Okay… let’s get back to business for a minute. Today’s topic: the ethics of paying influencers.
Buzzword Bingo: is “influencer” even a credible term?
Note: When I use the term influencer, assume that I mean “influencer” (with conspicuous quotation marks). I am not a fan of the term and would prefer not to use it at all, but that’s not really an option this side of 2010. In that way, it’s sort of like “content.” Besides, part of what I do involves managing influencer programs, so it would be weird for me to skirt around the term altogether. All of this to say that when it comes to buzzword douchebaggery, I am well aware that the term “influencer” tends to fall somewhere near the top of the heap (not all that far from “engagement” and “personal branding”).
For the purposes of this post, let’s all agree that an “influencer” is an individual who can be expected to exert some reasonable measure of influence on a particular audience or community. Whether that influence is massive (President Obama, Ellen DeGeneres, @Nerdist) or lean (your mom, that hipster dude down the street or your favorite Instagram user no one has ever heard of), that’s the general idea: what these “influencers” say and do impacts the attitudes and behaviors of people who pay attention to them. Politics, culture, photography, fitness, art, tech, whatever.
Influencers and marketing – a little context:
The idea behind using “influencers” in marketing campaigns is simple: you’re basically hoping for an endorsement of some kind. Nothing all that new about it: whether you’re in the business of selling cars, oil pipeline contracts, movies or pasta sauce, it doesn’t hurt to have one or two or five hundred credible, likable, influential, trustworthy people talk about the merits of your [insert whatever you want here] on channels where you hope your intended audience will tune in and pay attention.
If you’re an author or publisher, you know what kind of impact Oprah Winfrey can have on sales in the US, for instance, Or Bill Maher, or Bill O’Reilly, or Jon Stuart. If you’re a maker of athletic apparel, you know what kind of impact a superstar athlete can have on sales. Fitness celebrities can help boost sales of protein bars and exercise systems. Political pundits with their own TV shows can help sell or kill legislation and public policy. It all works the same way. There’s a reason fashion brands throw their wares at pop stars. There’s a reason bloggers get invited to attend launch parties and conferences. It’s all part of the same process: influential people with an audience are media outlets in their own rights, and in a way that, at least in theory, tends to be stickier and more authentic than advertising. Endorsements, whether implied or explicit, do work when they appear to be genuine.
At the very least, you want an “influencer” to be a vehicle of discovery for new audiences. You expect them to make that first introduction, and hope that introduction will paint your product or company or event in a positive light. Look at these awesome new cyclist-specific jeans! Look at how how awesome my selfies are now that I have a gizmo on my face! Etc. “Influencers” can also be brought in to validate a product or brand long after the initial discovery was made by an audience. Either way, best case scenario: an “influencer” acts as a credible promotional vehicle. A fangirl/fanboy. A product or brand ambassador.
On disclosure:
I’ll skip over the specifics of the rules of disclosure this time around, but be aware that both from an ethical standpoint and a legal one, disclosure isn’t optional. If an “influencer” has received any remuneration from a company leading up to or following an endorsement of some kind, they have to disclose it. They have to let people know the extent of their material connection with the companies they promote – if a material connection does in fact exists. That way, when your favorite blogger suddenly starts singing the praises of their new super awesome Sony mirrorless camera, you’ll know if they just bought one on their own and couldn’t be happier with the purchase, or if an agency working with Sony sent them a free camera and some lenses in exchange for a few blog posts and some Instagram content.
That sort of information is important because for “influence” to work, it must be built on a foundation of credibility. It doesn’t matter if you’re a celebrity endorsing a product in mass media ads (like Matthew McConaughey driving a Lincoln) or a mommy blogger gushing over her awesome new Reeboks. The audience has a right to know whether or not a material connection exists, and how that connection may or may not have impacted the “influencer’s” opinion and zeal.
Now that we have gotten all of that out of the way, we can finally get to the crux of the issue:
I was sitting at a conference several months ago, having a round-table discussion with a handful of “influencers” and social media managers who happen to run influencer programs for their respective employers. The discussion was about whether or not “influencers” should be paid.
The general consensus was that yes, they should be. And we’ll come back to that, but first, I want to address the argument against paying influencers because, although I disagree with it for practical reasons, it has some merit… at least in theory. It deserves a little attention, and certainly an acknowledgement. Bonus: it comes from a good place. Here it goes:
Why “influencers” should not be paid:
There is a belief, particularly in the PR world, that paying an “influencer” poisons that individual’s well of credibility, that the moment you pay them to become an ambassador or an “influencer,” or whatever you want to call them, they become shills – or at least they appear to have become shills.
At best, the image that pops up is one of a mercenary opinion-for-hire blogger. At worst, the image is one of bribery. The logis is as follows: paying an “influencer” pays for their opinion, and if you pay for their opinion, that opinion becomes null and void.
And you know what? I get it. I even agree. When you look at it that way, it makes sense to want to keep “influencers” pure. They should want to talk about your products. They should want to write blog posts about them. All you have to do is treat them super well and shower them with attention and invite them to events, and they’ll just become willing little content factories for you because they love you that much. That’s how you know your “influencers” are pure, genuine, credible, without reproach. Earned media vs. paid media. (Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.)
And you know, to some extent, that’s wonderful. There’s definitely a long tail community management model there, and some soft influencer development juice to that theory. I love how pure and clean and ethical it all is, but… let’s come back from lala-land for a second and look at this from a more realistic angle, because the assumptions driving that belief aren’t super solid.
