If you are a content creator or influencer and you are NOT consistently talking about brands and products you love, you are doing yourself a disservice! What may be even worse than that is if you are talking about products that you love without it being a partnership with that brand, and then you put somewhere in the post “don’t worry, this post isn’t sponsored by this brand!”
Here is why you definitely should be talking about brands and products you love shamelessly! And why you should NOT disclose when it isn’t sponsored.
I used to think that if I talked about brands, products, hotels, or services I wanted or liked, then I would be selling myself short on working with them. To me, I thought if I gave them free advertisement then there would be no reason or incentive for them to want to work with me because I had already given them a shoutout to my audience.
But this is kind of backwards!
By talking about a brand and what you love about them, you have officially put yourself organically on their radar! Brands love when they can work with a true fan of their brand because then they know that the influencer that they are working with is someone who loves them and is going to give them the best, most authentic content.
Not to mention, by giving them a little unprompted love on your feed, you can provide them numbers on how well they did on your page! Especially on your Insta Story because you can see just how many times they sticker tapped their tagged name or swiped up on your Story to a product that you might have linked. This sort of information can provide them with valuable insight in to just how beneficial a partnership with you can be!
So all around, giving brands some love and tagging them in your content that may feature them or give them a very specific shoutout could potentially get you a collaboration with them in the future when you pitch yourself to them!
Now let’s talk about why you should NOT be giving these shoutouts with the disclosure that what you are saying is not a paid sponsorship.
When you post regularly just about your day, do you also post that those aren’t sponsored? Probably not. By saying your glowing words about this brand or product, and that it’s “not an ad” or that “this isn’t a sponsorship”, you’ve almost set yourself up for mistrust because now when you talk about a brand during a paid sponsorship, it’s going to sound like you are only saying that because you got paid to do so. “Wow I just love this dress! It’s flowy, beautiful, I feel amazing in it! And FYI this isn’t sponsored.” This gives the idea to your audience that by saying nice things, it means that someone paid you lots of money to say those nice things and that it’s not actually your honest opinion.
Whether you were paid to talk about a brand or not, your words should be the truth! You should also be taking on collaborations that you actually love and that align with your lifestyle and interests. Not only that, but you have other interests outside of those partnerships, so why wouldn’t you talk about them? You need to build a trust with your audience and talk about the things that you love whether you were prompted to or not!
Why has there been a mindset created where we can only talk about brands if it’s paid? Probably because we are scared to talk about brands without being paid because we think it will take us out of the running for getting paid if we already gave them our audience for free!
Break free of this cage and talk about brands willingly and openly regularly! This will not only build trust with your audience, but that means when they do see a sponsorship from you, it won’t look like you are just shouting “AD” into their face! The best sponsorships are the ones that are organic to your feed. And if your audience is accustomed to you talking about products, then seeing a sponsorship won’t seem any different to them.
Be open with your audience when you have a partnership that you need to disclose, and be honest in your everyday life about the brands and products that you just love on the regular! Your audience will love hearing your thoughts!
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