How do influencers get jobs? It is changing.

Influential business is professionalizing. Content creators are contracting with major talent agencies. In February, SAG-AFTRA, the largest union in the entertainment industry, expanded coverage to sponsored content creators. And now a new service wants to make it easier for creators to sign up for brands and the companies that hire them.

James Nord, 36, founder and CEO of Fohr said: “We created a simple way for brands to create what is essentially a career page for photographers. enjoy. “It allows people to adopt, pull data from their social platforms and provide brands with an easy way to recruit, analyze and work with influencers.”

More than 50 brands, including Dyson, Costco, American Eagle, Lilly Pulitzer and Sephora, are using Fohr’s Ambassador Management Platform (AMP) to find talent. These companies pay Fohr to set up custom career style pages for them, where online creators can sign up to work with brands.

“At American Eagle, influencer marketing is arguably the most important thing we do,” said Craig Brommers, the company’s chief marketing officer. “We have a young demo, 15 to 25 years old. Social media is the oxygen for them and even more during a pandemic. “

Small creators often negotiate a brand partnership through personal connections or direct messaging on platforms like Instagram. Mr. Brommers says that American Eagle is flooded with live social media messages from people wanting to work with them; AMP, which asked users to answer questions about their content styles and interests, helped the company better identify American Eagle enthusiasts and followers.

“From our side, what we are trying to do is find authentic relationships, not pay to play,” said Mr Brommers.

Mr. Nord said he hopes AMP can make it easier for any creator to collaborate, regardless of their background or relationship. “The industry is too dependent on relationships now,” he said. “You get a job because you know someone who works for a brand. That’s not a fair way to organize the industry. By the way brands initiate these pages and have centralized venues for influencers to sign up, that would get anyone with a follower base up and say I want to work with you. will be a lot fairer.

Content creators are desperate for this kind of standardization. Yinon Horwitz, a 35-year-old social media creator based in Miami, says he spent the previous hours in his career hunting down people on LinkedIn and introducing himself to inappropriate companies because There’s no obvious place for him to see what they’re looking for. for. “Initially, it was difficult to understand who was the right person in a brand, business or agency to connect and build relationships,” he says.

“I think formalizing this is a great idea because it allows both sides, the creator and the brand, to compare apples to apples,” he said. “By reading the forms and getting a better understanding of the brand and what they’re looking for, sometimes we understand it’s not the best product.”

In recent years, a number of business-to-business tools have sought to help companies find and partner with influencers. In 2017 and 2018, there was an explosion of influencer marketing platforms where brands could look for influencers for one-off deals. However, due to unregulated business nature, some of the users of those platforms were left without payment.

Eleni McCready, senior director for brand communications and community development at Lilly Pulitzer, said she sees AMP as a step towards professionalizing the industry and leveling the playing field.

“It’s taking things out of social media and actually legitimizing it and saying, ‘This is a business tool that brands use to attract new talent,’ she said. “The beauty of those who can apply is that there are incredible content creators that we may never see, or that it can get buried in TV if you don’t search for a few days.”

Mr. Nord hopes that as more companies take advantage of AMP hiring in the industry it will become more sensible and clear. “Our hope is that influencers will start asking for brands to have this space and will start to be what brands need,” said Mr. Nord. “I don’t see a world where in a few years every brand doesn’t have tabs so people can sign up to work with them.”