Patron - Blockchain-based influencer sharing ecosystem!

focusnow (74)in #contest • 6 years ago (edited)

Introduction

Many individuals have been turned into national or global personalities because of their achievements in various fields of human endeavor. Usually, these super-talented or enormously creative individuals are considered to be celebrities because of performing at the highest level in sports, art, science, technology, health or other fields. Because of attaining a height of performance difficult for others to achieve, celebrities are usually considered successful and they influence a crowd of loyal supporters. People look up to them as models and want to talk, walk, behave and live like them. In fact, in some parts of the world, students and youths are instructed to work hard and become like one celebrity role model or the other - such is their height of influence.

The social media platforms have made it easier to organize people for social interaction. Among the many benefits of linking people up in this way, it has created a forum where celebrities have a horde of followers. These loyal supporters try to remain abreast of events happening in the life of their celebrity role model. Thus, it gives celebrities the power to influence so many people easily by updating content on their page. Through their activities on social media platforms, celebrities have drawn the attention of not just individuals, but organizations.

Because of having a crowd of people who they influence, celebrities exercise a powerful influence on others live and act. Organizations and businesses look up to such powerful individuals to promote their products and services. They understand that if a known celebrity represents their brand, they are more likely to draw his crowd of followers, make more sales and create more exposure for their business. Currently, sports stars and other celebrities sign endorsement deals worth billions of dollars with various organizations to become their global representative. While this model of business promotion is now prevalent, there are known problems and critical challenges that must be overcome to accommodate current trends in social media and maximize the inherent value of influencers on the internet. Consider the following:

The Challenge

1. Making of a celebrity: Before the advent of social media, celebrities are people who are extremely talented in one field of human endeavor or the other. It could be in sports, craft, architecture, fashion, or other sectors. However, the emergence of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc have made it possible for people to interact with billions of other users and influence their life. Because of this, an ordinary individual who does what many people like can become a celebrity overnight. Social media has made several previously unknown persons famous because they created or did something of interest to the global community. It could be someone who teach others how to play guitar. So the world has evolved from making celebrities through talent and creativity, to making them through social media platforms.

However, the biggest challenge in this era is that many famous people in this world are scattered in different places and rarely know each other. There are micro influencers here and there who have similar fans, but because the internet is such a huge place, there have been no service or platform to gather them and create an avenue for interaction.

2. The real impact of celebrities in business: Like earlier mentioned, organizations sponsor celebrities to represent their brand in a bid to increase sales. This is now a common practice as many celebrities sign endorsement deals with various organizations. However, the challenge is determining real value of a celebrity promoting a particular brand. While several organizations have recorded slight or significant sales increase after adopting a celebrity as an ambassador, it is generally difficult to relate specific sales figures and demographics with celebrity endorsements. Put simply, organizations find it difficult to know how many followers of the contracted celebrity actually purchased their product or service. This makes it struggle to properly evaluate and rate the value or extent of influence of a celebrity on business.

3. Heterogeneous crowd of followers: While a celebrity may have several million followers on social media, it is usually a mixture of people with different interest. For example, a national sports hero may have a crowd of loyal supporters from his country. However, their interests might differ. In this crowd of supporters, there may be pet lovers, fitness enthusiasts, youths, students, entrepreneurs, etc. Because of having differing interests and goals, it could be a challenge to capture the interests of these people with a single product. For example, promoting Ladies Bags to this crowd will result in limited sales since the product will appeal to ladies in the crowd and not everyone. Targeting a specific demographic in such a mixed crowd is a big hurdle that organizations are yet to overcome.
These and many other challenges have limited the use of celebrities or influencers in targeted social media marketing campaigns. The next part of this article shows a solution to the above challenges and explains a new social media sharing economy powered by blockchain technology.

The solution - Patron

Patron is a blockchain-based project that wants to create a link and sustainable economy between organizations, celebrities (influencers) and their social media followers. The project which is built on the Airbnb economy sharing concept, wants to leverage the connection and communication facilities of social media platforms to do targeted business promotions. Patron enables Influencers (Anyone who has a large social media following) to connect with businesses and organizations that will harness the large fanbase of influencers to create communication links for marketing purposes.

As social media platforms give ordinary people the capacity to affect the behavior of a large crowd online, Patron will let influencers connect directly with businesses that are looking for crowds to show their goods or services. Patron will let influencers connect to each other and see the rating of each influencer personality on the overall economy. It will help organizations reach out to specific fan demographics on social media and accurately measure the result of marketing activity of contracted influencers.

