Resources

How Do Pet Influencers Work with Brands?

Whether you started your Instagram account for fun or the hopes of going viral so you can become Insta-famous, you want to know how do pet influencers work with brands? How do brands find them and pay for creating content?

Background and Experience

Before FrenchieCute and before Vince Cincy, I was a blogger in another, more general and over saturated niche. And while dogs on Instagram are a dime a dozen, there aren’t as many dog blogger and fewer are blogs about French Bulldogs.

I’ve been able to take what I’ve learned from years of creating, networking, paid courses, and paying attention to social media trends and apply all of it to my work with Vince Cincy. I landed my first big paid gig when I had less than 7k Instagram followers! Having a website in addition to Instagram and accounts on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and a email newsletter means I have several ways I can offer to work with a brand.

If you’re only on Instagram, you have several options with feed post, Story, IGTV and URL in profile.

Homework for Pet Influencers

Take the time to work through the following steps before working with brands.

Your Profile
- Think of your profile as an elevator speech. Who are you, what audience do you serve, what’s your hook?
What can you offer a brand?
- Working with brands isn’t about you and the number of followers you have, it’s what you can do for the brand.
What deliverables (content format) can you provide?
- Photos, videos or both?
- If you don’t have a website, do not post to Instagram Stories, do not have YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, then you can’t offer that to a brand.
- If you’re only on Instagram you have options of still photo or video in feed, Story, IGTV and URL in profile.
Know your style.
- Will work for free?
- Host giveways?
- Product reviews?
- Compelling storytelling?
Create a Case Study.
- Even if you haven’t worked with brands, you can create examples by posting about products you use and love.
- Be sure to collect insights on these posts.
Media Kit.
- Think of it like a resume for your account.
- It pulls together your profile, content options, and experience.
Figure out your rates.
- If you want to get paid, you need to know your rates.
- You can start with an Instagram Money Calculator to get an idea of rates.
Understand FTC disclosure.
- Whether you’ve been given product and/or paid by the brand, you have to disclose.
- It needs to be obvious to your audience the relationship you have with that brand.
- Click for more info on FTC disclosure