How to make your website more brand-friendly

Think of your website {and overall online presence} like a digital storefront that serves as a window into what it would be like to work with you. It should be straightforward, easy to navigate and include important information at-a-glance. 

When we are tasked with researching and identifying influencers and experts to participate in the brand campaigns we manage, there are few things more frustrating than broken links or having to dig around to find the information we need. Here are a few tips that will keep your website and social media profiles what we call “brand-friendly” so you’ll get asked to do more work!

Make it easy to contact you if we’re interested. 

This is probably #1 in our books. A “Contact” or “Work With Me” page should be easy to find and in your primary navigation. Brands and agencies often put together lists of people they’d love to work with to circulate and get approved by the rest of their team, and it’s not complete without your email address. Even if you prefer to have a contact form, it just doesn’t “feel” like our message is getting to the right person nor is it something we can easily include on an approval list. Consider adding your email directly to your contact page even if you want to use {at} {dot} com to keep those spammers away. Trust us when we say that discovering an email address prominently displayed on a Contact page or Instagram profile is like hitting the jackpot for a brand!

Link between your digital assets, but not too much. 

Cross-linking between your social profiles {link in profile or social icons in the top right corner of your blog where most eyes are immediately drawn} is a big yes. Using a multi-linking service like Linktree to link to 20+ different posts and places might cause a brand or agency to move on. Likewise, if you regularly switch up the links in your Instagram profile a brand might miss your website. There have been times when we’ve wanted to learn more about someone, but we can’t get further than their Instagram profile linking to a third-party site to buy X product! In this scenario, it may be worth investing in a service that lets you link individual photos.

Tell us what you’re about. 

A succinct, well-written bio or About page is everything. We’ll often pull a description of you to share with clients and you can tell the story better than we do! Even if we’ve spent all the time in the world researching your brand and know you’re an amazing fit, we still have to share our ideas with someone else. Use this virtual “real estate” to showcase your well-defined niche, subject matter expertise, the content you create and who it’s for. These are super important to us when determining brand partners!

And also…tell us where you’re from. 

This might not be as obvious, but it is sometimes really important to brands to work with people in specific regions of the country even if you have a national reach. The reason may be because they are focusing promotions in certain areas or based on product availability. The best way to do this is specifically calling it out somewhere in your bio, though sometimes we can figure it out from location tagging or captions. We don’t want to get it wrong, so help us out!

Help us understand how you like to work with brands. 

We love reading about what you do and why you do it. A website that recently impressed us had a very detailed description of what made a brand a good partner/fit for them. It was immediately clear upon reading whether they’d like to hear from us and that saves everyone time! You can also share what strengths/skills you can contribute to partnerships whether it’s being a spokesperson, visual content, recipes, consulting, etc. so that we can get a better idea of how to customize the relationship. If you’re an influencer or expert reading this, we recognize that despite doing all of these things not all brands take the time to actually read it. That may be true and those are not the brands you want to build a relationship with! The good ones will take the time to get to know you before they contact you.

Don’t hide your personality or your beliefs. 

Many brands will go back and review quite a few previous posts {blog and social} before reaching out or after you contact them. Being who you are is a great way to attract brands that are the right fit. It also can turn away brands that are the wrong fit, which is ultimately the best for both parties. If cursing is part of your brand, by all means get after it, but you probably do want to keep it out of sponsored content. Likewise if you have certain food, fitness or health principles, don’t water them down just to land certain deals because it will not land with your audience.

Have some visual appeal.

Your site layout and social content is the first thing we see, even before we get to know you. If there are clunky plugins or things just look “off”, it doesn’t give off the same professional vibe. This doesn’t mean all of your content needs to be perfectly styled {we hire different people for different things}, but you should always put your best foot forward with a clean, organized presence.

Don’t forget SEO!

This is a whole topic in and of itself and we’re not going to delve into details here. But consider we’re given a blog name and asked to research it…but we search and search and can not find you anywhere. You want your name to come up near the top of search results obviously for your own blog name but also for important topics others might be searching e.g. recipe blogger, fitness blogger, NYC blogger or other niche-related keywords. Think about how you’re wording your bio and some of your more “static” pages that can help us find you.

What would you add to this list? What are some steps you’ve taken to optimize your online presence to make it easier for brands to find you, learn more about you and ultimately want to work with you?