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Influencer marketing platforms

Once you have followed rigorously the steps mentioned in the other articles, you might be curious of knowing on which platforms you can exploit your work and be rewarded for that, whether it involves cash or products/ services.

First of all, let’s outline that there are 2 types of collaborations: barter and paid. But which one is more suitable?

Since the beginning of trading, barter has been used by people in order to exchange good or services with one another. The advantage with barter projects is that the number of followers does not have a big influence on the decision making, so if you are fresh on the market, then it might be a great stepping stone. At the beginning, it is obviously exciting to get PRODUCTS FOR FREE, but you have to consider the worth and functionality of the product, consequently the fame of the brand, which can bring you more exposure. Usually, on barter collaborations you have free hands to do whatever you want with the product, but in case you want a long-term collaboration with the brand, the best will be to make a post and or stories to introduce it to your audience. However, there are contrary opinions regarding barter collaborations, which cuts the chances of a real content creator to get paid for its efforts. Below, I will list one of the most popular influencer marketing platforms where you can collaborate with brands. A shorter version of this text can be found here, otherwise if you want to discover in depth every platform, then keep on reading!

  • Brandbassador is a brand-building community app, which helps in identifying affiliates, influencers, and brands you want to collaborate with, in order to drive sales and complete missions that will propel your influencer journey. There you can find lifestyle brands such as DESENIO, Ideal of Sweden, One Piece, etc.
  • ReachBird has the largest site in Munich, followed by Ruggel in Liechtenstein, so they can keep track on the Swiss partners and customers and Budapest, where high technology allowes to control campaigns from brands such as The Body Shop, Lindt, Movenpick,etc.
  • Hivency was founded in 2017 and is a platform aimed to micro-influencers with interests such as Fashion, Travel and Lifestyle. When a company wants to launch a campaign, they describe the product or service along with the ideal promoter profile, so that the algorithm finds the best match.
  • BrandHeroes was founded in Denmark, Aarhus and they match local micro-influencers with lifestyle brands ( H&M, The Body Shop, Boozt, Vero Moda, Dyson ) for authentic collaborations, with the purpose of becoming Brandheroes by sharing the love for the brands they genuinely adore on social media.
  • Octoly accepts the accounts ( Youtube, Instagram) with over 1K from mostly Germany, US, France, Spain and Italy, but from time to time there are campaigns running in other countries too. You get products for free from beauty brands such as Sephora, Estee Lauder, but as well lifestyle brands, before their official launch in favor of your honest review.

But what does every platform have in common? Besides a collaborative transparent community managed through Influencer Relationship Management. there’s Artificial Intelligence to collect first party data across social media channels. Nevertheless, the audience and ‘fame’ are analyzed, so the plaform can meet their client’s requirements, in terms of targeting.

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The secret recipe of an influencer

Whether you are a small brand or an ‘influencer wanna be’, I will share the main ingredients for the secret recipe of becoming an influencer, a term that has gained throughout the steady growth over the past 5-10 years, positive and negative conotations.

Influencer Marketing Hub defined an influencer as someone who has:

  • the power to affect the purchasing decisions of others because of his or her authority, knowledge, position, or relationship with his or her audience.
  • a following in a distinct niche, with whom he or she actively engages. The size of the following depends on the size of his/her topic of the niche.

There are 6 different types of influencers- Mega, Macro, Micro, Advocates, Referrers, and Loyalists, which will be discussed in detail in the next post.

To break this down, firstly ask yourself: Why do I want to be an influencer? Am I hungry for money? Am I creative and able to differentiate myself on the market? Can my knowledge feed others and further have a small contribution in the world? Answering to these questions, will help you understand how much time and effort is needed to become an influencer because in the end everyone can be one. What I mean is that you don’t have to be a celebrity, because it is enough to be a customer or partner.

Maybe you are none of these and you just want to keep a diary, so that you can recall all memorable events in your life or get to know yourself and your passions, but if you want to do it well, then what you need is:

  1. VEGETABLES: choose the vegetables you know how to cook and you enjoy the most, which in other words means finding your niche stick to it as long as your stomach (brain and heart) is digesting it. Health and fitness, Beauty, Travel, Business, Fashion, Lifestyle, Animals, Relationships, Psychology, Interior Design are the most trendy niches.
  2. PAN: platform. Here you have 6 options: the well-known Instagram, Youtube, Tik Tok, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can obviously be on all of these platforms, but you will mostly spend your energy on the one generating more traffic.

While Instagram is the most effective social media platform for businesses and life changing tool for individuals due to the ease of usage, diversity, market penetration, but as well market penetration, Youtube attracts highly skilled experts willing to run introductory, maintenance, hashtag, contest or branding campaigns.

Besides, Tik Tok is the platform with the fastest user growth -500 million and it might just be one of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence endeavours in the world. According to Oberlo, Tik Tok’s mission is to capture and present the world’s creativity, knowledge, and precious life moments, directly from the mobile phone.

If you want to position yourself as a business-oriented influencer, then LinkedIn may well be the best choice for you. At the moment, Linkedin has over 50 million users and they aim for 3 billion users in the future, so the potential of the platform is still unexploited. Acting as a key opinion leader in your niche, it will give you the authority to analyze and promote clients on LinkedIn through influencer posts.

3. QUALITY or AUTHENTICITY call it how you want. No one wants to be you Photographers, creative directors, writers or videographers are focused on creating high quality content, rather than influencing and are often called ‘content creators‘. Choose wisely the brands you want to work with, as your audience might feel when you are promoting a product mismatching your values and beliefs and the same applies to brands looking to gain online presence through influencers. Don’t use bots or other shady methods such as buying followers, because the growth you achive is not authentic and moreover, nowadays there are tools (check this one ) to track down thesse people.

4. SPICES the hashtag game is still strong. For instance, a post with at least one Instagram hashtag averages 12.6% more engagement than posts without a hashtag, therefore prepare a strategy for that.

5. CONSISTENCY. Scheduling the content is both benefic for you and your audience as you gain trust for brands and their audience alike, which will maximise the potential of your influencer marketing.

6. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE/ EATERS. There are many tools, which enable you to ask questions, create opinion polls, and answer users’ comments in order to strengthen the bond with your audience.

7. ENGAGEMENT -see if your food aka content is boiling. If it’s not, then be open to rethink your recipe and take into consideration a constructive feedback. A tasty recipe requires to build a community around the message and high conversion rates, which involve the percent of people who visit your site, follow you, make a purchase or filling out a lead generation form. Also, once your food is being served or better said your post is published have straightaway that 1 hour golden rule of replying to comments, because a new content has potential to reach new people.In some cases, 30% represents the content creation and 70% is how you promote it, therefore making use of the other platforms and network will widden your audience.

8. EXPAND YOUR NETWORK & KNOWLEDGE Go to events, read blogs, e-Books, listen to Youtube videos and engage with likeminded people.

To finish your recipe, sprinkle with some editing and visuals as first impression does matter, but don’t over do it unless you are a very talented Photoshopper.

Is there a particular topic do you want me to dig into? Let me know below about what you are curious of and feel free to share your knowledge about this stubject.

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