Why “influencers” should be paid:
First of all, if you are paying an “influencer” for their opinion, you probably shouldn’t be running an influencer program to begin with. The belief that an “influencer” is paid to think a certain way or write a certain way because they were paid to is a pretty clear sign that you don’t understand how influencer programs actually work (or should work). You’re still stuck in a paid media vs. earned media conundrum, and you really need to let it go. It’s 2015, not 2008. Earned media isn’t what it was when having 5,000 followers on Twitter was a big deal.
Second, the moment you reach out to a blogger or “influencer” with an offer of any kind – an invitation to attend an out of town event, an invitation to review a product, an invitation to wear a T-shirt with your company’s logo on it – you’ve stepped into the paid media universe. I know this is going to be hard for folks with traditional PR backgrounds to grasp (or accept), but you need to, and the sooner the better. Earned media doesn’t live here anymore. It’s moved to the outer fringes of the long tail. Earned media is out there with community WOM and social shares. Your “invitation” is an RFP for content creation. You don’t have to like it, but that’s just how it is.
That means that if you are running an influencer program or an ambassador program, you are working in paid media. Divorce yourself from any notion that any of that is earned media now. If it ever was, those days are long gone. It doesn’t matter if you’re paying your “influencers” in free tickets to a conference or back-stage passes to a concert. It doesn’t matter of you’re paying your “influencers” with a bottle of your vineyard’s best wine. It doesn’t matter if all you’re paying for is their airfare and hotel so they’ll live-tweet your product launch. You’re paying them. You can stick your head in the sand and pretend you aren’t, but that well of credibility you were so bent on not poisoning, it’s glowing green from the money that’s already been spent on it. Now you need to connect the dots and stop pretending that it’s all amateur hour and free drinks in the bloggers’ lounge, because that isn’t reality.
Here’s where your mental shift needs to happen:
1) Influencer programs aren’t ‘earned’ media:
Community management (hanging out with fans in a very public way and helping them give you great WOM) is earned media. Running an influencer program (asking people to give up their time, do actual work and leverage their networks), is paid media. If you pay for your influencers’ travel and food and swag, you’re not working in earned media anymore. You might as well accept it and take it to the next logical conclusion, which is…
2) That stuff takes time:
Consider the opportunity cost (for an influencer) of either doing a day’s worth of client work that pays the bills or attending your unpaid event because it’s filled with amazing “networking opportunities.” Respect your influencers’ time. If you ask them to give up their own time in a way that will benefit you, pay for it.
3) It also takes work:
You’ve asked an influencer to write a blog post or make a video? That’s work. It has value. Your company is going to reap the benefits of the content they create and of their endorsement, right? Everybody up and down your org chart got paid for their part in it. The graphic designers, the event managers, the people booking your travel… If the only one who didn’t get paid is the “influencer” who created content for you, something isn’t right. That isn’t protecting anyone’s credibility. That isn’t keeping a program pure. That’s just being cheap. They’re doing work for you. Pay for it.
4) Networks aren’t free:
Consider that “influencers” have worked pretty hard to build their audiences, to build and nurture their networks. They’ve invested a lot of time and love and hard work into it. You know that those networks and audiences are valuable. That’s why you reached out to those individuals in the first place. Recognize that value and be prepared to invest in them too.
5) Your aren’t running a buddy program:
This isn’t coffee with friends, we’re talking about. You aren’t trying to be buddies with these people. You’re creating and developing a business relationship with them. Treat it like one. Respect them enough not to lure them into absurd “the networking opportunities are far more valuable than what we could pay you to come here” bullshit. Pay them for their work and time.
Note: At best, the “networking opportunities” are a bonus. And if the “influencers” you invited to your event are doing what they’re supposed to do (paying attention, testing your wares, live-tweeting presentations, posting pics and videos of your shinding on Instagram, spending half the afternoon in some wi-fi friendly corner writing a blog post about what they’ve seen), there isn’t going to be a whole lot of time for “networking opportunities.” They’re working, not hanging out at an industry party. Pay them for their time and their work. Period.
But the most important thing you need to take away from this discussion is this:
6) You don’t pay influencers for their opinion. You pay influencers for their time.
That’s why the “ethics” and “poisoned well of credibility” arguments hold very little water. If you’re paying for opinions, you’re doing it wrong.
You want to keep influencer programs pure? Me too. You want to protect the credibility of your “influencers” by keeping them from becoming shills? Me too. Put it in your contracts. Make it absolutely clear that you aren’t running a paid endorsement program. Use disclosure to your advantage. Rise above any and all suspicion by making your position crystal clear on this: You pay for time. You pay for work. You don’t pay for opinions or endorsements. Brand affinity and alignment get you in. The work you do is what gets you paid.
Which means:
1) Establish day rates for your “influencers” if you want them to attend events.
2) Establish content creation rates for your “influencers” if you want them to mention you to their audiences.
3) Build all of that into your budget before proposing it to your client.
4) For the love of puppies, start being a little more diligent about your “influencer” selection process.
7) Pick your “influencers” well and ethics won’t be an issue.
Tip: if an “influencer” favors “networking opportunities” over billing you for their time, they probably aren’t worth the investment.
Either they are too green or too desperate to build a “personal brand” on the backs of unsuspecting brands to be of any value to you. If it’s the latter, they will spend as much of the event (that you paid to send them to) as they can pitching themselves to your partners and clients. Not super professional. (Is that what you want? I doubt it.) Worse yet, their “influence” will likely be paper-thin and inflated with fake followers, and (irony of ironies) they are probably exactly the sorts of shills you aimed to avoid getting involved with in the first place.
You know the old saying: you get what you pay for. Well, there’s another piece to it: if your due diligence sucks, everything that follows will probably suck too.
