How To Get Brands To Send You Items To Review On A Small/Medium Sized Blog

Let’s say you’re blogging about cars or audio and would like to get a free carsubwoofer to review it. I think the most effective approach is to find some specific type of subwoofer, create a post that outlines top 10 subwoofers in that specific type and then rank it on Google. It’s important to create a specific post like “best 10-inch subwoofer for sealed box” instead of “Best Car Subwoofers” because you will be able to rank on Google much faster with a specific post.

Make sure to include specific term “10-inch subwoofer for sealed box” in your post title, H1 tag, and few times in a post to increase relevancy for that search term. I suggest to find 5-6 forums and 5-6 relevant blogs where you can comment on and place a link to your article. This will help you rank higher. Once you rank your article on first page of Google, you can email vendor to ask for a free product to review. Make sure to mention your ranking for their relevant search terms first to drastically increase success rate.

Contributors: Vladimir Beštić from Best Products Pro

Brands can tell super quick if you are just sniffing around for free stuff or if it’s a product you know/love/have uses/care about! If you have shown their product(s) in action before, or have at the very least been active on their social channels, you may already be on their radar! They want to have influencers with a similar niche or passion-point so they know their message is matching your followers’ interests! 

Contributors: Bryn Nowell from A Dog Walks into a Bar 

We try to focus on providing quality content while growing our audience, and when we see a company we can align ourselves with, we email or DM a pitch all about how our partnership can be mutually beneficial. The companies will check you out, and if they see that you're the right fit, and you genuinely want to promote their product, they'll consider sending you samples or products to try. Be sure to include ideas for how the blog post you're working on can incorporate the product.

Contributors: Cat Guillermo from GFamAdventures

We look for influencers (health professionals like RD, Naturopaths, Fitness coaches...) who will write articles/blogs based on their experiences and benefits they had using the standing desks that we provided to them.

Bottom Line: Better engagement with our influencers from giving them the best product that suits their standing desk needs to sharing their articles on our different social media platforms spells the difference.

Contributors: Michael Angelo Cruto from AnthroDesk 

My recommendation is to have a website that has strong SEO so retailers/brands can find you. I also recommend looking for your target business through Instagram. When you contact the brand, make sure you have your readership and all your blog stats ready. It also helps to have an IG page with a lot of followers and a lot of followers who comment. You may also offer a combination blog and IG post to sweeten the deal.

Contributors: Christina Arenas from Duchess of Dupont 

When you're pitching a brand, let them know exactly what they're going to get out of the collaboration, and focus your email on the brand and not on yourself. A lot of bloggers will focus the entire email around their blog and what the brand will provide for them, which is the opposite of what they want to hear about. They're interested in how big of a audience you have, how you'll bring exposure to the product, and how effective the collaboration will be. If you have a small audience, is your audience highly targeted, trusting of your content, or are they super engaged? All these are aspects brands are looking for. In other words, let them know why they should collaborate with you and what's in it for them. 

Contributors: Suzana Rose fron RoseVibe