How to Apply to a Brand Brief and Get Chosen: Portfolio with Statistics, Message and Mistakes

A single brand brief usually attracts dozens of applications. On Blogger Bank the average is 37 per brief (platform data, 21 August 2026). The brand has no time to read each one carefully, so it chooses in two steps: first it drops the creators who clearly do not fit, then it compares the few profiles that are left. This article is about getting through both steps: how to read the brief, what to show, how to write the first message and what to avoid.

Before you click: read the whole brief

The most common reason for rejection is trivial: a creator applies to a brief they have not read. The brand asked for a TikTok video and gets an application from someone who only runs Instagram. It is looking for someone in Kraków and hears from a creator in Gdańsk. Every application like that teaches the brand to scroll through the next ones faster.

Before you apply, check five things:

• Format and platform. A Reel, a story, a feed post, raw UGC footage for the brand's own ads. If you do not make that format, do not apply "just to try".
• Deadline. Can you shoot, edit and make revisions in time.
• Payment or barter. Do the terms work for you right now. Applying with a plan to renegotiate from scratch usually leads nowhere.
• Ideal candidate. Topic, city, gender and age of the audience, sometimes a minimum reach. This is the checklist the brand will use to go through applications.
• Usage rights. Does the brand want to run the video as a paid ad, and for how long. More in the glossary: usage rights.

How brands build a brief and what they look for, we show from the other side in How to write a brief for a creator. It is worth reading once to know what the brand pays attention to.

Brands choose by profile, not by cover letter

The person on the brand side goes through applications roughly in this order:

1. Topic. Is your content about what the brand sells, or about the lives of the people who buy it. The brand is looking for a creator who already talks to its customers.
2. Audience. Who watches you: age, gender, country, city. And whether those people react, not just exist.
3. Past work. Have you made similar content before and how did it perform.
4. Message. Only at the end, among the last few candidates, does what you wrote matter.

That order leads to one conclusion: most of the work goes not into the application itself, but into what the brand sees after clicking your name. In other words, your portfolio.

A portfolio with statistics: why nice videos alone are not enough

A portfolio of videos alone tells the brand that you can shoot. It does not tell it whether anyone watched. A brand that pays for a post on your profile is buying access to your audience, so it wants to know who they are and how they react. That is why a portfolio that turns viewers into briefs has two layers: account statistics and results of specific projects.

Account statistics

The minimum a brand wants to see before it asks anything:

• Reach and views for the last 30 or 90 days. The difference between the two is explained in the glossary: reach and views.
• Average reach of a single post or Reel. This is the number the brand uses to estimate how many people will see its ad. Follower count does not tell it that.
• Engagement: what share of viewers react. Definition and calculation: engagement rate.
• Audience: split by gender, age, countries and cities. For a local café, how many of your followers live in its city matters more than how many followers you have.
• Date. Statistics from a year ago work against you: they undermine everything else. Refresh them every few months.

A screenshot is the weakest form: brands know it can be edited, and some of them then ask for a screen recording or reject the application. How brands verify numbers is covered in How to check an influencer before a collaboration. The strongest are statistics pulled directly from the account through an official connection with the social platform: they cannot be faked and they update themselves.

Projects with results

Describe each project in your portfolio in three parts:

• Goal: what the brand wanted, e.g. "show a new cream to people with sensitive skin".
• What you did: format, number of pieces, platform.
• Result in numbers: views, reach, saves, shares, link clicks. If the brand shared the results of a discount code or link with you, add them, provided the brand agreed.

Example: "Reel for a skincare brand, a 14-day cream test. 48k views, 1.2k saves, 60 percent of the audience women aged 25–34." The numbers in this example are illustrative. In your own portfolio, enter only the ones you see in your account statistics.

A description like this answers the question the brand would ask anyway. It also shows that you treat a collaboration as work with a result, not as a one-off post.

When you have no collaborations yet

No paid projects does not mean an empty portfolio. Shoot content about a product you actually use, in a format that brands in your category look for, and show its statistics. Say honestly in the description that it is your own content, not a commission. The brand will see what it wants to check: whether you can talk about a product in a way your audience listens to. Which formats are worth having at the start is covered in How to become a UGC creator.