Here are some tips on how to dig up better “influencers” – the kind you will actually want to work with:
A) Authority:
Don’t just look at the size of their audience, their Klout stats and their keyword clouds. Study their channels. Study their content. Ask yourself not only what they talk about but also whether or not they are credible in these subjects. Do they mostly publish formulaic and vacuous “Top 10” type posts every five hours? Is their content just reheated fodder gleaned from hundreds of equally derivative and useless blog posts littering the web? Are they inveterate self-promoters? Is most of what they do just SEO-driven? Do they plagiarize other people’s work? Have they dedicated entire Pinterest boards to self-made memes of their own quotes? Are they pretty much just professional conference attendees at this point? In other words, are they just social media douchebags passing themselves off for actual credible authorities in their field, or are they the real deal?
Look for passion. Look for voice. Look for opinion. Look for critical thinking. Look for people with more than one focus. Look for people with an actual point, not just SEO hacks playing the social web to build “personal brands.” Learn to distinguish between authority (which actually drives influence), and social equity (which can be easily gamed by people without an ounce of actual influence on anyone). Hell, just look at their CV on LinkedIn. That’s usually a good start.
B) Credibility:
Do they already sing the praises of other brands or products? Great. Take a close look at how they do it and why. Does any of it seem incongruous? Does any of it seem like an odd fit? Are they lukewarm paid participants in an endorsement campaign or are they genuine fans? Do they shill for any company that will pay them to or are the companies they work for in line with their lifestyles and/or professional world? Do they even use the product in the real world, or just when it’s time to create content around it?
I’ll give you an example: I love Nespresso. I own a Nespresso machine at home. My parents own two. I pretty regularly give Nespresso props on Instagram because I start my day with coffee and… drink more of it than I probably should. I am not paid by Nespresso to do this. I don’t get a single perk from them other than the occasional “like” from their account on IG. I just do it because I’m a genuine fan. Now… if Nespresso’s digital agency contacted me tomorrow and offered me to write blog posts for them, I would be delighted. It wouldn’t be weird or out of place for me to become a more integral part of the Nespresso content universe. There’s history there. There’s context. It makes sense. But if I suddenly started singing the praises of Keurig machines, you could conceivably wonder what the hell happened to my love affair with Nespresso. The change would be dissonant. That sort of thing is a red flag. Look for it before reaching out to an “influencer” about becoming part of your world. Is this the sort of thing they do, or is their integrity pretty solid? I am tempted to use the term authenticity but… ugh… it’s been so overused already.
Another red flag is too many instances of contradictory endorsements. If an influencer writes hard and heavy about Ford one quarter then GM the next, that should concern you a little. Fan of Apple one minute and Samsung evangelist the next? Hmmm… Learn to spot mercenary “influencers” early, and you won’t have to worry about their credibility later. (In other words, make sure you only work with people who are credible in the first place. If you don’t want to work with shills, don’t hire shills.)
C) Cross-relevance:
The more interests a potential “influencer” has, the more potential connective tissue they will be able to bring to their contribution to your brand or product. Let me give you an example:
You’re an apparel brand. You make cool clothes for active, fashion-conscious men. Style-wise, you fall somewhere between hipster and business: class with an edge. The typical marketing reflex would be to look for your target market: city dwellers, 25-35, $40K-$90K, blah blah blah. Enter the search for fashion bloggers. All of that is fine and good. You will get as much play out of it as one would expect. If you handle it right, you will see a spike in visits to your sites and stores, even a spike in sales. And then, the spike ends and you either end up in a slump or on a plateau. Uh oh.
On the plus side, you’re established now, but on the minus side, you’ve flatlined. What do you do? Well, now you look to reach a broader audience. You look for tangents. In the context of an influencer program, you have to find new intermediaries: influencers who combine interests and authority across a complex matrix of communities and audiences. These are people who don’t just have fashion-focused followings. The fashion piece is just one aspect of their image, of their vibe of their shared universe. You’re going to need to look for gateway interests that will lead new audiences to your brand. You’re going to need to find side doors. Actually, find might be the wrong word… you’re going to have to build them.
More to the point, you are going to have to partner with real influencers, not just industry pundits, and with your help, they will build them for you.
That’s how it actually works: not relying on tired industry bloggers to create boring content for the sake of filling space and justifying budgets but making exciting new connections that open new doors in entirely new areas.
Your “influencers” shouldn’t just be one-dimensional internet characters writing the same stuff to the same audience day after day after day. They should also be real, complex, multidimensional individuals with roots and feelers and anchors in more than one industry, across a matrix of interconnected interests: tech companies should do more with artists, for instance. Fashion brands should do more with academics and athletes. You have to cross-pollinate. You have to build diagonal brand narratives, not just vertical ones. If you don’t, you’ll just keep doing the same thing over and over again, and with little to show for it. (Look around. How’s that whole “content is king” thing working out for you? Are you inspired yet? Neither am I. Why do you think people as abandoning Facebook and Twitter for Instagram?)
The best influencers are dot-connectors. They are translators. They are bridge-builders. Think Marco Polo, not Boniface VIII. The blogger who is going to sell your jeans to a whole new audience of shoppers isn’t a denim expert. It isn’t the guy behind the #1 jeans blog in North America and Japan. It’s going to be the selfie queen of Austin, the “eating clean” mother of three, the Crossfit fanatic who can’t find jeans that fit her properly anywhere but in your store. It’s going to be the boyish bike commuter dude in Portland, the one with the adorable pug photos all over his Instagram feed, who hangs out at coffee shops and loves how the right leg, rolled up or not, never rubs against his fixie’s chain. Those are the influencers who will be real agents of discovery and validation for you, even if they only have 2,000 followers each. They’re the real deal. 2,000 followers with an 8% conversion rate is still better than 200,000 followers with a 0.04% conversion rate. Think about actual impact, not just impressions.
