Why Should Influencer Partners Follow Brand Accounts? - Ep. 22

Welcome to Negronis with Nord. Today’s episode answers a viewer question about why you should follow the brand accounts you’re looking to work with. You can submit your questions for future episodes here.

Below is a transcript of the full episode for your reading pleasure. Make sure to subscribe to the Fohr YouTube channel to get notified of new episodes.

James (aka Nordling)

James: Welcome Negronis with Nord episode number 22, coincidentally 22 was my number. When I played football in eighth grade in Georgia, I moved from Massachusetts down to Georgia. Everybody played football. I was looking to make new friends. My brother was gonna play football. So I did the issue with me in eighth grade was that I was four foot eight and I weighed 78 pounds, I think in eighth grade. So you can imagine me like wearing like, you know, these pads and everything. I looked ridiculous. I remember the first game we played this much bigger school. We were single A, they were like a four A school. So, you know, we had 80 kids in our class. They had hundreds and these kids were fucking massive. I was terrified. Okay. And we were losing 54 to zero. We were getting destroyed in my mind. Looking back on it, kids were being like taken off the field on stretchers, obviously that like wasn't happening. But like that was the general mood I'm sitting there. Obviously, I wasn't playing because I was tiny. I mean, I had no business being on a football team.

Everyone called me Nordling because my older brother was much bigger jokes on him. I ended up being bigger than him, but I start to hear Nordling. Nordling like, they want to put me in the game and I literally, I sh*t, you not. I ran away and I hid behind one of my friends until the coach got frustrated and put someone else in. When the game had like 30 seconds, I like ran up. I was like, Hey coach, I heard you were looking for me. Sorry. And he was like, it's okay. We'll, we'll get you next time. And I didn't have to play. And that's probably why I'm with you today. I probably would've been murdered on that field, but anyway, 22 was my football number. That's a long way of saying that.

The political climate

James: So we start with the funny story and we move into the dismantling of the American empire. Obviously it's been a depressing week. It's been a hard week to focus on work. Honestly, you know, unfortunately there, there's just not a lot of actionable things that we can do. Realistically. We probably have decades before there can be a constitutional right for, to abortion. Again, it is difficult to say, you know, what as influencers should you be doing? What should you use your platform for right now more actionable thing is obviously one talking about it, right? We need to like normalize, continuing to bring these issues up and talking about it. So in case you're not overly political, but you find yourself disgusted with the last week and with, you know, the country in general, just gonna share some of the races that are possible to flip.

So I think the two big ones are Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Those feel flippable, if we can win those and hold all of the other seats, there's a bunch that are kind of on the preface, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, which surprisingly sometimes can go a lot up in the air. But if we don't lose any seats and we gain two more, we can end the filibuster. We can pass a national law giving women the right to have an abortion. So I think specifically, if you're in those states with a tight race, you should be focused on it, much more Pennsylvania, North Carolina, like influencers come through, let's keep the pressure on. Let's keep talking about it. Again, the road is much more complex and long than we have had for other issues, but hopefully it's something that we can continue to do. And I think as an influencer, again, you should be using your platform to talk about these things and to bring the issues to light and to educate your audience.

And of course we can balance that with fun lighthearted content. But I think that balance is important, especially when the world is falling apart. Also, you know, we can share again some of our resources and emails that help you push back campaigns or ask clients for more time, should you feel like you need that? You need to bring your full self to this work. You know, you need to bring the energy, you need to bring the passion. And sometimes you wake up and you don't have that. And that is okay, you gotta be communicative with the brand. And I find that if you can email them and let them know what's going on, they're gonna gladly give you time to, to do the best job you can, and to be in the right mental space. So we can share some of those resources as well, but take care of yourselves. It's hard out there. And unfortunately our fight is long. So it's a marathon, not a sprint.

Should you follow brand accounts?

James: There was a question on pitching. Somebody was asking about pitching through DMS. Basically if I can't find an email and I'm, and I'm sending a message through DMS, do I need to follow the brand? In this specific question, couple things I want to point out. One, they said, I couldn't find personal emails on their website. I wanna reach out to 25 brands. Do I have to follow them before I do that?

First word advice is it's not just the website, right? You want to look on the LinkedIn, obviously like the people who are running marketing and social or influencer should absolutely be on LinkedIn type in the brand name plus influencer brand name, plus marketing brand name plus digital. And you should be able to find the person that you need. A LinkedIn DM is better than an Instagram DM, I think just because it's specific, especially if it's a big brand, if it's a smaller brand where you think the founder or, or someone is the one manning the account, then I think you can send a DM in that case.

Yeah, I do think it's important that you follow the brand. The first thing they're gonna do is click on your account and it's gonna say follow, not follow back. If I saw that, I feel like I'd be much more inclined to ignore that message. We're starting a relationship you were saying, I love your brand. I wanna work with you. I love you so much. I don't follow you that doesn't like, make any sense. I understand it's a lot to follow people so you can follow and mute.

Haley and I were just talking about we had a webinar today. We were talking about community. We'll touch on that a later video, but you, you always know the people that are, are most engaged, right? The people that comment all the time, the people that like it, the people that share it, you know, a good way to get a brand's attention again, before you DM them and ask them for something is spend a week engaging. Best thing you can do is post about them. Right. But if you're not gonna do that, engage a little bit, you know, they remember your name. Like if it comes up enough, you will remember it, right? Like if there's a celebrity who you are like always commenting on their sh*t, there's a chance they will recognize your handle, right? Like that stuff sticks in your mind. And so when you see it, you'll say, oh yes, I see. You've been commenting.

Oh, you wrote that funny comment last week. And now you've like opened the door a little bit. Right? Cause they already feel like you have a relationship. But if I see that you DM me asking to work with my brand, I click on your profile and you don't follow me. I think there's little to no chance I'm answering that DM completely, realistically.

Why should someone follow you?

One more quick point. We did this webinar on community today. It reminded me of, of something I know we've talked about, but I think is worth mentioning again, that the most important thing I think you can do as an influencer as you're trying to build your following is answer. Why, right? Why would somebody follow you? Why would they continue to engage with you? And why would they share with their friends or followers, your content? I'm just asking you to go through the experiment of answering those questions and see if you think the answers are really compelling.

If you're being really clear about, especially, why should they follow you? And we talked a lot today about how a community exists to benefit the people that participate in the community, not to benefit necessarily the person that organized the community as an influencer, your audience, it exists for those audience members to derive value from the content and the experience of following you. Not for you to be able to get into the Chanel show, not for you to be able to afford a beach house. That might be a byproduct of building a successful, vibrant, engaged community, but it cannot be the reason for its existence. So ask yourself those questions, answer them. Why will you follow me? Why will you continue to engage? And why would you share my content with other people? If you have great answers for those, you're giving yourself a much clearer path to what to create, how to create it, who to target and how you're gonna grow your account. So as always, we welcome questions of all kind. We will be here. You know, we're mostly here every week, depending if I'm, you know, in a little bit of a crabby mood and don't feel like filming one week, but ideally we will see you next week, sending your questions like subscribe, follow us, do all the good stuff and we'll see you next week. Cheers.

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Cheers, and thanks for watching.

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