Recently I had an exchange with business acquaintance, where I was asked to leverage my social media contacts to help gather people for an event.
Naturally, because I have first-hand experience with the power of our social media power user network, The Clever 1000, I offered to mobilize the C1k. For a fee.
That's our business. Clever Girls Collective helps brands connect with social media power users, who apply their bright communication wattage to deliver the brand's message.
Clever Girls comes up with the strategy, we manage the logistics, and most importantly, we spend time getting to know the members of our network. Because of that, we have a good idea of who's interested in which kind of promotion, who's a good match for a brand, and what kind of communications they can produce achieve the brand's goals. We charge for these services and expertise, as well as access to the network.
We're the gatekeepers, so we're not spamming our network with crappy deals, and we're also their agent, asking for money on their behalf.
This particular person decided not to have the C1k work on the project, which is totally fine. But then s/he added, "I don't pay for social media."
That stuck with me for a couple of days, and I finally figured out why:
Clever Girls Collective believes very deeply that brands should pay for social media, specifically because brands expect to make money from that social media activity.
And we think that some of that financial benefit should flow through to the people doing the feet-on-the-street, word-of-mouth work.
We talk about blogger (or Tweeter, or Facebooker) compensation with every prospect, explaining that if you ask someone to work on your behalf, then you have to expect to pay them something -- in money, in product, in access to your audience/customer base, or a donation on their behalf to an important cause. The requirement is that it be something that the blogger values. Hey, some people actually don't like to accept cash compensation. There are an infinite number ways to compensate people, if you're willing to start with the premise that you need to pay people who do work for you.
The bottom line is, yeah, these are real communications programs, with real results, and it takes some budget to do right, just like any other real form of advertising, PR, or marketing. And you have to include paying for your resources, i.e. "blogger compensation" as a line item in your budget.
Helping social media users get appropriately compensated is one of our core Clever Girls values, and we are hard at work on projects to help achieve this. We do our best to build compensation into programs, e.g. the recent Roots Candles Mother's Day promotion, for which we paid bloggers $50 to manage a giveaway (plus they got a nice review sample of the product, which let's be honest, people enjoy the samples.) And we're giving back to the C1k out of our own budget, by sending two bloggers to the EVO Conference in Utah this June.
Although we don't pay people to be in the C1k, one of the benefits of membership is that over time you'll have access to opportunities to work with brands who value your effort and input, and will compensate you for them.
As I like to remind people: Nothing says "I LOVE YOUR WORK!"
like cash.
Bravo to the brands who already recognize the value of having social media power users work on their behalf and are willing to pay for that benefit.
And to those who are still trying to make social media magic happen at the bargain rate of "air and Twitter followers", I have this advice: Get out your checkbooks, it's time to show some love!
- Cat Lincoln/@DearBadKitty
Note: This am Liz posted this fantastic post about paying Mommybloggers on Mom 101, as I was proofing my post. Clearly we're on the same, "SHOW ME THE MONEY!" cycle.