That’s how you’ll reach new customers, how you’ll drive relevance and net new sales: by connecting to these folks and creating value for them that they will then be sharing with their audiences. These are the people you should be looking for and working with. These are the ambassadors you (or your agency) should be developing.
Think of the term “ambassador” for a minute. I look around at most “brand ambassadors” and can’t help but wonder why they’re even called that. They’re underpaid community managers, not brand ambassadors. They don’t build bridges across communities. They don’t go out into the world and create new connective tissue between cyclists and tech brands, for instance. They just talk to their own stagnant topic-focused audience. What they have is a church, not an embassy. They aren’t even evangelists. They’re just preachers, preaching the same sermons to the same choir day after day. It isn’t to say that there isn’t any value to that. There is. It’s a foundation. But if you want movement, if you want growth, you have to think about the world outside of your industry bubble. You’re a tech company? Expand your search beyond tech bloggers. You’re a fashion brand? Expand your search beyond fashion bloggers, or ask your agency to. (Shameless plug: we do that. … but it’s also how I’ve come to understand how this stuff actually works, so I don’t feel too horrible about it.)
Looking for potential influencers who aren’t entirely focused on your industry isn’t just tactically smart, it also eliminates a lot of douchebaggery that comes with working with the same thirty or forty professional industry bloggers who already do (or have done) work for your competitors and don’t really have anything new to talk about. You want to sort through the murky ethics of paying bloggers and influencers to create content for you? Start by fishing somewhere new, where people aren’t jaded yet, where they aren’t going through the motions just to score their next paycheck or their next free invitation to an industry event they’ll mostly use to drum up business for themselves, where their audiences aren’t carbon copies of the ones you’re already reaching now. Go make some real connections. Invest in them. Think of this brand ambassador business as a business, which is exactly what it is, both for you and for the people you are recruiting to be part of it. Social or not, it’s business development. You’re building an army, not throwing a party. Stop believing people who can’t tell one from the other.
To recap: money pays for work and time, not affinity. Not alignment. The ethics and integrity and credibility pieces of the equation are separate from the money, and when you know what you’re doing, keeping them apart isn’t rocket science. It starts with knowing how you’re going to run your program, how you’re going to manage it, what it’s actually going to be doing and driving, and how. Working backwards from that, it also means knowing how to find and recruit the right “influencers” and how to leverage them in the right way through your program.
At the core of all of this, from knowing how to actually do this stuff properly to the kind of impact (the concrete kind, the tangible kind) well-managed influencers will ultimately have on your business, you get what you pay for. It’s really that simple. You want to cut corners and invest very little? You hope that quality people with quality networks will give up their time and work for free? Don’t expect a whole lot. But if you’re serious about doing something that will work, in investing in something real and properly managed, then your program has a chance of being very successful. So take the time to find the right partners, build the right programs, and invest in the right influencers.
There’s a bigger piece that begs writing, but as we’ve already covered more than what I wanted to today, I will stop here. More soon. Until then, feel free to share your reactions and thoughts in the comments.
Cheers,
Olivier
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74 Comments
Another favorite part below. If I had a $1.00 for every time I explained this to brands, whom then thought I was “not for them” because they know so much about influencers than me, I’d be rich!
“You look for tangents. In the context of an influencer program, you have to find new intermediaries: influencers who combine interests and authority across a complex matrix of communities and audiences. These are people who don’t just have fashion-focused followings. The fashion piece is just one aspect of their image, of their vibe of their shared universe. You’re going to need to look for gateway interests that will lead new audiences to your brand. You’re going to need to find side doors. Actually, find might be the wrong word… you’re going to have to build them.”
Yeah, when you ask for inside information about someone who has build audiences, that knows what does and does not generate sustained attention, maybe listen more than you talk is what I’d tell brands.
Olivier I found myself standing and clapping as I read each section 😉
🙂 Thanks for commenting first. You beat everyone to the punch (and you’re spot on, as usual).
Like Michelle said in her comment above, I too was applauding Olivier for getting this right! And I also appreciate Michelle giving readers further insight as to what constitutes an influencer. Just because someone is popular with one group, doesn’t a market make. One must look beyond the niche and seek people who can and DO regularly connect with the minds of the audience at hand! True “influencers” don’t just show up for a gig. They practice their craft and craft their appearance, whether it’s in person or by written post. The best influencers know how to “set the stage” to gather up the audience as well! There is a lot of noise out there! Using influencers the right way, and paying them to do it right, is one of the smartest ways to market just about anything today!
Yeah, nothing annoys me more than ‘all-purpose influencers.’ Sorry but if your IG account sucks an dyou can’t take a decent picture to take your life, the fact that you are now using a super awesome Canon mirrorless camera isn’t going to have any kind of impact on anyone. There’s a model to this: the right audience, the right context, the right timing, the right tone… it takes a little more work than what most people (even in digital) think.
One question that hasn’t been addressed: How much is “influence” worth?
Let’s say that Joe Blogger writes about bread baking. If he publishes a bread recipe that uses Bob’s Red Mill spelt flour on his blog, he’ll almost certainly have more influence (on a per capita basis) than he will when he says “I just baked a wonderful loaf of bread with Bob’s Red Mill spelt flour” on Twitter. How much is the influence in each venue worth?
