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You love being active on Instagram and your fans love the content you share? Your followers are growing steadily and you want to take your Instagram account to the next level?

Then you must be wondering how to start engaging in an Instagram collaboration.

There are people that make a living through online marketing on Instagram. They create engaging visual content and get brands and hotels to work with them. In return, they promote the brands’ products and services as affiliates.

There are different types of income streams to monetize your Instagram account. We wrote an extensive overview of the different options in our guide How To Make Money From Instagram In 2021 With Under 2000 Followers.

Here comes the best part. Although Instagram is becoming increasingly crowded with Instagram marketers, there are still ways to get a share of the pie – even as a small account!

You don’t need to have thousands of followers to make some extra cash from your Instagram account! It’s possible to acquire brand deals with even under 2000 followers. We know it because we have done it! And we promise you that you can do the same.

The key lies in how you approach which brands.

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ou don't need to be an Instagram superstar to monetize your visual content. You don't even need thousands of followers! We tell you how we get hotels and brands to collaborate on our under 2000 followers travel Instagram account! Including an email template to make companies want to work with you! For small Instagram accounts, micro influencers, and travel influencers. Make money online, Blogging, Social media

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you use them to make a purchase, we will earn a small commission. There are no additional costs to you, but it helps us keep this blog alive. The products and services we recommend are based on our own opinions. Enjoy!

Look professional with your photography and editing skills

One thing that is extremely important for growing your Instagram account and coming across as a serious influencer to brands is your photography and editing skills. It is no secret that all successful Instagram influencers edit their photos to create a WOW effect and to make them stand out.

That means that before you approach brands for an Instagram collaboration, ask yourself if your account looks professional and if you can improve.

What helped us to get our photography and editing skills to the next level is SkillShare.

You can use our link and get a 2 months FREE trial of SkillShare. 2 months is a sufficient amount of time to go through the e-learnings. You can cancel your subscription anytime, which is great.

Here are 4 courses that we recommend:



9 Steps to securely land an Instagram collaboration

In the next paragraphs we’re sharing 9 steps on how you can get hotels and other brands to collaborate with you.

We’ve written these tips to guide you to get an Instagram collaboration through active effort from your side by selecting and approaching partners for collaborations.

Of course there is also a chance that you are contacted directly by a company on Instagram. In that case the following steps might not be applicable to you one on one. However even then you will also need to evaluate which companies you should proceed with and which offers you’ll be better off rejecting.

To attract brands for an Instagram collaboration, you do have to show that you are consistently active on the platform. For this we personally use Tailwind to schedule posts. This allows us to spend our time efficiently on Instagram, for example by posting consistently at the best time for our audience.

Ready to gain collaboration partners and start earning some cash from your Instagram account? Keep on reading!

1. Spot opportunities for an Instagram collaboration 

The very first step of getting brand deals is to be creative and think of your next upcoming events or travel plans that could bring collaboration opportunities.

  • Are you travelling to a new destination and still need a hotel?
  • Are you planning a road trip and need to book a car?
  • Do you love sports and are looking for new work out gear?

All these are examples of potential reasons to work with companies. Think about what type of businesses could be interesting for you to collaborate with.

Make sure you are clear about what you are asking from your partner.

There are so many possibilities! Hotels, travel agencies, restaurants, clothing brands, tech companies, and others are always looking for new ways and marketers to promote their products.

2. Do your research for an Instagram collaboration

The next step is to do your research on possible partners for an instagram collaboration. Our recommendation is to make your search as concrete as possible by focusing on opportunities that are within close reach. This means that rather than trying to book all of your hotel stays for the next 6 months, think of one upcoming city on your list and focus on getting a hotel collaboration there. That will make your research more targeted and thorough.

We like to start our research on Instagram. We typically do a hashtags search to find potential collaboration partners.

For example, for the hotel example we will use #hotelkualalumpur, for finding hotels to approach. When we find an attractive hotel that we like via hashtags, we always double check the rating and reviews of the hotel on booking.com. 

The most important decision is still to come. Which of the companies that you found online will you contact? To make the selection, it’s crucial to know how to pick the “right” partners for making a collaboration proposal.

3. How to pick the “right” brands and hotels

This step is a very important factor for whether your collaboration offer will be accepted. The key of increasing the positive response rate of possible partners is knowing who to target.

Since we’re talking about Instagram collaborations, the partner should see a clear and substantial benefit from receiving additional exposure via social media. This means that they themselves are still emphasising a lot on growing their exposure and investing into promotion via social media.

A good rule of thumb for us is to use the brand’s size of Instagram: Focus on companies that have under 20K followers.

If you see that the brands or hotels are active on Instagram, the less followers the better! Those companies are actively trying to grow and might be interested in investing into you.

Especially if you find during your hashtag search that other Instagramers are writing promotional posts about the brand, you know this brand might be very interested to receive your offer.

4. Think clearly about your value and your offering

It’s really important to do this step right! Spend some time thinking about what value you can bring to your future partner in this Instagram collaboration. We talk more in detail about examples of the different types of deals you can offer to brands and hotels in our post How To Make Money From Instagram In 2019 With Under 2000 Followers.

  • Do you think the brand will be interested in receiving exposure via your feed or stories?
  • Do you want to create promotional materials for your partner?

All these are options for offerings and there are more you can think of.

