Forget about Hollywood stars—nowadays, brands are going after social media celebrities for advertising campaigns. The rise of social media networks like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Quora have birthed influencers with major followings and companies want to cash in on their popularity. Influencer marketing platforms such as Niche, TapInfluence or FameBit spotted a new trend fast and are now connecting some of social media’s top content creators with big corporations for advertising deals.
The current digital technologies are providing people with new opportunities to learn about product information. Recent years have witnessed the rise of many digital influencers, who are known as “niche experts” in different areas, with the growth of multiple online platforms such as Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Quora. A digital influencer often starts as a regular consumer, but with a higher expertise in some niche markets and the enthusiasm for sharing opinions with people, and gradually gains popularity. Though not marketing professionals, these experts, with thousands or even millions of followers online, have great influence on consumers’ product information learning.
As the influencer market becomes crowded, competition has increased and marketing campaigns have become increasingly aggressive and, sometimes, overreaching. Knowing that consumers trust the digital influencers and infer the quality of a product line from their positive/negative product opinions, brands are trying to win the influencers’ support.
Once upon a time if the company wanted to get people to buy its products it might turned to a celebrity for an endorsement. But social media has completely changed the calculus of fame. Now someone with a million of followers on Instagram might get money to wear a particular dress. It can be a full time job, and a lucrative one, for so called social media influencers. However, companies must balance the desire to sell products on social media or elsewhere, against the fundamental principle of law that material claims must be substantiated with the appropriate level of support.
In its Endorsement Guides update, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission made it clear that if a company asks individuals to endorse its product on social media sites — even though the endorsements may not look like traditional advertising — those posts are subject to the endorsement guidelines. If not, companies are at risk of action from regulatory agencies such as the aforementioned FTC, local district attorneys, offices of state attorneys general, competitors and, of course, plaintiffs’ lawyers.
Certainly, it seems like this is an update that’s time has come. While social media ads are flooded by unscrupulous influence marketers using deceptive practices to sell products online, there are very few well-run platforms, that already include appropriate disclosure.
This list aims to provide a range of well-established influencer marketing platforms and applications to reach out to social media influencers, promote your brand and help you to launch a successful marketing campaign.
Disclaimer: our extensive due diligence is based on research, media coverage, platform reputation, UI/UX design quality and raised capital/investment in company’s infrastructure.
1. Niche.co
Niche.co, a company acquired by Twitter back in 2015, aims to connect advertisers and brands with social media influencers. Niche doesn’t have exclusive deals with any of the influencer it works with, but helps recruit them by offering free analytics, so they can see how their social media campaigns are working. Those stats are valuable to advertisers, too, who often pay them based on the audiences they’ve accumulated.
2. Revfluence.com
Revfluence.com is an influencer marketing platform where brands and companies can partner with the top social media content creators in order to promote their products or services on social media networks. “Our team blends experience from leaders in product, engineering, and content creation, brought together by a shared passion for building the best content marketplace. With a constantly growing base of thousands of excited users, Revfluence is poised to define the relationship between brands and creators over the next 20 years,” company says.
3. Brandbacker.com
Brandbacker.com is an online influencer content marketing platform for brands and companies, that want to get exposure on blogs, social media networks and YouTube vlogs. It helps brands reach millions of new customers and influencers while tracking every read, click, share, like, tweet, reblog & more.
4. Famebit.com
Famebit.com is a go-to influencer marketing platform to promote branded video campaigns. The company was acquired by Google in 2016 to leverage its technology platform to help YouTube influencers better connect with brands. Famebit helps advertisers connect with social media influencers, in an effort to bolster branded content deals in online video, particularly, on Google’s video platform YouTube.
5. TapInfluence.com
In 2016, influencer marketing platform, TapInfluence.com (founded in 2009), has raised $14 million in Series B1 funding. Today, a provider of influencer marketing technology has a network of 50,000+ vetted social media influencers and is one of the best platforms to reach out to content creators.