Do you define that value as a CPM, as you would with advertising? That would seem reasonable, since a blog with 10,000 unique visitors per month isn’t going to have as much influence as one with 100,000 UVs a month, and a social-media enthusiast with 1,000 Twitter followers isn’t going to have as much impact as one with 50,000 Twitter followers.
That’s a good question.
On the one hand, you have the issue of paying someone to do a write-up or shoot video, right? There’s the work/time aspect of it.
Regarding the other part of the equation, you have to look at audience size and whether or not the audience is even the right one, right? Say I’m a woman, and that I blog about fitness a lot. I have 100,000 followers on Instagram. You see me pushing all kinds of products, from sports supplements to clothing and shoes. Seems like I might be a great find, right? Okay… but what if 85% of my followers are men? That means that the size of my relevant audience is only 15,000. Maybe.
That’s a consideration I see a lot of agencies miss entirely. Some of it is accidental but a lot of it is deliberate. Why? Because agencies don’t always care about outcomes beyond reach and impressions. They don’t really care about influencing sales. That’s why the value for an agency might be CPM, but shouldn’t be for the client.
That’s why I put a premium on actual ROI, but… that’s a whole different story.
Oliver if you were standing in front of me when reading this, I may have kissed you. I sometimes feel like a broken record explaining this to clients. I will add that if the brand does treat an influencer well they will continue to talk, write, and share about the product/service/or brand which turns into earned media.
Aww, thank you! I think there needs to be a follow-up to this piece that shows, in diagram form, how earned and pay work now, and that the layer of blogging and influence that we are talking about, while driving and fueling earned media, is clearly paid media now. (And has been for some time.)
Olivier, thank you for creating such an on topic article! You have managed to make what can be a very complicated topic to explain very clear.
I am the the travel blogging world and it is firstly amazing how many approaches I receive to work for free, which I quickly regretfully decline, but I am also a bit over the ‘top 100 travel blog’ type posts – the same names keep popping up, and while most of them are still good to read there are so many newer voices popping up.
The engagement point is also interesting – I have recently been researching the Oceania Travel Bloggers Directory and as part of that I have written an article which is about to be published where I have reviewed each of the top Oceania travel bloggers social media followers, and I have also flirted with assessing each of their engagement. I definitely need to do further research to be able to better define that engagement, which I think is one of the real issues out there – it is very difficult to define and put a quantitative number on, although many sites have tried. I quickly saw that some of the very top sites actually had really poor engagement, and some of the mid range sites actually were doing very well in this area which reflects your statements above.
Thanks again for a really worthwhile article.
That sounds really interesting, actually. Klout scores are an imperfect benchmark, so any matrix you put together would probably be an improvement. Let me know what you come up with. 🙂
PS: I need to start getting into travel blogging. I certainly do enough of it. Might as well put it to a more productive use.
“there are so many newer voices popping up.”
Travel blogging is an insanely tough vertical to actually make money from. There are so many new voices because it’s constantly new people who decide to make travel blogging a “career” ….only to give up before they ever have a large enough readership to turn it into a business. Most “travel bloggers” aren’t actually traveling. That said, that doesn’t mean people are going to stop trying… the prospect of constantly traveling and writing/photographing/filming it is obviously a fairly compelling dream for many 🙂
You would think that with so many talented people looking to do this, the business infrastructure for that specific type of biz would be a little more fleshed out. I think there’s an opportunity to build something cool there.
But that would mean brands like Social Media Examiner couldn’t build their social media empire (and their CEO’s buy their mansions) off the backs of unpaid influencers. Dangling the “exposure” carrot has led to a new kind of pimp. He’s still saying “Baby, let me make you a star!” he’s just not doing it in the back room. Free content has also ruined it for writers who have been getting paid all along, because now the most popular online properties in the niche know that “influencers” are clamoring to write guest posts in exchange for “getting their name out there” and a backlink. I only half blame the pimp. The person that’s willing to trade something valuable (expertise) in exchange for a mention is also making things bad for the rest of us, It’s not influence, it’s ego.
Absolutely. Everything you just said. (Except for the mansions. I don’t think anyone at SME is living in mansions. At least… I hope not.)
This is fantastic. Sharing. And bookmarking in the same folder as Mike Montiero’s “Fuck You, Pay Me” link and Harland Ellison’s video rant about paying content creators.
Funny, that “fuck you, pay me” video is always in the back of my mind when I discuss this issue. We’re on the same page. 🙂
What? I’m supposed to go to industry parties to network? I thought it was to eat, drink and gossip. Seriously, though, there is so much innuendo, mistrust and even fear swirling around these issues it was a relief to see this written down in such a clear insightful way. It clarified things even for me, and I thought I knew it all. (That’s a lie. I was paid to say that.)
I know, right? I could pay you but you will get so much more out of the networking! lolz
If I had a dollar for every time a conference organizer gave me the same line in exchange for a free keynote. 😀 “Think of all of the consulting opportunities!” Yeah… um… here’s how many consulting gigs I’ve scored so far from speaking at conferences: zero.
Now the question is, would you rather be paid in cash for your time or would a year-long supply of Nutella be an adequate substitute?
All the YES!! Thank you for posting this, if you don’t mind I’d love to add a link to this post in my media kit under the section ” But why do I have to pay for this stuff!?” x
Go for it. 🙂
Fantastic piece Olivier I found it after Kate shared it. I love the way you’ve differentiated between affinity and work/time.
Just working on my new media pack so would also like to link to this as it’s just perfect IMHO!