Being a project powered by blockchain technology, Patron will remove the need for a third-party credit facility by using its token to fuel economic activity on the platform. This will let Patron users trust each other since they will have access to all transaction records immutably stored on the blockchain. The token will also serve as a medium of value exchange between influencers, fans and organizations.

With Patron, it becomes easy for ordinary people to become influential and let their voices be heard. This project hopes to combine blockchain technology with social media to create a value-sharing economy where demands for human resources meet supply. Lets take a deeper look at how Patron will achieve a value sharing economy based on social media.

There is a place for everyone on Patron

To begin, it will be nice to explain the positions occupied by all users on the platform. Patron was built for everyone. On the platform, users are identified as one of the following:

Influencers (Hosts): An influencer is anyone within the social media circle that is capable of making people think and act in a peculiar manner. On patron, influencers could be talented individuals who have excelled in a particular field and admired by a crowd of loyal supporters. An ordinary person who have a large fan base on social media because of what he does is also considered an influencer. Influencers can use smart contracts to enter a business agreement with organizations to represent them and promote their products or services. The agreement may include terms that define the behaviour of the influencer within the period of agreement. For example, the influencer may be banned from promoting other products within the periods covered by the agreement. When influencers agree to promote a particular business, the are paid for their services.

Sponsors (Guests): Organizations and businesses that want influencers to promote their product or services are called the sponsors. When sponsors recruit influencers, they are guaranteed access to the influencers social media followers for marketing purposes. The Sponsor agrees a deal with an influencer to promote their brand according to the terms of the agreement.
Followers(Fan): These are the loyal supporters of the influencer. They are usually arranged according to areas of interest to make it easier for targeted marketing by sponsors.

Core features that make Patron truly unique

Patron Have was designed to make targeted marketing more effective and efficient. Below are some features and functionality that positions Patron as a leader in the influencers and social media marketing industries:

1. A marketplace for influencers: Before now, influencers (often called celebrities) are extremely creative or highly talented individuals that are scattered all over the world. It could be individuals who have performed enormously in Art, Fashion, health, education, or other fields. Often, they have no way of knowing each other personally so as to collaborate on projects. Patron have changed all that. Patron realizes that Social media has changed how influencers are made and interact. It understood that anybody with a very large following on social media is an influencer. While there could be big-time influencers and smaller (micro) influencers, Patron created an avenue or platform to gather these influencers so as to form a coordinated coehesive group.

Previously, it was difficult for organizations to partner influencers since that struggle to understand how this partnership contributes to the growth of their business. The root of the problem is that influencers have a mixed followership. Hence the product or service of a business may not appeal to the entire crowd. This can lead to poor returns from marketing campaigns. To address this issue, Patron has arranged influencers based on their area of specialization. It could be sports, fashion, fitness, pet, freelancing, etc. By so doing, Sponsors are rest assured to find influencers whose fans are of a particular niche. Having this targeted demographic access will ensure that any marketing effort will appeal to the entire crowd, and there is a higher probability that all or a good number of this target population will buy the product or subscribe to the service.

In addition to the above benefits, it will be very easy for sponsors to create a marketing campaign and promote their product since the target demographic is easy to pick out. No time will be wasted on researching the most likely crowd to advertise to. This will save lots of time and resources for organizations. Overall, sponsors spend less time and resources to create efficient marketing campaigns with influencers on Patron than they do now.

Influencers that use Patron benefit in many ways:

Collaboration: Since influencers on the Patron platform can easily identify each other, it will be easy for them to collaborate on projects. This kind of relationships could give sponsors the opportunity to market more than one fans group at this same time if the share similar characteristics.
Stable Income: Because Patron built this unique marketplace for influencers, it becomes easier for influencers to make more money. Unlike before when most sponsors are sceptical about patnering influencers for marketing this goods, more and more sponsors are now confident that their marketing budget will yield results at the end of the day. So this means that they are more likely to pay influencers and tie down more lucrative deals with them. Hence, influencers are guranteed more stable income for belonging to Patron. Ofcourse as they relate and do business with sponsors, their value will rise over time, as well as the money they demand for their services.
Branding: Influencers are able to built a more reputable brand around themselves as they work with multinationals and big organizations. Their track record of delivering success with every project adds to their growing reputation. As such, they will gather more followers and their worth will rise sharply. Remembering that trust from others count on Patron, influencers that have successfull built their brand, trust and reputation are more likely to be rated higher than others on Patron.

