5 Strategies To Use as a Micro-Influencer To Get Maximum Exposure for your Brand

Working with your favorite brand is every blogger and influencer’s dream come true. Even better if it’s a brand you’ve utilized throughout your entire life! So, it would be icing on the cake if your work with said brand gets selected to be featured in their NATIONAL CAMPAIGN right? Read on to see how you can potentially make this happen for your business too!

Recently I had the opportunity to collaborate with an advertising agency to help spread awareness on how COVID-19 is effecting local businesses and charities. Specifically for their client McDonald’s and the Ronald McDonald House Charities. The campaign was to raise awareness and support through raising money for their Ronald McDonald Emergency Fund.

Here is a little background information on what the funds are used for:
“The emergency fund is used to support families with meals and supplies during this time. The RMHC is partnering with local restaurants to provide meals for families every night, which in turn will help our favorite small-owned businesses as well.” Find out more information on their site. https://secure2.convio.net/rmhci/site/SPageNavigator/pw/Donation_Landing.html

Since it was my first time working with this agency I wanted to be sure to put my best foot forward in hopes that it would lead to future opportunities. It’s one thing to have a brand reach out to you in regards to your work and want to collaborate with you. It’s another when you’ve cold pitched a brand yourself and they agree to give you a shot, you have to knock it out of the park THE FIRST TIME.

Once you get clarity from the agency on the campaign details via a script, mood board or email confirmation, you should be good to go to start creating your own content. Here are the strategies I used to come up with my original content that I provided to the agency.

 Brand Colors – when you think of the brand, what colors come to mind? What colors invoke familiarity to the brand? Be sure to incorporate those choices in your content. I made sure to use yellow and red for McDonald’s in my feature.
 Emotional Impact – what emotions do you want to invoke from your audience? What message are you trying to convey? What childhood memory do you want the viewer to tap into? Be sure to incorporate this in your content. Going to McDonald’s with my parents is a fond childhood memory. I knew I wanted to include my kids in this campaign feature and have us smiling and laughing to invoke the feeling of joy.
 Props are key – but not just any props! Be sure to include props that logically go with your theme and concept. Look around your house, you’d be surprised to find things that you already have. I still remember getting a Happy Meal with my parents as a child. I was sure to include a Happy Meal box in my feature.
 Lighting & Scenery – Where do you want your concept to take place? Get creative! Think outside the box. Now’s the time to try out something new other than your standard everyday post. Since this feature was taking place during Covid-19 I knew we couldn’t go inside of the restaurant but I also knew that I didn’t want to be inside of my home. So I decided to include my van in the picture and talk about going through the drive-thru in my caption. I made sure that the McDonald’s logo was visible in my shot.
 Storytelling – It’s so easy to throw up a few words, include a catchy phrase paired with the latest trendy hashtag. But what if you took some time to think out your written message and tap into the art of storytelling? Draw your audience in hook, line and sinker. It doesn’t take a wordy caption to get the job done. I included real life issues and made sure to incorporate the pertinent information that the campaign spoke to in my caption.

I’m happy to report that I used each of these 5 concepts to execute my content for the RMHC campaign. I’m also happy to report that three days later after posting the image on my Instagram account I was contacted by an overseas ad company. They were asking for permission to license the image I posted on my Instagram account. As a micro-influencer with less than 5k followers I was ecstatic to have my content featured in a national campaign! It was a privilege to be featured alongside two of my kids in the ad as well as knowing that my oldest (12 years old) captured the image for me. Overall this was a big family win for us and a big win for me as a fairly new blogger.

Check out how it all came together in the link below.

This is your friendly reminder to keep doing what you’re doing. It’s not going unnoticed and will pay off eventually. Don’t give up on yourself or the value and skills you bring to the table. YOU’VE GOT THIS!