Once you realize that the affinity piece is qualitative/subjective and the time piece is quantitative/objective, it becomes easier to draw a line between the two. The recruiting into a program (however unstructured it may be) is the qualitative piece: are we aligned? Does this person fit into our world? Do we fit into that person’s world? What are the points of intersection? Does this seem genuine or a little forced? etc. Once the qualitative/subjective piece is out of the way, the quantitative piece boils down to compensating someone for their time. If they produce content for you, attend an event, do things that they would otherwise be getting paid to do, pay them.
This isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for earned media. It’s the next link in the chain, really, so it is VERY important. In a way, it’s what makes this particular influencer layer work. I plan to do a follow-up to outline where earned media fits in all of this.
It’s also worth mentioning that some of your best influencers may be eager volunteers anyway. You don’t have to pay them if that isn’t an issue, if they don’t ask, if you don’t have a structured influencer program. Using myself as an example, I routinely act as an influencer for brands I love: Nespresso, Specialized, Rudy Project, GoPro, Canon, Hincapie Sportswear, Sony and many more. That’s 100% earned media. But by the same token, those recommendations aren’t structured. They aren’t strategic. They aren’t part of a cohesive effort to help launch a product or boost sales or improve brand perception. They’re the frosting on the cake, not the cake itself. That’s where the gap is. A structured influencer programs fills that gap.
As I navigate opportunities to write for brands, I have declined almost all of the offers (some lucrative) because I value my readers and respect their intellect. I’m an all-in kinda gal and once I find something worth writing about for any corp, I’ll do it with gusto, mostly because I’ll love the product and want to share it with those who trust me.
I’m in this for the long haul and I don’t consider myself an influencer as much as someone who writes about what they love and simply wants to share the love, in hopes of making someone’s life easier or a bit more fun.
Loved this piece. It resonated and confirmed many a thought. Thanks.
Great to hear that you agree. I run into bloggers who are pretty mercenary about their revenue model and others, like you, who value their credibility (and the trust of their audience) too much to shill for anyone with a little cash. (Not judging anyone btw. Being mercenary isn’t necessarily bad.) I just happen to prefer the non-mercenary kind. I’m the same way.
PS: Nice to meet you. 🙂
Nice to meet you too. Gonna hang out here a bit more. Maybe learn something.
I have to say that I almost never pay influencers unless I ask them to do something, specifically create content or speak. aying personal brands who meticulously cultivate followings is something I do, again, but I find it is secondary to finding the loyalist with passion. Personal brands/big “influencers” usually add an air of credibility. But most of my influencers programs don’t involve pay. Instead, they usually involve a bit of quid pro quo.
To me, a good influencer program identifies advocates who care about the product or issue and are inclined to talk about it — with or without the organization. That’s where the rubber hits the road with these types of campaigns, particularly when you want to drive ROI and other outcomes.
Geoff,
1) If you aren’t asking influencers to do something, I’m not sure that you’re running much of a campaign. We’re talking about brands recruiting influencers to write 1, 2, 3, 4 blog posts per month, attend conferences, use their products, etc. These are people who are being asked to do work. They aren’t accidental fans that just happen to say nice things about a brand in passing. So if you ask them to do work for you, here’s where “the rubber hits the road” when it comes to “quid pro quo:” pay them for their time.
2) You wrote: “To me, a good influencer program identifies advocates who care about the product or issue and are inclined to talk about it — with or without the organization.” Yes. That’s true. 100%. But the moment you reach out to them and ask these passionate people to do work for you, pay them. I don’t see how passion and remuneration for work are mutually exclusive. If I love my job, if I love the company I work for, I still get paid to do that job. It’s pretty simple. Influencers are contractors. Pay them.
There’s a reason why most of these campaigns don’t really stick (I know, I know: yours are different. It’s what everyone always says.): after a while, your clients’ biggest fans come to realize that you get paid a solid deal of money to run these programs and campaigns while all they get are T-shirts, gift certificates and kudos, even though they are the ones doing the heavy lifting. You know what? There’s a shelf life on treating people that way, and I’m not really sure it fosters long term loyalty. Nobody likes to feel used – especially people who care a great deal about the brands they eventually feel kind of used them then tossed them aside once they outlived their value. Know what I mean? So just pay them, man. Reward the ones who do it for free all on their own, but pay the ones you hire to do actual work. It isn’t just ethical, it’s also an investment in long term loyalty.
I still can’t really wrap my mind around the notion that just because people love a brand, they should be happy to work for free. Where does that mentality even come from?
“After a while, your clients’ biggest fans come to realize that you get paid a solid deal of money to run these programs and campaigns while all they get are T-shirts, gift certificates and kudos, even though they are the ones doing the heavy lifting.” Exactly. And that’s just it. As a former PR pro and now freelance writer and blogger, I would ask that marketing and PR folks who still don’t understand all the awesome you are saying here try this exercise: put yourself in the shoes of the “influencers” whom you “found” who also share a passion for the brands/products/messaging of the client with whom you’ve sealed a contract (or the company for whom you work). Imagine that you are not the manager of said campaign, but the “influencer” curating the message and visual, and then using your voice, visibility, and platform – all of which has taken you YEARS to grow in strength, presence, and credibility – in a space that has taken you YEARS to nurture, develop a rapport with, and that trusts you, to market it all. Imagine, that all you get for your time is a thanks, a sample, and maybe a dinner. Then the rent bill comes or the kid’s need braces, but none of the kudos, no matter how special, can pay for it, though you’ve invested the time in the work, work which translates to success for the campaign manager, who, as a results, stands to benefit from not only look good, but also a good chance for renewal of their contract or next year’s raise or promotion. Imagine. And if you don’t want to pay, or prefer not paying, than at least know that you have zero control over the message, whether it is to your benefit, or whether it gets out at all. I can say, in the 9 years of doing this, neither exposure nor someone’s praise, gratitude, or appreciation has ever helped to pay my bills. We’re professionals not because we want to make friends, but because we insist on doing the work worthy of payment.
