SDH 220: Develop a Strategy that Profits with Julie Solomon

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What do you do in a pitch meeting as a blogger? Do you negotiate your rates or do you have pre-determined ones? How do you know your worth as an influencer, and communicate that to brands?

Well, look no further than influencer marketing strategist, Julie Solomon! Julie shares her tips and tricks with bloggers and other influencers on her blog, website, online courses, and new podcast, The Influencer! Through these multiple outlets, her audience is able to network, and load up on valuable resources that they’ll need to turn their online platforms into profitable businesses and grow their brands.

Julie originally got her start in PR and worked at the publishing house, Thomas Nelson, now owned by Harper Collins. Though she progressed rapidly and loved working with people like Mike Hyatt and Dave Ramsey, she could not shake her need to innovate. So she left Harper Collins, and co-founded a PR-firm with her business partner, but was ready to move on after a couple of years. She began noticing a career pattern within herself, and said she was always ready for the next big step after doing something for around two years. She needed to find a profession that could keep up with her and became interested in the constantly evolving online influencer space.

To get acclimated to the influencer world, she wanted to understand what it meant to be one and began lifestyle blogging for a couple of years. By experiencing their highs and lows, she figured out where the industry needed help the most, and began building a service list for her marketing business.

One of her courses, Pitch it Perfect, was created from discussions with bloggers who couldn’t get their foot in the marketing door or had plateaued once they did. Since Julie had eight years of PR experience under her belt, she was able to come up with unique opportunities for others to offer brand collaborations with media outlets and established brands beyond the typical Instagram post. So she developed a strategy course that lets bloggers know what to say to brands, and how to negotiate rates and deals. She said one of the biggest mistakes she sees bloggers make is giving their rates before they even have a deal, which causes them to lose all their negotiation power. By learning to finesse a negotiation, she helped bloggers make 2-3 times more than what they were initially offered!

Tune in to hear more tips on how to grow as an influencer, how she grew her own brand, and so much more!

In this episode you will…

Create more "evergreen" or timeless content so you can repurpose it
Develop your services based on your clienteles need
Understand how to pitch to brands
Learn how to give genuine complimentary feedback to brands
Be able to build relationships with people through an email
See how to build an engaged audience

INSIGHTS

“When it comes to pitching or emailing anyone…you always want to come from a place that’s complimentary…really coming from a genuine place of saying look I’ve tried your product, I’ve tried your services, and I really love them, and this why… really give them a lot of genuine feedback…as to how their products or services are really benefitting you and the audience that you have.” -Julie Solomon

“A lot of bloggers or influencers will come across saying, ‘Hey this is who I am, this is how many followers I have, this what I want to do, and this is how much it’s going to cost.’…And that’s such a cold way to come across…so really you have to come at it as like how can I build a relationship with this person. There is an actual human being on the other end of that email…how can I serve them in a way that’s going to be impactful, and really in a way that’s help their bottom line.” -Julie Solomon

“To me, it’s about the quality over the quantity…A falling number doesn’t really matter, because it’s really about how engaged is that community…I’d rather have 10 people who are super engaged in everything that I say, who are loyal members of my community, who are going to be there to offer constructive criticism, or whatever it may be, than to have 500 people who don’t give a crap, because that’s what’s really going to help me build long-term.” -Julie Solomon

"I really feel like passion, or your lack of passion is really like a spiritual condition...what joy are you not able to find because of this lack of? So for me when I go through these periods, I really try to get back to the basics of...what's my purpose?...I just try as much as I can to just stop...when I start to lose my passion, is when I try to do too much at once...I have to connect with nature...and where I can really be still...but if I can find those moments in that, that's where I can kind of seek out what the truer issue may be, and then try to figure out if I need to maybe be more flexible with my passions." -Julie Solomon

"I always knew I wanted to help people [and] I wanted to connect at the end of the day...how I do that now is through podcasts, and course creations, and Instagram stories, and all these other things! And it's really about being flexible, you can still get to that passion at the end of the day, as long as you're flexible with the journey of getting there." -Julie Solomon