You want to contact your favorite YouTuber to try to convince them to set up a partnership? Then you probably know that contacting a YouTube channel with a significant number of followers can be rather difficult because of their busy schedule, taking in account you are likely not the only one trying to reach out to them.

Getting a reply from a famous YouTuber is certainly not easy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done! There are a couple of different ways to contact a YouTuber or YouTube channel, but most of them will not result in getting a reply. With this article, we would like to go over some tips in how to be successful in your endeavor.

 

Via YouTube

The easiest way to contact any YouTuber, famous or not, is through one of contact channels they provide on their YouTube profile. In any YouTube profile, you can find an “About” section. This obviously is where you can find more information about the producer or producers of the channel. Most YouTubers will at least have an email address shared next to the part that reads “For business inquiries”. After proving you are not a robot, you will be prompted with the email address provided by the owner of the YouTube channel.

Once you have acquired the email address, you can go ahead and send a short message explaining why you wanted to get in contact. Be concise, as you might know, if the YouTuber is popular, they can’t lose any time reading long and wordy emails. It is quite likely that they will read your message, so if they don’t reply they are probably not interested in your proposal or currently don’t have any time on their hands to answer you. Don’t take it personal!

A second way to contact a YouTuber, is by sending a direct message via YouTube itself. To do this, once again go to the “About” section of the YouTube channel you are planning on contacting. Next to the little flag icon, you will find a button that reads “Send message”. As with sending an email, make sure to keep your message as short as possible.

 

Using other social media accounts

Another way to get in touch with the people behind a certain YouTube channel, is doing this by reaching out to them through their other social media accounts. It’s not unlikely the YouTuber you are trying to reach will also have a Facebook account, Twitter handle and is regularly sharing pictures on Instagram.

One thing to take in account when contacting a famous person via their social media, is that these are usually monitored heavily by their office and team who makes sure that nothing inappropriate happens—including direct communication with the public. Your chances of successfully contacting a famous person through social media and getting them to reply is therefore rather low. Having said that, the three most obvious social media platforms you can use to make contact are Twitter, Instagram and in lesser extent Facebook.

Finding out what the Twitter handle is of the YouTuber you want to contact, should be an easy task to do. Usually they will have their other social media networks linked below each video. Otherwise, a simple Google search should do the trick. Once you have discovered where to find the YouTube channel you are trying to reach, you can go ahead and try to get a response from them. The best way to do this is, is tweeting at them directly by using the @ symbol followed by their account name. Make sure to use tags that your celebrity is using to improve the chances of them seeing your posts.

A second potential channel to contact the YouTube channel you want to partner up with, is Instagram. Although some celebrities may have private messaging disabled, it never hurts to try sending a direct message. A second option is commenting on photos and posts made. You never know if they will respond to a comment, but it’s worth trying and doesn’t take much effort.

Thirdly, you can use Facebook in trying to get in touch with the YouTube celebrity. If you can, although not easy because of the limitation in the number of friends on Facebook, add the celebrity as a friend on Facebook. Otherwise, just “like” their page. Many celebrities turn off private messaging on this platform, but in many cases, you can still communicate with them by posting on their wall. If you can send private messages, do so with a friendly, polite request for contact. When contacting someone of Facebook though, it is expected though the Facebook page is run by a social media handler, and not the celebrity itself.

 

Find email address

Another way to find relevant content creators is a service called Ninja Outreach. Ninja Outreach is an ideal solution for anyone trying to identify and for getting in touch with a single target or a lot of them at the same time.

Anyone with a social media account and influence can be reached, but the more popular they are the more difficult it gets. Ninja Outreach has a powerful email finder that will usually succeed in pulling up personal emails and will help you figure out anyone’s email associated with a blog or company.

Using a public relations firm

If you have some money to spend, you can also choose to hire an A-list Public Relations Firm. But, be aware that the best PR firms will not guarantee you will get a reply, and you will generally be paying the publicist to ‘pitch’ you or your product, goods, services, or company to the the agent, manager, or publicist, for them to consider doing business with you, receiving a gift from you, or similar.

To clarify, the PR firm will be making the contact ‘for you,’ as they will theoretically have the established and trusted communication line to the offices of famous people already. In any case, be prepared to pay a generous sum of money for this task. It is no easy task for even the best publicist in the world, as it is ultimately up to the person being reached to decide what to do with the offer.

