Insight of Influencing
It is no question that influencer marketing is taking social media by storm. Nathan is an influencer and team member at Hollywood Branded. Nathan sits down with Stacy to talk about what it is really like to be an influencer and what brands should be aware of when working with influencers.
Influencer marketing is an effective way to market your brand. In this blog, Hollywood Branded discusses what brands need to know about influencer marketing, and how brands should be communicating with influencers for the most successful partnerships.
A Little More About Nathan
Nathan is not only one of our agency's team members at Hollywood Branded...he is also a music artist and social media influencer who has built a very engaged follow of over four million viewers on TikTok. His approach is unique and leverages his love of comedy and music. He inspires others to be authentic and live their life at their fullest. His topics include a range of social issues including mental health, LGBTQ+, and marginalized communities. Nathan started by posting YouTube videos and Tumblr content when he was just 12 years old. He learned how algorithms work and what type of content gets audiences actually engaged. Over the last seven years, he has used TikTok to build awareness of his own music and has created brand sponsored content for a number of top brands and companies. In 2020, Nathan started the influencer house, Playhouse LA, where he lived in a California mansion and threw brand sponsored COVID-friendly events with companies like Jim Beam, Caritas, and Faria. Nathan and Stacy chat about what is needed to create a successful TikTok following and how brands can better work with influencers.
Interview Transcript Highlights
Question: So what I'd like to start off is having you share a little bit about yourself and what got you to be this influencer and how you got here. What was your journey?
Answer: Yeah, so I moved to Los Angeles when I was 21, which was a very interesting time to move to Los Angeles. I started on the app Musically for my professional career, which got bought by ByteDance and turned into TikTok. I started a music career about three years ago, utilizing my following and pushing my market towards my music. I've worked with a lot of different brands as a consultant for social media. I'm now working at Hollywood Branded as a social media coordinator, which has been very fun. And I just really want people to be inspired by me to be their most authentic selves and just enjoy life to the fullest, where nothing is off limits. If you want to be a singer, you want to be a doctor, you want to be an astronaut, you can do it. It just takes hard work.
Question: So when you work with a brand, how do you approach it? Do you reach out to brands? Do brands reach out to you? Typically, how do you create a brand partnership?
Answer: Yeah, a lot of my brand partnerships have come from in-person relationships at different events or through friends of friends. But a lot of them have also come from them emailing me or a management company emailing me about an opportunity or I reach out. Typically, I'll reach out to about 10 brands before I get a secured brand deal, just one. But typically if a brand comes to me, it's way easier success partnership rate.
Question: And when you're reaching out to brands, do you just say, "Hey, I'd like to work with you," or do you come in with a strategy or how do you approach?
Answer: Typically, when I will reach out to a brand, I will let them know that I'm interested in their product or whatever they are producing. And I'll explain a little bit about myself, why I'm interested in working with them, the type of video I'd like to make, a potential ROI, and then my one sheet, which if you guys don't know what a one sheet is, it's just all of my metrics, popular videos that I've done before, popular brand partners that I've worked with and popular brand partnerships that have been successful. So things like that, my demographics.
Question: So for all of you brands who are out there who are just like, "Oh, I'm going to shoot off a dozen different inquiries," or a hundred inquiries or however many inquiries as you spam influencers, trying to figure out who you're going to work with, what you're saying is if someone actually sits down, puts together a detailed campaign in the initial first reach out, you're going to take that more seriously than if it's just, "Hey, Nathan, we're interested in working with you"?
Answer: Right. Some people don't even take the time to change the spam email to, Hey, Nathan, there's be hi, whoever. And that's not a good thing, because I know that you're not actually interested in me, you're probably just spamming this out to thousands of people or hundreds of people. But if someone actually takes the time to be personal with me, then I'm more likely to want to work with them and then send them a carefully thought out response that would take me however long to write.
Question: Are there any other things that brands should know with working with influencers or you?
Answer: Influencers are typically younger. It's a very new free flowing industry. Influencers can be hard to communicate with sometimes, but giving them, I guess, the benefit of a doubt sometimes because influencers can be hard to work with in a prideful way. Influencers think of themselves very highly. In my opinion, I think a little bit too highly, but not in a way of how they price, but just the way that they carry themselves, I think it is sometimes a little too much. But when you go into talking, if you're going to speak directly with an influencer, not a management who's used to the business lingo really dialing in with the influencer to make sure they understand their contractual agreements and just all the things that they would need to know from a business standpoint.
Check Out The Podcast!
Nathan has so much information about being an influencer and the industry. Check out the podcast below to learn more about brand partnerships and influencer marketing!
Every week we have a marketing professional on our show to share their tips, tricks and lessons learned from their professional experience. Check out some of our other podcast blogs from earlier this year:
- The Great Resignation
- Personal Branding 101
- Attracting More Visitors To Your Site
- The Key To Building A Major Brand
- Increasing Your Conversion Campaigns
Every week we release a new podcast featuring guest's with so much knowledge about marketing, you don't want to miss one! How can you make sure you don't miss an episode? Click below to subscribe!