The first message: short and about this brief

The message is read last, but it is often what decides between two similar profiles. A good message fits in four sentences:

• Why you. One sentence on what connects your content with this product.
• The idea. How you see this piece: the hook, the situation, the shot.
• Audience and numbers. One number that matters for this brief, e.g. the share of viewers from the given city.
• Confirming the terms. That the deadline and format work for you.

A template you can adapt:

"Hello, for two years I have been making Reels about caring for sensitive skin, so this cream reaches exactly my audience. I see it as a 30-second morning test, with a hook about stinging after washing your face. 70 percent of my audience are women aged 25–44 from Poland, and a similar piece in my portfolio has 40k views. The deadline of the 15th and one Reel plus a story work for me."

The numbers in the template are examples: use your own, from current statistics.

If you are writing to a brand outside the platform, with no published brief, add one sentence on what you propose (format and deadline) and a link to your portfolio. Do not send your whole media kit in the first message: two or three examples closest to what the brand sells are enough. What a media kit is and when to send it is in the glossary: media kit.

What to avoid

• Applying to everything. The brand sees that the application has nothing to do with your content.
• The same message everywhere. "I would love to collaborate" answers none of the brand's questions.
• Asking about what is in the brief. A question about a deadline that is already stated shows you have not read it.
• Old or unverifiable statistics. Numbers without a date or only from a screenshot raise doubts.
• A link to your whole profile instead of examples. The brand will not scroll through a hundred posts to find the one that fits.
• No rates. If the brand does not know what you cost, it will compare you with creators whose rates it can see. How to write your rates down is in the glossary: rate card.

Red flags on the brand side

Applying is also checking the other side. Be careful when:

• the brand asks you to pay for something: an "entry fee", the product, shipping or a spot in the campaign;
• there is no brief and no terms, just "we'll work it out";
• the brand wants a full piece "as a test" before choosing, without payment;
• payment is to be "based on results", but nobody has defined which results or how they are measured;
• you cannot check which company is behind the account.

What to agree before the first piece is made is explained by attorney Natalia Łukawska in Influencer–brand collaboration: what to agree.

When the brand chooses you

Confirm in writing, ideally in one place: format, number of pieces, deadline, number of revisions, payment and usage rights. Ask how to label the content, because a paid or barter collaboration has to be labelled as advertising: ad disclosure. After it is published, add the project to your portfolio with its result. Your next application will already be stronger.

On Blogger Bank your portfolio is your profile

On Blogger Bank you do not write a cover letter for every brief. Applying is a single "Apply to brief" button, and the brand receives your profile in its list of applications. On the card it sees your name, follower count and reviews, and after a click, your whole profile. That profile is your portfolio, your media kit and your first impression at once. Before you send your first application, the platform will ask you to complete your profile.

A profile attracts briefs when all its sections are filled in:

• Connected accounts. You do not upload statistics by hand or as screenshots. When you connect a social account, you grant access through the official API, and the statistics appear in your profile on their own. Once Instagram is connected, the brand sees data pulled straight from the account: reach, views, average reach per post, active viewers, audience gender, age, countries and cities, and your best content, for 7, 30, 60 or 90 days. They update automatically, so you do not have to copy them. A connected account also gives you a verification badge.
• Content categories. Brands pick creators by topic, so choose the categories that match what you actually publish.
• Collaboration portfolio. Each project has a name, a cover, a link to the content and a description. In the description, put the goal, the scope and the result in numbers, as in the example above.
• Video portfolio. Sample videos, your best pieces and links to videos or PDFs.
• Intro video. A short clip in which the brand hears how you speak and how you present a product.
• Description, photos and price list. Who you are, who watches you, which formats you make and what they cost.
• Reviews. After each completed collaboration the brand can leave a review that stays on your profile.

What we see on the platform comes down to a simple rule: the more complete your profile, the higher the chance a brand hires you. Profiles with verified statistics and audience in particular get more responses from brands. A profile without statistics and past work loses to a similar profile where the brand sees the numbers straight away.

The other rules: creators do not pay for an account, and on paid briefs the commission is 5% on the creator's side and 5% on the brand's side. The brand's budget is secured upfront, and the payout arrives after the content is approved. Next to the apply button there is also a chat with the brand, for when you want to ask about details or send your idea. Create an account, complete your profile and see how Blogger Bank works for creators.