That’s like telling Geoff how it really is! WTG, Oliveir!
Loved this post. Here in India digital media marketing and working with bloggers / influencers / tweeples in in nascent stage and typical pitch I get for my little blog is ” I am doing a big favor by choosing you” and a lot of bloggers etc. too feel that way. No More, this post is an eye opener and confirms my belief that we need to find a win -win situation for all involved, I see no reason why only the content creator should work for exposure, as they call it 🙂
Hi Olivier,
I work in the PR industry and I just wanted to say this is a great article, I really enjoyed reading it and it also gave me some great insights :).
And you know what: our (academic) research suggests that paying people for WOM doesn’t even have to hurt its impact on others (as long as you “keep it natural”).
See: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11747-013-0327-8/fulltext.html
Hi,
Awesome post! Very useful information. I’m writing a blog for my class and I wrote a post about influencers. It’s no where near as informative as yours, but upon researching influencers, I learned how important they can be for businesses trying to market themselves!
Hi; Excellent!!! In Puerto Rico, where I live, the’re a little behind in all of this. I have been creating content and branding for the las 4 years. At this point I’m an influencer and everything you said validates and reaffirms what I believe.
I found your blog searching for info on rates and how to charge clients for me and my brand. I still don’t have a number but I have an Idea of the fype
of work I should do in terms of hours etc.
Will go read your other blogs.
I read this at a very interesting moment. I’m a travel blogger who has been happy to just get great free trips in the past. But tonight I got an email inviting me on a cruise with a company I don’t really like (haven’t experienced them; more their crappy record) to go on a type of trip that doesn’t really call out to me. I have some friends going on it which is the only reason I’m considering and it’s geographically easy for me. So do I ask, for the first time to be paid and if so do I have more of an obligation to write only positive things about it? If I don’t get paid I fwill eel freer to be vocal about it if I think it’s awful. Can I spell “conundrum”?
One of the best pieces I’ve read in a long time. You nailed it. The best influencers are dot-connectors. They are translators. They are bridge-builders. — YES. Whoever has the chance of working with you is very fortunate.
I’m a blogger. I love it. I also love the brands, products, etc that I share. I’m starting to establish myself and work with companies. I appreciate this article on so many levels and I see much value in keeping things transparent.
One of my favorite lines from you post: “Earned media doesn’t live here anymore. It’s moved to the outer fringes of the long tail.” Classic 😉
Every once in a while, I say something clever.
As a niche bloggers and having heard “sorry, your visitor numbers are too low” way too many times, I can only applaud for what I just read. Cheers from Holland!
Agencies don’t always understand audience lifecycles, long tail, or niche. And if they don’t understand it, they can’t sell it to their clients.
As a blogger, who just woke up and is a bit coffee deprived, I read this and immediately thought “woah, where he going with this?” I was expecting it to lead down the path of bloggers are useless, don’t have influence, etc, where many of these articles go.
However, you surprised me and I’m grateful there are people like you working in the PR industry. At some point, I’d like everyone I work with to realize they are not paying for my opinion but my time. When a company hires me to feature their product in a recipe, I don’t just slap some goo together, snap a pic and call it a day. I take pride in my work, especially when it comes to photography. I won’t claim to be an expert but I’m sure going to show my work/food in the best light possible and that includes the brand’s product. If it’s something I use regularly or just tried for the first time, my audience is going to know about it.
Five years ago, I was a lot more cynical about the value of “influencers.” I might not have written this piece at all.
But… the value of influencers isn’t even the real point. Once a company decides to hire influencers to review or talk about its products or services or event, it is showing that it believes influencers have value. So my opinion doesn’t even matter. The company’s opinion drives the decision to hire or not hire influencers.
Once the decision has been made that they have value to the company, and it is hiring them to work on a campaign, that’s a professional relationship. It’s a business agreement. If influence has value, and work is involved, then payment has to be part of the equation. It’s that simple.
Oh Oliver! This is an excellent, excellent read and the very reason we created our NordicTB collective and network.
Thank you!
As an influencer myself, this is perhaps the most important issue when it comes to communicating value to brands: “You don’t pay influencers for their opinion. You pay influencers for their time.”
Many brands wrongly believe that they are paying for a biased favourable opinion of an influencer when in fact they are actually paying for the time that it takes for the influencer to create and publish the branded content.
That’s especially difficult to get across to former PR pros. I don’t know why, but they seem to have the most trouble with this.
Oliver, you can’t see me but I am literally giving you a standing ovation! I am a blogger and my blog is my full time job and my families only income. I had a message board in1996 and went to wordpress in 2008. I spent many years fostering a relationship with my readers when my blog was just a hobby. I now have a great relationship with them, that when it came to minimizing my blog it was well received because we had already fostered that TRUST! It also depends on HOW you write. I try to turn my sponsored posts into green articles so that my fans leave feeling like they have gotten something out of it and not just an advertisement.
And let me just ask a question to those who manage influencer campaigns that don’t pay their influencers. DO YOU WORK FOR FREE? You must really really like the brand who hired you to run that influencer campaign so you should want to do it for free to right? Because your passionate about the brand who hired you, your a loyalist 😉 You don’t work for free and I shouldn’t be expected to either! Just say’n …………………………
That should say monitizing not minimizing lol
But… it’ll give you “exposure!” LOLz
I love this article! Thanks for taking the time to break this down! As someone who works with “influencers” and has been deemed an “influencer” by others, I know exactly what you are talking about and I agree!
