In this video, Christine answers a viewer question about the best ways to find both brands and creators to collaborate with. She shares her own tips for finding the best creators for brands to make media with, and she flips it around and shares what creators can do to find brands who would be a great fit for collaborations.
See full transcript of the video below.
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Transcript:
Welcome! I am finally answering a listener question we got in the comments a couple weeks ago and it was a really good one. We were kind of having a conversation on a previous video about how do you figure out what topics, content, ideas, brands would want to collaborate with creators on. And so this was kind of coming from someone who works with creators trying to get them doing collabs with brands. So I’m going to answer this both from like, as a brand, what can you be putting out there to let creators know who you want to be collaborating with and how they can find you? And then I’ll also kind of approach it from like, hey, if you’re a creator or a PR rep, or you’re someone who’s trying to get opportunities for creators to do collaborations with brands in long form media projects, how can you research and figure out what a brand wants to have a creator. Like what kind of topics or projects they would want to collaborate with. And this will be a true answer. And it will not be a short and easy one as far as what I’m going to suggest. Because to me, this is where the real work needs to happen. Versus outsourcing this to like AI or third party tools. There are a lot of third-party tools that are built to do what we call social listening, scrubbing the internet for where conversations are happening around certain topics. Hashtags are like the oldest version of this, you know, searching for hashtags. And up until today, AI is being used way more to help social listen for what creators are talking about and what brands are talking about, and to help people who work in media who connect brands and creators to figure out the right connections. And so that’s part of what I do right now. I work at an advertising agency and I’m helping find the right talent to feature in campaigns for organizations and brands. And so I’m doing a lot more of that now. And I will tell you straight up that the AI technology isn’t great yet for this. It’s getting there. it’s better than it was, it’s a good place to start, but any third-party tool I use and even the search features on like Instagram or TikTok, the most valuable use of your time when you’re trying to find the right fit of like what kind of topics, projects, would this brand want to be doing? You got to like go deep. You got to literally like take in a lot of content. You need to go down rabbit holes. You need to notice what comments are and then what the threads of the comments are and then if it popped over to Reddit or went over to YouTube. Like when people talk about going down the rabbit hole in internet land, This is where it’s actually really useful because I think AI tools for social listening are still a little too new. They’re getting better. They always are. That’s how AI works. The more you use it, the more smart it is. But they’re not amazing yet. Sometimes I’ll be looking for creators for a specific feature or video, and I’ll start on a third-party app like Hype Auditor, and then it won’t get me very far, but if it even gets me one account that’s the right type of account, then I start mining that account for comments, followers, who they’re following, who they’ve done collaborations with, who’s appeared in their photos, and I kind of do like an old-school search and I will find so much better information going that route than just relying on third-party tools. And so this is a lesson for both brands and for creators, or those who are working on behalf of creators. If you’re trying to figure out the right partnership for like a long-form media project, a YouTube series, a podcast, you know, something that just lives on social, like a substack feature, whatever, You want to really understand the values of the brand and the values of the creator and what’s exciting to them right now. Because both things have to be true for a really good collaboration. The long-term values that don’t sway and change year to year between a brand or a creator, those need to be in alignment. And what’s currently exciting and relevant to the brand and the creator needs to be in alignment. And so it’s really hard for like AI to figure that out or third-party listening tools. You kind of have to go with your gut on this and use your human skills. And it does take time. But if you do a little bit every day, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. And that’s what I end up doing. I focus on a few key clients throughout the day, you know, during the work week. And when I’m out there on social media looking at creator accounts, I am constantly keeping in mind the brands that I want to find great creators for. And so it’s not like I do this for eight hours a day, like my brain would turn to total mush. But let’s say I do an hour in between meetings, or I spend 30 minutes here and there, or I was looking for something for one account, or project and then I happen to see something that pinged in my mind was like, oh wait, that’s actually really good for this other client or project. Like that’s so much more likely and has yielded such better results for me when I’m looking for great creators to partner with than just relying on like, I’m gonna do this in