Patron Wants To Create Tangible Value For Social Media Influencers

chekohler (70)in #cryptocurrency • 6 years ago (edited)

Social media has taken the world by storm, what started as an alternative media platform for user-generated content has become the springboard for content creators. They now use social media as a medium to share their ideas and lives with the world become an authority on a specific topic and build up an audience.

These social media super users have been labelled social media influencers and have now become somewhat of a viable career choice for many. The social capital they have built up with audiences is eventually monetised, effectively selling the attention they receive each day.

How do social media influencers make money?

Once an influencer reaches a specific amount of followers around 10k or more depending on their specific content niche.

They then leverage their audience as a sales tool and approach brands for collaboration opportunities.

Branded posts

These are posts featuring the brand/product where the influencer can passively feature the brand in an everyday use, often subtle product placement style posts.

Sponsored posts

These are active promotions where the influencer states this is a sponsored message, and they are getting paid to try the product or service and feature it in their post.

Sponsored reviews

These are active reviews where the influencer tries out the product or service and provides documentation of use and their opinion on how the product or service works.

Premium content

The influencer can create personalised content, additional content, behind the scenes content that is blocked by a paywall and fans, can get access for a fee.

Merchandise

The influencer can create their own physical merchandise and sell it to fans and followers

Subscriptions

Fans can subscribe to users premium content and pay a monthly fee to have unrestricted access and even private messaging with influencers.

As you can see there are plenty of revenue streams for influencers to persue however, most influencers are looking for that brand collab payday and that is how the majority of influencers make a living using social media and leveraging the eyes on them each day.

The problem with paid influencers

The real issue with paid influencers is the question around their effectiveness. Do their branded posts reach the number of followers they have or could many of them be dead or ghost followers? Is the audience demographic active in the purchase cycle or does the influencer have enough authority to convince their followers to purchase? These and many more questions remain unanswered as this marketing discapline continues to grow.

Influencer metrics are shady at best and this sort of dark social metrics are hard to calculate a return on investment so with all the frenzy going around about influencers it creates an unregulated market of speculative value.

Influencers are then reaping the benefits of it by overcharging brands for low return advertising compared to that of traditional social media ads or paid per click search advertising.

Demo

Demo for Patron

Benefit of direct contact with influencers

Finding influencers is hard enough as it is, then sifting through them to find ones who met your needs and have a quality audience is even harder. Businesses have two options when finding influencers they can approach them directly which takes time to find the right one or employ an agency to do so, which adds to the cost and puts even more strain on the ROI of the exercise.

Benefit using Patron

Patron aims to bring brands and influencers closer together and breed profitable relationships through effective collaborations via its platform.

For businesses

By using Patron a sponsor/business/brand looking to find content creators can spread their information quickly to both its key demographic and related crowds with minimal research and investment.

By using Patron they can easily identify the correct influencers, find a price upfront and see how they can leverage their budget effectively for maximum reach.

For influences

Influencers can build a brand around themselves based on their followers, the companies they have previously worked with, and their price range.

This creates a competitive market where influencers are not just graded by followers but by the quality of their work. Influeners can also add key metrics when enticing brands such as access to a few specialized followers who are repeat buyers, or they can price themselves cheaply and release multiple contents to a wider, general audience.

This can help build the influencers reputation and work with brands that compliment their style, content creation and audience.

What I think of Patron

I think what Patron is trying to create is an admirable product that would benefit the market in a major way helping bring some sort of transparency and regulation and comparative value to the market of influencers.

They still have a long way to go in terms of adoption but even if 1% of global infleuncers get on board it will still be a sizeable market in an industry worth billions and one that continues to grow.

My only concern is how they are getting involved with payment and facilitating the open payment of influencers, this could be an issue as people do not want their income being broadcast out in the open especially when they are public figures.

Perhaps opting for a privacy system when transmitting value would set businesses and influencers at ease and encourage adoption of the platform. If not influencers and businesses may simply use the marketplace to meet and then handle payment outside the ecosystem.

Patron definately has some merit to it and if it can be 10% as popular as Patreon is for content creators at the moment it would be a huge success as a blockchain project.

For More Information on Patron

If you found my review on Patron interesting and would like to know more I would encourage you to do your own research and make use of the following resources.

This is my submission for the @originalworks sponsored writing competition found here
Here is the link to my Tweet about Patron - Tweet

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide any investment advice and is for educational purposes only. As of the time posting the writers may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency as all investments contain risk.

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