Linking brands with bloggers

Cape Town – Linking marketers to big media organisations as well as to small bloggers and social movers and shakers may sound like a stretch too far, but a rising new tool created in South Africa is helping companies get their message out in more dynamic and focused ways.

Webfluential is a platform that connects social influencers to brands, helping them disseminate content to the audiences, its CEO Steven Murray told Fin24.

“It’s very important that Webfluential helps both the influencer and the marketer,” said Murray.

The platform is excellent for specialist bloggers with good page views and social media followers, who can sign up and create a rate card for marketers to target their audience… for a price.

Big and medium sized media organisations can also benefit financially from using the platform, especially if they have built up good social media followers.

For marketers and PR agencies, the platform assists in sending out paid-for press releases to targeted audiences who trust their source implicitly, making the marketing spend more traceable and effective.

It has 650 marketers registered and 1 670 influencers signed up, which is growing daily, Murray said.

Listen to the full interview:

Influencers unrecognised

“Influencers typically didn’t know their value, whereas now from our system, it will help rank you in terms of your influence against your peers,” he said. “Based on that, we help you build your rate card, so you know what your value is for your audience size and reach and your resonance and your relevance.”

Influencers give Webfluential access to their websites or blogs and channels like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube and then they list you on their site. They also give you analytics and list you as an influencer with the various channels available for spreading a brand’s message.

Evaluating impact and reach

“Reach isn’t necessarily a great indicator of how influential you are,” he said. “So you want to build a system that would evaluate impact as well as reach.”

Through an algorithm, Webfluential can use data to depict how influential people are. “Brands are more influential the more valued their content they share is, through good research and planning,” said Murray.

“When a consumer is out there looking for a product, they have an emotional engagement with the product,” said Murray. “The first thing that pops up on Google is often a review about a product, so now marketers can leverage that and use influencers to talk about their products or experience around their product.

“When consumers go online, they get these reviews from influencers who are quite selective about what they talk about.

Webfluential milestones:

Advertorial fears

The concern that is raised by bloggers being monetised on this platform is that they could fall into a trap of being paid to write about every product that comes their way.

“That’s where a blogger has to be very specific about the jobs or the briefs that they accept,” Murray said. “It becomes very clear to an audience if they are commonly being plugged for things that they are not really interested in.”

Bloggers who receive a brief from Webfluential can accept or reject it depending on whether it is appropriate for their audience. They should only accept the brief if it adds value to their audience.
To keep transparency, bloggers could also declare a post or tweet is sponsored to ensure the integrity of their work.

“We find that because they [bloggers] are sensitive about cultivating their audience, they will be very selective about the type of briefs they take on so that it’s not just fluff coming through their channel.”

Positive feedback

“It’s nice to be able to engage with consumers,” he said. “We’re getting great feedback from influencers, who really enjoy using the platform. The feedback from marketers has been fantastic.”

A good example of a success story is the Smirnoff Explore the Night. “The experience for the influencers was so good,” he said. “If you Google Smirnoff Explore the Night, the top three results are actually from influencers, who posted content about their experience.  

“They were taken on a Lear jet and flown to Armin van Buuren, got to experience the concernt and were flown back the next morning. The engagement from the influencers was great and their audiences were very receptive to that content, because it was such a great story.”

The top searches on Google for this campaign were:
- What my boyfriend wore
- Superficial girls
- My city by night

Another success story was MappedinCT, where they got tech entrepreneurs to put themselves on the map to see Cape Town's Silicon Cape community. "We used 10 influencers and got massive reception to the point where actually Helen Zille retweeted about the content that was going on about start-ups in Cape Town.”

@SiliconCape @TCMaree @forbesafrica @CapeTown @zimbuwa if you're also addressing me, would love to meet them. I LOVE INNOVATION.

— Helen Zille (@helenzille) November 5, 2014