This marketplace has another huge benefit in how it lets companies meet influencers directly. Consider this:

Benefits of letting influencers meet companies directly

For influencers: Since there is no middle man or credit institution linking influencers to companies, the referral fee is removed, letting the influencer earn more money than when there was a middleman. Simply put, influencers make more money by dealing directly with companies, period.
For Sponsor: For sponsors, they obtain cheaper contract fees because they do not have to pay additional fees to the middleman. Put Simply, Sponsors pay less when they deal directly with influencers since they are paying no one else to link them to the influencer.

The above and more are the benefits and functions of having a marketplace designed for influencers by Patron. The next feature that make Patron truly unique is the value system they created for to rate influencers worth. Here is how it works.

2. Creating a value system for influencers: One of the metrics that have been missing in the influencer market is how much an influencer is really worth. It is obvious that a celebrity may not be as big as they are seen or they may be really bigger than their true worth. But for now, all celebrities are considered famous without an indicator of how famous they really are. This contributes to the inability of organizations to measure the impact of marketing efforts with influencers. Patron came up with the solution. Instead of looking at influencers as equal, Patron came up with a way to know the true value of an influencer. The following 3 criteria are used to determine the true worth of any influencer on Patron:

Reacheability: This has to do with numbers. How many followers an influencer has shows how popular and influencial he really is. An influencer with 10,000,0000 followers on social media has more influence than one with 1,000,000 followers. If a marketing campagn is done on the two influencers, the one with 10,000,000 will reach more people, hence, he will be rated higher on Patron.
Engagement: This is the ability of an influence to interact with his fans and stimulate them to take action either to subscribe for a service or purchase a product. If an influencer can relate with his large followers and move them to action, Patron will rate him higher than one who rarely interacts with his followers.
Evaluation by Users: How other users on the platform see an influencer affects his rating by Patron. Even in real reall life, anyone held in high esteem by the public is well respected. On Patron, the open nature of blockchain tehcnology will make it possible for other users to see the transaction history of any influencer. If he or she is viewed by many others as trust-worthy and nice, Patron will rate him or her much higher than someone who others see as unfriendly and fraudulent.

The next feature of Patron makes it truly a modern project with the ability to operate without fear of fraud. Patron is built on blockchain technology. Why blockchain, you might wonder? Here is why.

3. Using blockchain for trustless transactions on Patron: Every project must have a way for participants to pay or receive payments from transacting parties. Patron solves this challenge by building the project on blockchain technology. Almost everyone knows that blockchain technology has made it possible for individuals to pay or receive payments in a secure and transparent manner. Using the peer-to-peer payment scheem, influencers, sponsors and fans on Patron can transact without fear of losing funds. The use of blockchain payment removes the need for a third party payment gateway. Since blockchain payments are open and permanently inscribed, Participants in the Patron sharing economy can build trust based on past history of genuine and successful transactions. Influencers or anyone who receives payments are rest assured that the full value is paid since there will be no high processing fees by any third party institution.

How Influencers contracts are made on Patron

There are three (3) standard billing format that sponsors can take up as they design the contract with influencers. Each billing format has terms of service, limitations and financial implications. It is up to the sponsor to decide which format will be best for them. Here is a summary of each billing format:

1. One-time purchase of influencer's fans: As the name suggests, the sponsor will have unreserved access to the influencer's fans after making a one-time payment. No other money will be charged subsequently for future campaigns. The sponsor will always have access to the fans of the influencer.

2. Public Relation contract: Here, the influencer is contracted as an ambassador of the sponsor and will represent their goods or services. During the period of this contract, the influencer is forbidden to promote goods and services from other companies until the period of the contract expires. The sponsor pays the influencer every month for this contract.

3. Sale and acquisition of influencers (M & A): Here, the influencer markets himself to sponsors and look for the best bidder to enter a contract with. The influencer makes an offer to sponsors and those that meet his demands can be contracted. Under this billing type, the influencer names his price. The sponsor will "acquire the rights of influencers themselves, including promotional PR media of influencers, portrait rights, sales amount within the contract period."