Keep this in mind: The more (active!) engagement you have on your account, the more likely the brand will be willing to pay you to promote their products on your Instagram account.

The opposite holds as well: The smaller your account is, the less interested the brand will be in you as an online marketer for their products. Instead, there is other value you can create for them.

This is the secret to approaching brands for an Instagram collaboration as a small account! Use your feed as a public business card to showcase your creative skills and think of how these these skills (e.g. photography / videography) will create value for your partner. For example, for their marketing efforts.

Think about how much your service is worth.

  • Are you satisfied to receive a free product?
  • Do you expect one or three nights complementary stay at a hotel?
  • What affiliate marketing rate can you accept?
  • What can you charge for your service?

Dare to experiment how high you can go before a partner rejects. It’s trial and error and the more frequent you practice negotiations the quicker and more comfortable you will learn what works and what doesn’t. 

5. Be time conscious when suggesting an Instagram collaboration

We noticed that the time proposal we make for a collaboration to a company can be a major determinant for whether our offer will get accepted or not. 

For hotel collaborations we recommend to approach the hotel 2-3 weeks before your intended stay.

The reason is that this period will give the hotel sufficient time to handle your request and you to follow up in case you don’t receive a response immediately. Also, getting in touch with the hotel 2-3 weeks before, will allow you to arrange another collaboration or book something out of your own pocket in case your offer gets rejected. 

We experimented with approaching hotels on last minute basis 1-3 days before the date of the intended stay. While such a deal can be quite lucrative for the hotel because the room is likely to remain empty, it turned out to be too short notice. We often could not get in touch with the responsible decision maker to make the deal happen in time.

For collaborations that involve product reviews, take into account the delivery times for planning the time line for your collaboration. You don’t want to receive a beach towel when you’re actually about to go on a hiking trip. 

Also, take into account seasonal peak times. Try to think from the hotels perspective: When would be the best time for them to collaborate with you?

6. Draft an email

Your email is your moment to shine and you should make sure that your pitch is convincing and includes all information that is needed for the receiver to make a decision.

This is what the email should include:

  • The reason why you’re writing this email and why you selected them as an ideal partner
  • An introduction of you with focus on your online presence and reach (Instagram account, online blog, number of followers, website traffic if you would like to mention, etc.)
  • Previous achievements and collaborations (if any)
  • What you can offer and how your offer will create value for them 
  • What you expect in return
  • When you expect to receive an answer
  • Your contact information

Below you can see an example of an email we sent to a potential partner, which led to a collaboration.

Instagram Collaboration With Hotels and Brands in 2020

7. Get the contact details of the marketing manager

Keep in mind that hotels and brands are organizations in which people have designated responsibilities and roles. Your collaboration request will need to arrive in the hands of the marketing manager (or in some cases sales manager) of the organization.

In most cases the email of the marketing manager is not easily to be found on the website. Don’t worry. In this case we advice you to send your email to the general contact email of the company. Typically, your email will be forwarded internally.

Follow up with the hotel or brand via phone and ask whether your email has been forwarded to the responsible person.

Ask to be reconnected or write down their contact details, so you can follow up once more directly.

8. Follow up

You might not like to receive “kindly reminder emails” yourselves, however they have proven to work very well in our communication efforts with potential clients. 

People nowadays get swamped with emails and your email might have drowned somewhere in the depths of someone’s inbox. Don’t hesitate to send a follow up email 3 days after your first email – in fact we encourage you to do so!

What works best for us is to ask for the phone number of the responsible marketing manager and call them to ask whether they had the chance to read our email already. This gives us the chance to introduce ourselves verbally and pitch our email again directly.

Following up has proven to double our success rate. So it would be a shame not to do it!

9. Be confident

This one sounds very trivial but it’s actually the piece of advice that we couldn’t stress often enough. There might always be the fear in the back of your mind that you’re not good enough or not big enough. That’s normal.

Don’t let those concerns prevent you from trying! After all, what can happen?

Your mail might not get answered. – So what?! No feedback is also a form of feedback, which you can take to think about how you can improve and continue trying with another partner.

Eventually you will find somebody that sees you as a fit for their brand and that will be your stepping stone to the next collaboration and the next brand deal.

Keep this in mind:The biggest reason why people fail is because they don’t try, and the reason why they don’t try is because they lack confidence.

Let us tell you this.

There will always be doubts, you will always think you might not be there yet. Get out of your head and just try! You will be surprised where your courage will lead you to.

Our recommendation for a successful Instagram collaboration

The tips above are based on our own experience. We are no Instagram coaches or collaboration gurus, we simply wrote down what has proven to work for us.

If you are looking for good lessons and trainings on how to grow your Instagram account with proven techniques, we recommend you to watch the Youtube videos of Vanessa Lau. Vanessa is an online business coach who grew her business to 6 figures value and is teaching millennials to become successful online entrepreneurs. We love her practical and relatable advice for rock starting your online business through social media. Make sure to check her out.

Here’s a summary of the steps above to collaborate on Instagram

How to get an Instagram collaboration with brands and hotels

  1. Spot opportunities on Instagram

     

  2. Do a quick research about potential partners

     

  3. Pick the right brands with this golden rule

     

  4. Define your value and offering for the Instagram collaboration

     

  5. Propose the Instagram collaboration at the right time

     

  6. Use this email template

     

  7. Find the contact of the marketing manager

     

  8. Follow up

     

  9. Be confident