The Beauty Blogger's Guide to Approaching Brands for Product Reviews, Sponsorship or Paid Ads

I'm very active in several Facebook and LinkedIn groups and have even started a couple of my own for Health and Beauty Entrepreneurs to help them with the business side of their glamour jobs. Several of the members in these groups happen to be beauty bloggers who want to be influencers in the industry. Many of the beauty bloggers are active participants on the discussion groups. This in fact is a great action to take if you are looking for exposure for your blog, you have to join the conversation outside of your blog as well. Groups provide a platform to discuss brands and often times brand representatives are listening in to hear what's being said about them and their competition to provide better customer service to their consumers.

If you are a beauty blogger looking to work with brands you don't want to make the mistake of posting an inappropriate solicitation for their products in a social networking group. How you approach a brand about writing a review for them can have an impact and it's very important to be ethical and authentic. You don't want to appear to be a product junkie looking for free stuff, but rather a legitimate beauty entrepreneur.

Perhaps you want to review beauty products, gain sponsors or start reeling in paid ads for your blog, here are some guidelines you should follow when approaching brands for business:

1. Treat your blog like a business. Before you even approach brands, be sure that your blog is a project others will want to be associated with. Have quality consistent content that is visually appealing. Have pride in the work that you do. Understand that you are running a business and require a certain standard of respect towards the service that you provide for brands to their target market.

2. Determine your rates.  Know what your blogging services are worth to a brand. Once you've decide that you are going to monetize your blog, you must determine rates for ad space and services that you will provide, writing reviews can be one of those services. Choosing to write reviews for brands for free consequently hurts the entire online marketing industry. Giving away your work depreciates the value of the time and services that all bloggers provide to a brand. Giving away something of value for free makes it harder for others to capitalize off of these services. If you aren't sure what you should be charging check out this blog post by Erik Deckers Suggested Freelance Writing Rates - Midwest Edition.

3. Have something in writing. Prepare a rate sheet or a media kit that brands can look over. Create something visually enticing that will draw the brand into a discussion about working with you. It's okay to be creative with this, but always be professional. If you develop a media kit make it representative of the quality of services and content that you provide in your blog. This may be your first impression on the brand representative, make it count! If you want an example of a blog media kit, check out this one I made for my beauty blog, Blushing Ambers.

4. Search out brands to work with. Stating that you want to work with all beauty brands is not realistic. Not narrowing your ideal advertisers and sponsors is a big mistake. You'll find yourself looking to work with any and everybody and this only leads to working with nobody. Not every brand will be a good fit for your blog. Many times a brand won't work with you if you are already working with their competitor. For example, placing an ad on your blog for Urban Decay may ruin your chances of receiving advertisement with Make Up For Ever.  So decide ahead of time if you want to work with one over the other.

5. Personally contact brands. The biggest mistake I see beauty bloggers make, is posting in a general group discussion that they want brands to send them products to review. Although the goal is to have brands reaching out to you, if you aren't there yet, it won't happen by consistently posting spammy requests in an open forum. If you are following #1 and treating your blog like a business, then asking for money from brands should be a priority. There is no way you can run a business if you aren't generating any income. To do that, you have to ask for the sale, but brands want to feel that they are special to you. Contact the head of their advertising department by email. Addressing the contact person by name shows that you took time to seek out their business. Express that you are an ambassador of their product. This will make a huge impact on their decision to work with you. Establish that you are an influencer among your social networks and explain in detail why they should advertise with you over another brand.

If you stay within these guidelines you should have no problem approaching brands about doing business with you. If you still aren't having any luck email me your questions and I can give you suggestions (Business@BlushingAmbers.com).

If you found this post to be interesting, read next Wednesday's post "How to Close the Sale: for beauty bloggers that want to work with brands".

What's a Social Media Beauty Strategist?

You're probably wondering what is a Social Media Beauty Strategist... Truth is, I made it up, but it's a combination of the market I work with and what I do for them. You may have heard of a Chief Social Media Officer or CSMO, a term that places the importance of appointing a C-level executive to manage social media for a corporation. Doesn't sound quite as pretty as Social Media Beauty Strategist, does it? Like a CSMO, I too manage social media, but most of the time I don't work in a corporate office. Beauty is in the hands of the consumer and so I go where the influencers go.

You can find me listening, commenting and sharing content in Facebook groups, on a Twitter chat, pinning a pic on Pinterest, or thumbing through Tumblr. I offer boutique services in social media to clients who need to brand their beauty products. I manage their brand online so they don't have to and that means a lot more than tallying up likes on Facebook.  If you want a little more insight on what it takes to brand for beauty watch this video to find out.


Branding for Beauty, as her social media strategist | Amberly Carter from Amberly Carter on Vimeo.

So if you still aren't sure about what I do to help grow businesses in beauty, here are a few of the services I provide:

- Social media strategy based on brand goals
- Tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Yelp and Twitter set-up
- Day to day management of social media platforms
- Social Network/Blog advertising
- Spam checks
- Digital campaigns
- Email/chat/phone support
- Identify and follow influencers
- Directory submission
- Geolocation promotion
- Article submission/backlinks/blog comments
- SEO copywriting
- Email marketing
- Mobile SMS marketing
... and more

If you'd have questions about social media and beauty contact me at  Business@BlushingAmbers.com. I'm highly connected through several social networks, especially Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Let's link up!