a day and I’m gonna use AI. It can be a great help starting point, reference point. If I have nothing to go off of at the beginning, it can kind of get me going somewhere. But so often I find that over time, like over the course of a couple weeks, over the course of a month or two, I end up finding people, obviously I know who the brands are that I want, that I’m, you know, representing the brand. I find people because my radar is on and I’ll start to notice. And I’m in, you know, algorithmically, I’m searching and I’m getting recommended creators who fit the topics and the accounts that I’m searching or following. So especially TikTok is a much more powerful search engine than like Instagram. But YouTube as well is a powerful search engine. If you start watching and consuming creator content or brand content that aligns with the industries or the niches or the topics that you know either the creator you represent wants to cover or the brand you represent wants to cover, The algorithms will do a lot of this work for you. You have to give them time and you have to use the platforms and I don’t recommend doing this for eight hours a day because it can kind of be soul-sucking. So I would say like do it in bite-sized pieces regularly and get those algorithms to start suggesting things for you and do your own rabbit hole searching and pay attention to what’s, you know, in the news or currently relevant when you’re reading a newsletter. Just like have your radar on for when your topics are being mentioned and like get curious and click on the link and go read the article and see who was mentioned or go through the comments. Going through the comments is probably one of the most helpful resources that I think AI doesn’t do a great job of, but humans can. And so sometimes I find the best creators by like seeing who commented on like a post on an account that I knew was like a really good fit for the brand. I’m like, ooh, who’s commenting on this? And then obviously I can, if it’s like a smaller account, I can kind of see like who follows this account. So the answer is to the question how do you figure out like what brands are in the wheelhouse of a certain creator that there’s a good collaboration opportunity? Pay attention to what brands are talking about the topics that your creator is talking about and notice what’s relevant currently to that brand. Like go down the rabbit hole look at a lot of their content for the past couple years. Whether being mentioned in you know relation to in the news. but also go kind of reverse engineer and notice who’s commenting and maybe who is that brand following on social media. That’s a real tell, right? Because a brand is typically considered to have a much larger audience in a small group of accounts they follow. But you can tell a lot about a brand or an organization by who they follow. That tells you a lot about what opinions they value and where does that brand comment. So that’s kind of a way I want you to start thinking about this. It’s a bigger project. You do need to put in some, it’s not even sweat equity because you’re not breaking a sweat, but I would say like do a little bit every day, train your algorithm to show you brands and content in the niches that you want. And then on the other side, if you work at a brand and you’re trying to find the right creators to partner with, I want you to really pay attention to the comment section and who similar, like a really good way to do this is find a really cool project on social media that was done that you loved. You’re like, oh my gosh, I would love if our brand could do something like this, you know, on this theme or this topic or for this community or this demographic. and then go through whenever they announced it or whenever the big social posts were made, maybe they had an event or they did a launch, and go through all the comments and see who’s commenting and who’s excited and click on them. Go figure out who those people are. It isn’t just a thing you can outsource to a third party tool yet. I totally think we’ll get there probably soon, but I just, I haven’t found great results just relying on AI so far. Um, I would say use both, use a blend and the more you use the third rate tools, the better they’ll get, but still rely on your gut and using your own brain. And it’s almost like you can. You can start to see the same people in accounts and you start to like put the pieces together and you’re like, oh, there’s like a community here I didn’t know about because look who keeps commenting, look who keeps tagging each other, look who keeps being featured in these photos or these collabs. So brands, I want you to be really active on your own socials and following creators you love and shouting them out and supporting what they’re doing and paying attention to who comments on their stuff. And then creators, I really want you to do your research and be in the orbit on social media of the brands you would love to do a collaboration with. That’s just like old advice and new advice at the same time. I’ve said a version of this for years, and I’m saying it’s really relevant in 2025, where there’s so much reliance on AI and third-party tools to do the work for you. I just don’t think they’re good enough yet. So I would say do your own work. And if you can’t handle that much social media in a day, you’re normal. But do a little every day, and you can start to find some cool corners of the internet. Okay, that’s the video for today. Hope that answered a question. Feel free to ask more in the comments. We’ll see you next video.