How to Find Brands to Work With as an Influencer

Finding brands that truly align with your content can feel overwhelming, but it's far from impossible with the right strategy. Instead of waiting for opportunities to fall into your lap, you can take control and build the partnerships you've always wanted. This guide will walk you through actionable steps, from polishing your creator brand to mastering the art of the pitch, so you can start landing your dream collaborations.

First Things First: Nail Down Your Niche and Brand Identity

Before you scout for brands, you need to make sure your own brand is crystal clear, professional, and appealing to potential partners. Brands aren't just paying for exposure, they're investing in your unique voice, your well-defined niche, and the trusting relationship you have with your audience. Getting this foundation right is non-negotiable.

Define Your Content Pillars and Unique Value

What are you actually known for? Your content pillars are the 3-5 core topics you consistently create content about. For a travel creator, this might be "Budget Solo Travel," "Off-the-Beaten-Path Destinations," and "Backpacking Gear Reviews." For a home chef, it could be "30-Minute Vegan Meals," "Meal Prep Sundays," and "Sustainable Kitchen Swaps." When a brand manager visits your profile, they should understand who you are and what you offer within seconds. Vague content gets you nowhere. Be specific, be consistent, and own your corner of the internet.

Know Your Audience Inside and Out

Brands want to partner with you to reach your audience. Therefore, you need to know exactly who that audience is. Dive into your Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube analytics. Go beyond vanity metrics like follower count and look at the real data:

• Demographics: What’s the age range, gender split, and geographic location of your primary followers? A brand selling skincare to Gen Z women in the UK needs to know if their ideal customer is in your community.
• Engagement: Which posts get the most comments, saves, and shares? This tells you what your audience truly values and helps you pitch relevant collaboration ideas.
• Interests: What are your followers talking about in the comments? What other accounts do they follow? Understanding their broader interests helps you identify non-obvious brand categories to partner with.

Polish Your Profile and Create a Media Kit

Your social media profile is your digital storefront. It needs to look professional and make it incredibly easy for a brand to say "yes."

Start with your bio. It should clearly state your name, your niche, and your value proposition (e.g., "Helping millennials build wealth through simple investing"). Include a direct way for brands to contact you, like a professional email address, instead of telling them to "DM for collabs."

Next, create a media kit. This is a 1-3 page PDF that serves as your creator resume. It should include:

• A short, compelling bio
• High-quality photos of you and your work
• Key statistics (follower count across platforms, engagement rate, monthly views)
• Audience demographics (from the analytics you just pulled)
• Examples of past partnerships and testimonials (if you have them)
• A menu of your services and starting rates (optional, but professional)

You can create a beautiful media kit for free using a tool like Canva. Keep it clean, on-brand, and easy to read.

Proactive Outreach: Don't Wait for Brands to Find You

Many creators play a passive game, hoping brands will magically discover them. The most successful influencers are proactive. They identify the brands they want to work with and strategically build relationships. This is how you land partnerships that you're genuinely passionate about.

Step 1: Create Your "Dream 100" List of Brands

Forget generic lists. Get hyper-specific. Make a spreadsheet and list 100 brands you would be absolutely thrilled to work with. Don't limit yourself. This list isn't about who you think you *can* get, it's about who you *want*. Organize it into categories:

• Brands You Already Use and Love: This is the easiest and most authentic starting point. Go through your home - kitchen, closet, bathroom - and list every product you genuinely recommend.
• Brands Your Audience Mentions: Pay attention to your DMs and comments. What products or services are your followers asking about? Which brands are they already tagging?
• Aspirational Brands: These are the "reach" brands. They might be bigger players, but adding them to your list keeps you motivated and pushes you to grow.
• Competitor's Partners: Look at what brands other creators in your niche are working with. This is a great indicator of which companies are already investing in influencer marketing and understand its value.

For each brand, add columns for a contact person, their email, your outreach status (e.g., Engaged, Pitched, Followed Up), and any relevant notes.

(Example Spreadsheet Columns: Brand Name | Category | Contact Person | Email | Status | Notes)

Step 2: Warm Up Your Prospects with Organic Engagement

Never send a completely cold pitch. Before you ever ask for anything, become a genuine member of that brand's community. For each of your "Dream 100" brands, spend a week or two building a relationship:

• Follow them on their most active social platforms.
• Comment thoughtfully on their posts. Don't just post a fire emoji. Add to the conversation and show you understand their brand.
• Tag them in your Stories or feed posts when you're naturally using their product. This is a low-pressure way to get on their social media manager’s radar.

This "warm-up" phase shows that you’re a real fan, not just a creator looking for a paycheck. When your pitch email eventually lands in their inbox, your name might already be familiar.

