An influencer reflects on his partnership with the Houston Chronicle

Shawn Singh started the Instagram account @ShawnTheFoodSheep while working on his master’s degree with the goal of posting every day for an entire year. Today he’s amassed 234,000 followers on Instagram and also posts on TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat — all about Houston and its food scene. Singh has a full-time job outside of his platform, but he aims to use his social presence to be a community leader in Houston. Beyond food coverage, he showcases things to do, organizes events and is launching a scholarship at a local college.

“As opportunities come to you, you kind of run with them, and that’s always been my belief system,” Singh said.

That’s true, too, for brand partnerships. In early 2022, his first-ever brand deal was with Jack in the Box, and since then, he’s had a regular flow of similar opportunities with other fast food chains, tourism industry organizations, business districts and even Snapchat. When the Houston Chronicle approached him about partnering to share more about their food coverage, Singh was interested in the opportunity because he hadn’t partnered with a media organization before, he said.

Singh spoke with API to share more about his experience working with the Chronicle on three Instagram Reels, including what worked, what differentiated this partnership from other brand deals and what it meant to him to align his brand with a local news organization.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q: Do you post the same content to every platform, or do you change it to focus on the different audience and style?

A: My audiences are very different, you know? People that follow me on TikTok don’t necessarily follow me on Instagram, and it’s the same way with Snapchat and YouTube. These are four distinctive audiences.

Instagram is where I’m the most active, and that’s where I’m sharing a lot of the day-to-day goings on in Houston. I won’t do that with Snapchat because I have more of an international audience with that. But you always need to have subtle nuances and know your audiences.

Q: What made your partnership with the Chronicle so unique?

A: I was honestly very honored that the Houston Chronicle reached out because I’m a big believer in journalism. With social media nowadays, I think people make things much simpler than they need to be when, in reality, things are a lot more nuanced and complicated. And I think the Houston Chronicle’s food reporting just did an amazing job of that, and it’s something that I’d always admired. I was also interested in their motive — it’s not like they’re just trying to get more sales, they want to focus on good reporting. There are journalism standards that they want to uphold while also creating videos and sharing their work on social media.

Even though I have a great relationship with my audience, there’s a sense of legitimacy that you as an influencer also get when you work with a reputable media brand. The Houston Chronicle got a lot out of it as well because a lot of younger people don’t even know what the Chronicle is, so that they got a lot of exposure out of us. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.

Q: How was this collaboration different from your other brand partnerships?

A: A lot of times, when you as an influencer get approached for a partnership, people are telling you what to do with a script. But in this situation, there’s more ideation involved. When I was talking with Jennifer, they wanted to hear my ideas and what I thought would do well. I think that’s very important, and something that influencers appreciate because a lot of times, if you’re doing a brand deal, they don’t understand the subtleties or the nuances of your own audience.

Q: Was there anything that surprised you about the partnership?

A: I enjoyed the flexibility and the trust — there wasn’t a lot of editing going back and forth. What I expected was three or four rounds of edits, which was not the case at all. There’s of course going to be minor edits of fixing a word or misspelling, but there was a lot of trust. With certain partnerships, it can be really random on how stringent that they could be, and I really love that the Houston Chronicle was so flexible and gave me the freedom to operate as I typically operate.

Q: Were there any challenges that came up?

A: It’s tough with videos to really understand going in how viral something is going to go. With this partnership, I was testing and learning and doing stuff I hadn’t done before. For example, my second video was with the Chronicle food critic Bao Ong, and it was a very conversational video, not a straight voiceover like I typically do. So it was a little bit riskier in doing something new, but it is our best performing video, and I was really happy about that.

Q: What are some ways you benefited from this partnership?

A: Afterwards, other media outlets in Houston started reaching out a little bit. I’ve gotten to know and network with a lot more media folks since that initial partnership. Beforehand, a lot of media would just treat you as another influencer. Now, I know a good amount of people in the media — even recently with the Texas Michelin Guide ceremony, I was texting two or three other media folks about what they thought was going to happen. And a year ago that wasn’t the case at all.

Q: Is there anything you would do differently in the future with a similar collaboration with a news organization?

A: I just actually had a conversation with Jennifer last week, because we’re potentially looking to work together again. We both enjoyed working together, and I told them I was happy to do it at whatever rate — I can be flexible, because I really did thoroughly enjoy it. I think I would ideate a little bit more in the future — even for this first process we did ideate a little bit, but I think I agreed that I could make the video on that topic, and I didn’t necessarily challenge it. I feel like I can be more comfortable saying, maybe we should do this thing, or do it this way.

Q: What advice would you give to newsrooms that would like to work with influencers?

A: The first is to always measure a risk profile if you’re working with an influencer. I post my daily life almost every day, so you have to be comfortable with that. I like to have fun with it — sometimes, I’ll post memes or make jokes. So you have to find an influencer that matches up with you — don’t force it. If it doesn’t fit, then it’s not a fit.

If somebody matches up with your newsroom’s way of doing things and you really like somebody, don’t rush into it. Make sure they have a year or two of content out there, because again, it’s a risk for you. If you’re the Houston Chronicle and work with me, and then I go and make a video saying a bunch of cuss words, that’s something that isn’t on brand for them and would reflect badly.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

A: I do enjoy the people aspect of it. A lot of times we look at newsrooms, and we just treat them as CNN, Fox News, Houston Chronicle or whoever, but I’ve been getting to see the people and see the process behind it. Like when I grabbed dinner with Bao for our second video, I asked him a lot of questions about how the Houston Chronicle does things, how he approaches things, and I genuinely enjoyed learning about it.

So, if you have the opportunity and bandwidth, and if the influencer is comfortable with that, even just grabbing a coffee with them would be awesome.