Working with Brands: The Sales Pitch

You’ve seen other bloggers doing giveaways with their favorite craft companies or receiving “gifts” from craft companies that they can use in making projects and writing tutorials. Well I bet you’ve wondered “how do I make that happen for my blog?” The answer is surprisingly simple: Reach out to the company.

Sounds too simple right? Well it honestly easy that easy. The fastest way to get what you want is to ask for it. However, there are definitely some nuances to be aware of before you start emailing every company under the sun.

Do your research:

• Make sure that the company you are reaching out to makes sense for the topic of your blog. For example, you wouldn’t want to reach out to a show company just because you want free shoes if your blog is about recipes and cooking.
• Make sure the company you are reaching out to is blogger-friendly. It may come as a surprise, but not all companies are. Has this company done a giveaway with bloggers before? Do they talk about bloggers they work with on their site?

Knowing what a company is about, how they treat their relationships with bloggers, and what they can offer you before you reach out to them will not only prepare you to enter the conversation with them, it will also make you seem well-versed and professional.

Another thing to keep in mind before spending a lot of energy reaching out to companies is making sure that you are worth their time. Companies think in terms of page views and dollar signs. They are only willing to give up free product for bloggers than can get something in return for them. If you look at a company and they are only working with very big bloggers, you might want to wait until you grow a little more before you try reaching out to them.

This is a great article on making yourself presentable to companies when doing reach outs. It’s from the Independent Fashion Bloggers Network, but with a little tweaking is definitely applies to all bloggers no matter what the genre.

 Have you had any success stories in reaching out to companies?