Other Services that Patron will Provide

Patron is developing services that will add functionality and ease of use for influencers and other users of the Patron platform. They include the following services:

1. PATRON Live: PATRON live will be a very useful tool for influencers on the platform. At present, there are many social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and the rest. Influencers on this platforms must deliver their messages one by one to fans in order to reach them. PATRON Live powered by Switchboard will feature an application that can stream content across all social media platforms at the click of a button. With PATRON Live, influencers can deliver marketing content to all their followers in differnet platforms at once. For the followers, they do not have to download SNS applications one by one. By just downloading the PATRON LIve apllication, that will receive updates from their influencers on all social media platforms at once.

2. Crowdfunding 2.0: For individuals looking to contract influencers, this crowdfunding platform can be used to hunt influencers and get them to partner with such individuals. This and PATRON Live are still work in progress that will be ready at a future time.

The Token (PAT)

Patron will issue its own coin (PAT) which will fuel all economic activity on the platform. PAT is ERC20 token which will be purchased by users that want to participate in the shared economy on Patron. Below are some uses of the coin:

Contract between host (Influencer) and guest (contractor) using PAT

Use PAT for host (Influencer) and guest (influencer) co-starring

Ambassador agreements using PAT

Use PAT to buy, sell and trade with influencers

Influencer followers and fans can buy PAT from PATRON

Followers and fans will cheer and do a fan vote with PAT for influencers

If the Influencer who voted has been able to make a contract,
　you get money from the Influencer at the rate of voted PAT (stable)

Fan polls to drive engagement on the platform and award contracts and incentives 　
　based on popular demand

Coin Distribution

Coin Schedule

How raised funds will be used after coin sale

The funds raised after the public sale will go into the following areas of the project:

Patron Development: Funds will be used to finance the development of various DApps such as PATRON Live, Web apps and other applications. Other things include financing the development of the function for trade agreement with influencers. All these will be funded after the coin sale.
Patron ICO: This will include all the expenses for the token development and running the ICO.
Influencer Management: Funds will also be used for the scouting of influencers and gathering them to join the platform. Other expenses under this category includes blockchain development, Mining and others.
Patron Incorporation: Funds will also be used to register the company and perform other legal requirments for establishing the business. It also includes renting and paying for offices in Silicon Valey and Japan.

Coin Lockup

We will be locking up 160 million PAT tokens (that is the PATRON-owned portion and 40% of the total amount of PAT tokens) for 2 months after the ICO closes.

Use Case

1. For Company
BigSis is a company that makes Ladies wears. This company has experimented with many forms of social media marketing with poor results. After 5 years of not investing in social media marketing, the new marketing manager suggested that they try it once more for the Christmas season, being fully aware of and convinced that Patron will be the solution to their challenges. After searching on Patron, he found an influencer that deals on Ladies Fashion and contracted her for last quater of the year. BigSis recorded a 20% sales increase in the first month and up to 65% sales rise in the final month of the contract. They company management was happy and has made plans to always engage influencers from Patron.

Me as a potential Influencer

Everyone aspires to becomes successful and well-known. I have big dreams to become influential in social media through sports. Since the past year, I have been gathering soccer fans on my Facebook fans page where I give them news, soccer fixtures and other updates. Here is the page address: https://www.facebook.com/fans247/. The page is growing with more soccer fans joining everyday. Currently, I have 1500 followers. I know this is a small number to become really influential. But I can still benefit by using PAtron.

I see this page growing to 1,000,000 followers in the next two years. I will sign up on Patron and continue to build my audience. I have an average of 8 new followers each day. As I continue to build my fan base, my reputation will grow. On Patron, I will reach out to sponsors that make sports wears and try to show them my portfolio. With time, I can begin to make big money from contracts. For the meantime, I will be building my followers and get to know other influencers that share my niche on Patron. That way, I will benefit from Patron now and in the nearest future.

Conclusion

Patron is the ultimate game-changer for the influencer industry. Its unique influencer marketplace creates an avenue to organize influencers based on genre and area of specialization. It lets influencers meet companies directly. Sponsors are able to make cheaper deals since there is no middle man. Using blockchain technology, Patron created a trustless, secure payment system to allow participants build trust based on transaction history. The Patron rating system allows sponsors to know the true worth of any influencer, so as to have an idea of the likely results of a deal with him. Patron will truly transform social media marketing and position it to become a more predictable sector than we have it today.