Step 3: Master the Art of the Personalized Pitch

Once you've warmed up a contact, it’s time to send your pitch. A generic, copy-pasted email will get deleted immediately. Your pitch must be personalized, professional, and value-driven.

First, find the right contact. Don't email `hello@brand.com`. Go to LinkedIn and search for job titles like "Influencer Marketing Manager," "Brand Partnerships Coordinator," or "Social Media Manager" at your target company. Use a tool like Hunter or RocketReach to find their professional email address.

Next, craft the perfect email:

• Catchy Subject Line: Make it clear and professional. Example: "Collaboration Idea: [Your Niche] for [Brand Name]" or "[Your Name] x [Brand Name] Partnership."
• Personalized Opening Line: Prove you're not a robot. Mention a specific product you love, a recent campaign you admired, or how long you’ve been a customer.
• Quick Introduction: Briefly explain who you are, what your platform is about, and who you serve. "I'm Jane, a food creator who shares 30-minute family-friendly recipes with an audience of over 50,000 busy parents."
• The Big "Why": This is the most important part. Explain why this partnership makes sense. "Your new line of organic pasta sauces is a perfect fit for my audience, who are always looking for healthy and quick dinner solutions."
• Propose Concrete Ideas: Don't just say, "I'd love to collaborate." Give them a specific, creative idea. "I envision a 3-part Instagram Reel series showing how to use one jar of your sauce to create three different weeknight meals."
• Call to Action: Attach your media kit and propose the next step. "I've attached my media kit with more details on my audience and past work. Are you available for a brief chat next week to discuss this further?"

Keep your email short, skimmable, and focused on the value you can provide for *them*.

Leverage Influencer Marketing Platforms and Agencies

While direct outreach gives you the most control, you can also use platforms and agencies to find opportunities, especially as you're starting out or scaling up.

Sign Up for Influencer Marketing Platforms

These websites are marketplaces connecting creators with brands running campaigns. You create a profile, connect your social accounts, and can either apply to open opportunities or be discovered by brands searching for creators like you. Some popular platforms include:

• Aspire
• Upfluence
• Grin
• #paid
• CreatorIQ

The benefit is that they streamline discovery, communication, and payment processing. The downside is that they can be very competitive, and some platforms may take a percentage of your earnings.

Consider Working with an Agent or Manager

Once your career picks up and you’re fielding multiple inbound requests, you might consider getting representation. A manager or agent can elevate your career significantly. They have established industry connections, handle all the stressful negotiations, review contracts, and find you bigger, more lucrative deals. Typically, they take a 10-20% commission on the deals they secure for you, but the right manager is well worth the investment.

This step usually comes later in a creator's journey, once managing the business side of influencing becomes a full-time job in itself.

Make Yourself Easy to Find: Optimize for Discovery

While you're busy with proactive outreach, make sure you're also setting up your profiles so that brands can easily find you. Think of this as influencer SEO.

Treat Your Bio like a Business Card

We mentioned this earlier, but it’s worth repeating. State your niche directly in your bio ("Chicago Fashion Blogger," "DIY Home Renovation Expert"). Add your city if it’s a key part of your brand. Most importantly, ensure your professional email is visible and clickable. Brands won't waste time trying to figure out how to contact you.

Use Strategic Hashtags and Keywords

Brand managers actively search hashtags to find creators for campaigns. Use a mix of broad, specific, and community-based hashtags in your posts. For example, a home decor creator might use #homedecor (broad), #scandinaviandesign (specific), and a community tag like #myneutralabode. Think about what a marketing manager would type into the search bar and use those keywords in your captions and hashtags.

Tag Brands and Locations Organically

When you post content featuring a product, tag the brand. When you visit a local cafe or boutique hotel, tag them and the location. Brand managers screen their tagged photos feed for user-generated content and potential partners. Putting your work directly in their line of sight is one of the easiest ways to get discovered organically.

Final Thoughts

Finding the right brands to work with is an active process that blends strategic preparation, proactive outreach, and optimizing your own channels for discovery. By defining your brand, building your dream list, and learning to pitch with value, you move from passively waiting for opportunities to actively creating them.

Once those partnerships start flowing, managing all the moving pieces - deadlines, content requirements, posting schedules - becomes its own full-time job. I know firsthand that juggling multiple brand deals alongside your own content plan can lead to burnout and chaos. That’s why we built Postbase, to give creators a simple, visual calendar to plan and see all of their content in one place. You can schedule everything in advance, for all your platforms, so you’ll never miss a sponsored post deadline or have a gap in your content schedule again.