3 MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN COLLABORATING WITH A BRAND

Hello Fashionistas,

It’s been a while I shared knowledge via my experiences on here, the blogging streets been dry and empty for too long & we phasing out. Say hello to greener streets, flowing water and limitless content via my blog, newsletter (sign up here if you haven’t), my IG Page and Yess my Youtube Channel is coming soon.

Today’s blog post is something I learnt as an Influencer & blogger living in Lagos, Nigeria and honestly believe this applies to anyone collaborating with any brand in whatever part of the world. However these are more tailored to my own experiences I mean isn’t that why it’s called a ‘personal blog’?

Spending the money before the collaboration happens

This is easier said that done. You may be running low on your monthly expense budget then a savior comes to rescue you from your gloomy looking account balance. ‘Savior’ being a collaboration deal you just signed for your brand. DO NOT be tempted to spend all of the money before delivering the content intended for the collaboration. The first thing should be your ‘cost analysis’ for carrying out the collaboration be sure to transfer the ‘cost’ out of your account ASAP, get the supplies you need and also transfer a % to your business account (or another account) you can use either to pay maintenance fee for your website (if you have one) or maintenance fee for yourself (makeup, data etc.) basically costs for running your business. Also, there’s no feeling like having to deliver work you’ve long spent the money for because then the work feels like a drag & you feel less motivated to pull through or even worse realize you do not have enough money to cover the cost of the content creation process.

Set: @belangelique_store Shoes: Zara (Shop similar)

Using the product before creating content

I honestly learnt this the hard way.

Lets say you decided to work with a brand in exchange for a product because you’ve either reached your monthly target for paid collaborations (not to say money is ever enough dahhh) but you can spare that free spot or the brand logo would look good on your media kit either ways you agree to the terms, get the product (which is worth 50,000 – 70,000 NGN) and decide its officially yours, you start slaying in it on a daily basis or even just once and you are yet to deliver the content agreed on with the brand here’s something you do not know ‘that product isn’t yours until you’ve delivered the content fully‘ well no one told me this earlier until the product worth (50,000 – 70,000 NGN) got misplaced/stolen, had to replace it with my own money because the content most be delivered you can’t go back and send an email saying ‘oh hi, the item got stolen hence can’t deliver’ the least you can do is let them know they’ll be a delay due to a reason.

Not having a signed contract or at least a written evidence of posting and payment agreement.

I’ll say this once, when it comes to life & business ‘No one is to be trusted by word of mouth‘ please get that collaboration deal sent to you via email with what they want, what you want, payment agreement etc. I mean you can obviously communicate with another platform via phone call, WhatsApp but after all said & agreed request politely for the agreement sent to your business email and feel free to follow up with an email stating what you are to deliver, time frame etc. From experience most times no contracts are signed but a trial of email with an invoice, agreement clearly stated WORKS!

These are all from my experiences and not ‘googled’ as I learn more this blog post would be updated but for now this is all the juice I have.

|Thanks for reading|

Love & Light

What have you learnt as an Influencer/blogger in your short/long time frame working with brands? Please share I’d love to learn and sure others would love to read yours too.