There is already a blog about the best influencer marketing platforms that you can partner with as an influencer. However, you may still confused about why to work with a platform and what should look for when considering a marketing platform as an influencer. This blog will introduce these.
Why To Work With A Platform
- To Build Relationships
If you feel that you are reaching the influencer status, you could consider opting into an influencer platform. In addition to making through your own site or channel, work with a platform gives you an opportunity to build relationships and hopefully gain your first paying influencer marketing gig.
- To Build up Your Credibility
After you participate in a few influencer marketing campaigns for a platform, you start to build credibility and prove yourself. That's to say, you begin to create a record that other brands can see. The more successful you are at influencer marketing, the more brands take notice of you, and the more of their budget they are willing to shift in your direction.
- To Have A Better Likelihood of Creative Freedom Than Dealing Directly With a Brand
What makes influencers gain their status is the quality of the content that they share with their audience. Their audiences trust them. However, there are quite a few brands, particularly more traditional companies, keeping tight reins on how their brand is represented. You can avoid the problem by using platforms. The platforms have always been involved in influencer marketing, and they understand the importance of creative freedom for influencers. They can act as intermediaries, ensuring that brands do not pressure influencers to relinquish all creative control.
What Should Look For When Considering A Platform
There are so many platforms that it is not easy to compare them. And they operate in many different ways. Some select their influencers, inviting them to join the platforms. Some invite applications from interested influencers who meet certain criteria. Some accept any influencer who apply. Some simply provide names to brands using their own electronic formula, with influencers often unaware that they are even promoted by the platform. So what should you look for in a platform?
- Access To Opportunities
Influencers prefer to work with a platform that will provide them with plenty of chances of being selected to work with brands. This obviously means that the bigger platforms with more customers have an advantage. FameBit gives its influencers the chance to bid on influencer opportunities and influencers look for relevant brands on FameBit. IZEA is another platform that shows potential influencers jobs that are available for influencers.
- Rate Guidance
The best platforms have a clear guide as to the worth of an influencer for a transaction. Some of the platforms work on the basis of offering free products to the influencers, which for many micro-influencer is a perfectly acceptable rate of payment.
The “ads” on FameBit show how much brands are willing to pay influencers. This makes things very clear to influencers as they decide which brands to make a bid to operate with. Some of the platforms specify fixed rates. Influenz, for instance, specifies a payment rate that is dependent on how many Instagram followers you have. And Webfluential has an interesting tool where influencers can enter their Twitter handle on the site and it will give them an estimated value per influencer tweet made.
- Reporting Tools
The reporting tools not only benefit the brands but also helpful to the influencers. They help give guidance about which content performs well with audiences, and which has not. Many influencers find it useful for perfecting their content creation in the future. And sometimes payment is based on performance and the platforms’ reporting tools provide the evidence required to set the level of payment.
- A Genuine Community
One of the key benefits of influencer marketing to influencers is the opportunity to build up genuine relationships with similar people. Those platforms that offer a genuine community for their influencers and brands to interact obviously have a real advantage when it comes to winning an influencer’s approval.