 

Authenticity over popularity

There are some things to take in account, which can help you evaluate if there is a chance the YouTuber is likely to reply to your request. First, make sure the YouTuber you are contacting is an authentic person. The authenticity of the person will be of a big importance in making sure to get a genuine reply. Receiving an auto-reply message isn’t going to be hard to achieve, but this is obviously not what we are going for here. Contacting an authentic voice will be crucial in being successful.

Second, it is very important to contact the ‘right person’. What we mean with this, is to be sure you are reaching out to a YouTuber who fits the profile you are searching for. This is probably one of the most important factors to take in account. If the receiver of the message takes the time to read your message, the receiver must feel like the message “makes sense” and seems appropriate. For example, if you are proposing a partnership, the cooperation needs to be inviting for the person you are proposing the partnership to. In other words, you need to be compatible.

The compatibility is way more important than the “famousness” of the YouTuber. You must hire by fit, not by followers. When contacting YouTubers to partner up, it may seem enticing to simply go for the channels who have the largest following or view counts. While this makes sense in theory, if you don’t have the right fit, your message will likely go unnoticed. Smaller influencers who have a highly engaged audience related to a niche subject are highly invaluable. They have a way greater impact and are often more cost-effective in establishing a partnership, due to their audience size.

 

How to find relevant content creators

But what to do when you are not sure which YouTube channels create content that is compatible with what you are searching for? Well, there is a handy tool you can use to find relevant content creators. An interesting tool to use in this case is Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo is a tool that will help you to discover content creators related to a specific topic. In summary, Buzzsomo will help you find influencers related to specific topics. It is also a way to track competitors and do an analysis based on their content.

Buzzsumo is very popular among different agencies, brands, publishers, bloggers, and marketers. But Buzzsomo does not only cater to professionals, it is also meant to be used by the average online user and its unique search engine will help you find the content creator you want to partner up with.

 

Email templates

If you are not sure how to get started when writing your message or email, no problem! Below you can find two templates that can help you to get inspired.

When proposing a partnership:

Hi [name],

My name is [your name] from [company/project]. I’ve been a subscriber to your YouTube channel since 2015.

Your recent video about [topic] really resonated with me. I really felt like your message was my audience would appreciate and decided to share with my followers.

I wanted to get in touch with you to discuss this subject further and see if we can work on something similar together soon.

If you are interested, we can set up a Skype call one of the next days to discuss starting a collaboration that would bring value to both our audiences.

Kind regards,

[your name]

When offering a free sample:

Hi [name],

My name is [your name] from [company/project].

I really enjoy your [content] and am impressed by how well you’ve done with your [company/project].

I’m reaching out to you because I have a product/service that I think your audience would appreciate. Would you be willing to test out and potentially review [product/service]?

I can provide a free sample for you to review, and five extra ones that you can give away to your audience.

Please let me know if you are interested.

Thanks for your time,

[your name]

 

Evaluate your efforts

Once you have sent out your requests, you will need to give the people some time to reply to you. If you didn’t hear back after a few weeks tops, the odds are you won’t get an answer. To make sure that everything stays organized, it might be good practice to keep track of all the outbound messages. An easy way to do this is by writing down all your efforts in an excel sheet. Then evaluate the different attempts and repeat the successful pursuits.

But don’t wait 2 weeks to send a follow up email, as studies show that 90% responses come after having sent a follow up email. When you send an email, how long should you wait for a response? Is it OK to follow up a day later? If you haven’t gotten a response in a week, should you assume you won’t get a reply?

During this age of information overload, understanding the psychology of email communication could help you gain a competitive edge. So, you need to know what to expect from communicating with others, and you will need to understand how to optimize the messages you are sending to be sure your communication is successful. Sending an email at just the right time could make all the difference in the world.

This is the reason why you always need to send out follow up emails. 90% of emails that received replies are replied to within one day after they were opened. During that first day, over half of opened emails were replied to within three hours. So, if you didn’t receive any reply within 48 hours (not taking in account weekends), you can go ahead and send out a follow up email.

Once again, make sure to track all your interactions. You certainly don’t want to double send an email or follow up to early or to late. This will come across as being very unprofessional and will give your receiver a good reason to stop paying attention to your messages.