Excellent.
Freaking awesome post! Standing ovation over here!!!! Sending you lots of ‘virtual high-5’s’ too! Thanks for putting this out there Olivier…
Thanks!
Great article and content! All was spot on!
Thank you.
Fantastic article! I pay bloggers in my day job and am a blogger in my hobby life – so I straddle both sides of the fence. I pride myself on my selection process for bloggers. Yes – #sizematters – but if you write 20 posts a day about free crap or coupons – you’re not really a good fit for giving me meaty content that will drive a brand’s message home. I don’t care if you have 200K followers – if your post sucks, it does me no good. On the other end – I’m in the throws of frustration in dealing with “fashion” bloggers that think I should pay them $1500+ for a post!!! Yes – you have 50K Instagram followers – but unless you show me sales numbers that tell me 1 out of 10 people buy that shirt – I’m not paying you $1500 for one stinking post!!!! Let me get off my soap box and get back to work. 🙂
Agreed.
I am really disappointed in myself that it took me this long to find this post. Great outlook and insight into the space. Thank you for putting it down in words so perfectly.
I’m really disappointed that it took this long for that post to make the rounds, but the bright side is that it finally did. It’s all good. Better late than never.
I love this! I find it so frustrating when companies want me to spend hours on posts for them for what? A lipstick? I’m happy to receive products for consideration but if you want guaranteed coverage, specific posts, bla bla bla…then that’s going to cost you.
Exactly. Free stuff gets you a mention or two. When you’re asking someone to do actual work though, pay them.
This post seems to be making the rounds in my circles today and I’m glad. I missed it a year ago but it still rings so true.
– Pay for time, not opinion
– Look for authenticity with a broader sphere of influence.
– Don’t be the professional conference-goer douchebag (I know some of these).
Great article that I’ll be sharing.
Now I really want to know – was all of this just an SEO hack to get Nespresso to contact you?
It’s always kind of funny when an older post suddenly gets discovered. Evergreen content for the win!
A brilliant post. You’re spot on and this is a message that marketers and influencers need to hear. I’m a content creator myself and also run conferences for influencers so I see this from both sides. Marketers need to pay for time and value but influencers need to understand what is worth paying for. The distinction between authority and social equity is an important one. In this highly visual world, where the prettiest pictures are the only ones grabbing our increasingly short attention spans, I feel in many ways we’re mistaking the ability to self promote and take a good IG photo as influence. Influence can be more subtle than that and its worth seeking out.
Great article. I wanted to point out something regarding your argument about loving two brands at one time in the same industry. You compared Nespresso to Keurig, which are two TOTALLY different beasts. We have both a Nespresso and Keurig machine in our home. Each does a different job. Sometimes its a latte kind of morning, sometimes its just a cup of flavored joe kind of morning. Just because I may sing the praises of both machines depending on what kind of morning I am having does not make me worth any less. What I think you meant to say was probably the opposite. Say an influencer was always bashing a brand and suddenly started singing their praises, now that would be a different story. Just as in the Nespresso and Keurig instance, we use several different brands of diapers. I love them all. So why don’t I stick to just one, because who ever has the better sales prices gets the business, doesn’t mean I love the other any less or that I shouldn’t/can’t sing all of their praises online or in person.
Good point. We have a Nespresso and a Keurig as well. Although… for us, while they reside at the same address, their users are different. I’m Nespresso. The rest of the family is Keurig. There’s very little crossover there.
But yeah, I take your point.
I’ve added this link to the bottom of my “work with me” page. I figured that instead of repeating myself over and over, I introduced potential partners to this post 🙂
PS – I enjoyed the Nespresso reference; but I’m biased 😉
It’s okay. When it comes to Nespresso and Nutella, I’m biased too.
Good idea!
Yes. Yes. All of this. I may very well send this article to every PR rep who doesn’t “get it”…
Very, very interesting! Saving this so I can refer back to it. Thank you Olivier 🙂
Hello! Your comments box doesn’t seem to be working on mobile by the way, at least it wasn’t for me.
A question – when you refer to paying bloggers, are you talking about money specifically or any form of compensation e.g. product? Because this article seems to be talking about money, but then it also says “It doesn’t matter if you’re paying your “influencers” in free tickets to a conference or back-stage passes to a concert. It doesn’t matter of you’re paying your “influencers” with a bottle of your vineyard’s best wine…”
I’m a blogger who’s worked with a fair few brands, and a blogger engagement manager in an agency, so I’ve seen ‘influencer marketing’ from both sides of the coin, and I feel like money doesn’t always have to come into the equation. So often, I hear the refrain “sorry, I don’t work for free” when working on a product-only campaign, but somewhere along the way bloggers seem to have forgotten that doing something in exchange for a product isn’t doing it for free. That kind of response actually makes me wonder if they’d even be worth working with for the brand – are they doing this because they *genuinely* love this type of product (in which case, you’d think they’d jump at the chance), or are they just in it for the money? Especially when I see relatively new bloggers charging the same as established ones – a lot of people nowadays seem to be starting blogs just in the hopes of making money from it.
Not saying you should never pay bloggers, and it’s usually the only way to work with the really big ones who blog full time (so need to earn money from it), but I don’t think it should always be the case if they’re getting other benefits.
Late to the party, but would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to hawk our INFLUENCER MARKETING FOR DUMMIES book (which just came out last month, order on Amazon today!) wherein we say the same thing. But with more examples and stuff. Because book.
*Pats self on back*