Believe it or not, brand collaborations don’t just end when you hit publish.

In fact, there are a lot of loose ends to tie up after you put your content live, and if you want to impress your brand partners and get asked back as a repeat client, you’re in the right place.

Today we're going to walk through all of the steps to properly wrap up a brand collaboration as an influencer.

I have personally worked with dozens of brands like Amazon, L’Oreal and LOFT in my 10 years as a micro influencer and if you’ve ever done a brand partnership, I don’t need to tell you that it's never as simple as you think it is.

From the initial outreach and negotiation process with the brand, to redlining contracts, to creating the content and engaging with your audience, it’s really a lot—and we haven’t even gotten to reporting and analytics yet!

Let’s review what to do after you finish a sponsored post so that you can impress the brand and have them ask you back for future partnerships.

Make sure everything looks good

The first thing you'll want to do as soon as you hit publish is make sure that all of your content is properly uploaded across platforms.

Check that your Instagram stories are in order, make sure that all of the hashtags or any required tags that the brand asked you to post are working and clickable, and double check that all of your spelling and grammar is correct.

You'd be surprised how typos can slip in or things can get posted on the wrong platform or you grabbed the wrong file so before you do anything further, confirm that everything is as it was agreed upon between you and the brand.

Let them know your post is up

The next thing you'll want to do is email the brand with a link to your post and let them know that it's live.

After talking to my friends who work on the brand side of influencer marketing, the more I realize how important it is.

Even if you've agreed upon a posting platform and the date or time that the post is going live, you still want to notify the brand when you actually post it.

There's a chance that you are one of dozens, if not hundreds of influencers part of the brand campaign that you're working on especially if you were cast through a third-party platform.

If you make it easy for your brand representative to find so they don't have to go digging for your posts later on (or potentially miss your Instagram stories while they're live), they’ll appreciate you giving them a shortcut to getting the information they need.

Remember to screenshot your analytics

Next you'll want to set a reminder on your phone to screenshot your analytics at 23 hours.

I advise doing it at 23 hours because Instagram Stories expire 24 hours after you post them.

You want to be sure to give the content enough time to get a full day of impressions so the brand can analyze its initial performance before any content like Instagram stories potentially disappears.

You should also do this for any static posts or permanent content because the brand will still want a sense of how it went in the first 24 hours.

Paint a complete picture of your campaign to brand partners

Screenshots sent in a Google Drive with no context can sometimes create even more work for your contact.

Calculate your performance

Now you’ll want to take a look at those numbers in your screenshots to calculate a few metrics that the brand will definitely be interested in hearing about.

Some examples of analytics you can report back to a brand are engagement, reach, click-through rate, and video or story viewer retention.

Being able to go back to the brand with these numbers is really important so that they can understand how your posts performed in relation to how your content typically performs.

One thing to note is that in general sponsored content does perform a little bit lower than organic content on average, so if your engagement rate was higher than usual in your industry, be sure to point that out to the brand.

Share your metrics in a wrap up report

Now it’s time to share your screenshots and numbers with your brand partner. I’m here to tell you that I have done this task in so many different ways over the years.

Some brands ask you to put your screenshots in a Google Drive folder, others will have you upload it to a back end or particular content platform.

The reason I don’t prefer those options is that I’ve found that they honestly leave out a lot of details. It's really hard to paint an overall picture when screenshots are just kind of haphazardly flung in a Google Drive folder.

There isn’t much context and there’s more work for the brand representative on the receiving end of that content, especially if the screenshots appear out of order or if they are unnamed files.

So while every brand is different, and will ask for different ways to submit your content, one thing that I started doing in the last year that has been really well received by brand partners is actually compiling a campaign wrap up report.

This, of course, will require a little bit of extra effort, but I think it's worth it because you will really, really impress the brand when you do this.

What I have done for several past brand collaborations is to take my screenshots and analytics, put them into basically a beautiful PDF document with additional insights. It really helps tell an overall story to brands.

Very few people are doing things like this when they share metrics with brands, I think this is just such a great opportunity to get ahead, make a good impression and have a brand really remember you and want to ask you back for future partnerships.

I’ve actually taken my campaign wrap up report and turned it into a digital downloadable template that you can all access and use for your own brand partnerships.

My Campaign Wrap Up Template is fully editable within Canva. And it's super, super easy to use. All you need to do is drag and drop your screenshots into the frames that are already listed in the template, replace the text with your own insights and save it as a PDF document.

It comes in five colors, but you can customize it as much as you’d like. If you already have a branded color palette that you use, you can save those hex values in a Canva Pro account (try Canva Pro free for 30 days!) and automatically apply them to this template with the click of a button.

One recent brand partner who received the report said, "Oh my goodness, this little recap is amazing. I wish all creators would do this. Thank you x10,000!"

Now THAT is the kind of response you want from a brand partner at the end of a collaboration.

All you really have to do is drag and drop in your screenshots, swap the dummy text with your own insights, download it and send it off to the brand.

Email them your recap report and invoice

At the end of the partnership, in a new, separate email I will send my campaign wrap up report along with my invoice.

If you have not already invoiced the brand at this point in your partnership, now is a totally reasonable time to send them an invoice so you can get paid for your work.

And of course, be sure to include a “thank you” in this email that you're sending them with your wrap up report and with your invoice with all of your payment details.

Don’t forget to follow up!

The day that you send that invoice, set a reminder in your phone or put it on your Google Calendar to check in with the brand three months from that date.

I think that it's really great to make a habit of checking in quarterly with your brand partners to see what they're working on, if there's anything new on the horizon, and mainly just ask if there are other ways that you can support them. This will keep you top of mind for future brand partnerships.

If you're interested in purchasing the campaign wrap up template to make your reporting easier, you can grab that here!

If you have any additional questions about the campaign wrap up process, leave them in the comments down below.

yours,

Austen

Photos by Karya Schanilec

How To Wrap Up a Brand Campaign Like a Pro