, MCNs, agents, agencies, producers… and their expectations aren’t to be entertained, but to get specific deliverables. So what should you do in order to reach this new audience ?
Good news, the key process is not so different from how you address to your fans !
THINK AND CREATE DIFFERENTLY
When you program your YouTube channel, you think about what you like and you think about your fans’ expectations : what they like, why they are visiting your channel… because you want them to be happy and loyal. You thus build and script content for a specific audience that is or will become your fans.
For businesses, you need to think “content creation” for a different audience : businesses.
What are businesses looking for when they partner with influencers ?
They are expecting a result from their work, a deliverable: a branded content video, or performing merchandising partnership, or affiliation sales….Creators, who have been used to be very autonomous and free in the development of their business on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram, are often surprised that new partners can be more demanding, and more ROI-oriented than what social media appear to be.
In fact, social media platforms have become more and more demanding before they share revenues with creators: as any YouTuber knows, it isn’t that easy anymore to monetize views without respecting relatively strict content rules; and even tighter requirements are demanded from Facebook.
Of course, making branded content or licensing content can mean higher requirements, and it is always much better to integrate those requirements from the start in any partnership. While they might be ordering content, what they actually want isn’t to be entertained, but to get access to audiences and to expertise : they want to see the match between your audience and their consumers and the match between your expertise and their products
So they will expect to see your audience characteristics, your demographics data, expertise on different subject /thematic, your overall performances and your brand content experiences.
To give business partners what they want to see and ease their job, you should put together all those elements, and build your business visibility. You should create a presentation of what you want to show businesses, whether it is a powerpoint, a pdf, or even a specific business video which will be shown only to businesses.
Creators have natural marketing skills since they know how to create content: don’t let others market you with their own presentations and profiles, go and personalize your marketing materials and create videos for businesses. And the whole process is going to be the same as for publishing on YouTube for example: think, create, broadcast.
BROADCAST YOUR BUSINESS PROFILE
How can my business profile be visible for this audience ?
There are a number of branded content marketplaces (Famebit, Octoly...) you can join, and which will make you visible for brands who want to do marketing campaign, affiliations, events…
You can also publish your profile on professional social networks, like for example Linkedin,. Also make sure that your talent manager, if you have one, has a proper business profile about you so he can promote you better toward potential business partners.
At the end of the day, broadcasting your business profile should certainly not be considered as more difficult than broadcasting to your community and fans! But it won’t be done through the same channels and with the same content.
At Wizdeo, it’s our goal to help you reach your goals and find more revenues to live your passion, don’t hesitate to contact us if you want know more.
To go further, you can check Ahkeem's article to learn which brands pay the most for Instagram post.