Marketing teams care more about your comment section than your follower count
The best thing that happened to my brand outreach was realizing that marketing teams don’t care about having a lot of followers anymore. Because that’s what new creators believe, and that’s what I also used to believe to.
I only have 5k followers, not verified and don't have plenty of viral videos. But I still pitch to different brands every single week, and still land paid deals because of my comment section.
Here’s the thing, brands don’t care anymore if you have 100k followers or much more than that if your comments aren’t full of interactive people who actually care about the content you post. If your comments are full of bots or dead silent, brands won’t accept collabs from you. But if your tiny audience interacts with you like their own shopping advisor, these brands will take you seriously into their marketing.
Part of my pitch are the screenshots of my comment section to prove that my account is full of alive and actual people who care about my content.
If your audience trusts your taste and actually talks to you, stop waiting to achieve that 100k followers. You already have the leverage brands are looking for.