Become an influencer Read online

  Wian says it is more transactional than this.

  I’d suggest it to viewers along the lines of: “Send me gifts and I’ll follow you back.” The reason some of them want me to follow them is so I might like their videos and grow their engagement. Also, some just want me to mention their names in the video, to acknowledge them. To wish them happy birthday or whatever. Look, some nights it makes more sense for me to sit and answer my e-mails and set up event bookings or content deals, but on other nights R1 000 in gifts can totally make an hour’s worth of a TikTok live worthwhile.

  If your aim as an influencer is to build a solid enough following in order to earn an income, then this is the crux of the exercise. However, I know monetisation tends to be something influencers seldom discuss. There are a few people in the industry whom I know I can call to compare notes and we give each other a fair bit of advice, as well as support, because it is sometimes difficult to navigate on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. However, because of the inherently competitive nature of it all, I have also encountered plenty of people who don’t want to share these trade secrets.

  I like referring to webfluential.com or influencermarketinghub.com for guidance on this as well – these are like a kind of “Uber for influencers”. The Webfluential platform was created in 2013 for influencers to sign up (you have to be vetted by a Webfluential employee) and be listed with a public profile. You even get access to guide prices on what other influencers with similar reach, relevance and resonance charge for sponsored content on a variety of different platforms (Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, your blog, paid appearances, etc.).

  You are welcome to set your rates at whatever you choose, but you give the platform a percentage of whatever you earn and, in return, you enjoy the support of a dedicated Webfluential staff member during any campaign. This person acts as the go-between for the brand’s marketers and you the influencer. Essentially, they do what YouTube’s monetisation function does for YouTube content creators, only now you can agree to what you charge before the advert features on your account. The downside is that you do not build a direct relationship with the brand, but the upside is that you get indirectly introduced to new clients outside your existing network.

  They check that you received the information you need to incorporate and communicate in your sponsored post, that you load your post(s) in the agreed time frame, and that you provide the links to these posts as a report-back function for the client’s benefit. Often, they will also give you instructions on how to change a few settings on your platforms, so that brands can promote or sponsor your content to pop up in more people’s feeds as a paid-for advert. They also often help you to activate software that ensures that both you and the client get useful and important analytical data on how your followers engage with the sponsored content you created.

  I have worked directly with marketers, brands and agencies as well, and these business relationships have their own pros and cons. They usually contact influencers via DMs or your e-mail address (if you have a public one), or you can seize the chance to set up personal relationships (these are probably the ones that yield the greatest return) by attending launches and events and networking with clients who are in attendance. Or you can just pitch yourself to them directly. I have googled the names and e-mail addresses of marketing managers at brands and e-mailed them pitches on how I wanted to add value for their brand.

  An important aside, though: the guide price advice you can gather on websites like Webfluential does not consider supply and demand. At different stages you might have multiple offers coming your way and you will be able to push for higher rates, while at other times you might need to drop your expectations to stay busy. This is the nature of being a freelance content creator or, essentially, an entrepreneur.

  Knowing when to push for more and when to take what you are offered is the stressful aspect inherent in any job that doesn’t earn a straightforward salary. Sometimes you win, while other times you lose out.

  When considering an offer and drawing up a quote, I always ask myself:

  •What is the best that can happen?

  •What is the worst that can happen?

  •What is the most likely outcome?

  If I am comfortable that I can face any of the answers, I proceed.

  Let’s talk formulas

  There are two ways to approach rates. The one is to ask what the market is willing to pay and to adapt. Joe Scott also outlined the alternative, which is to figure out what you need to be able to make to do this work full-time.

  Value your time per hour accordingly [which can only be decided by you and your lifestyle needs based on the aforementioned question], and think about how long it typically takes you to film/edit/publish a typical video on YouTube, an image on Instagram, or whatever platforms make the most sense. For example, if I’m pursuing it full-time, and my goal is to make a working salary of around $20 [let’s say R400] per hour and it usually takes me 20 hours to produce and publish a video, there’s $400 [R8 000] right there. But then you have to account for your follower size [or average impressions] and its value, along with the cost of operation for your equipment, and the like.

  Maps Maponyane says he initially worked on 50 cents per follower, which basically boils down to R5 000 per paid post if you have 10 000 followers.

  But then as your following increases, you need to drive that cent-value down. You have to be reasonable. It’s not the US, where you’re going to earn R500 000 for something. Even if you charge 10 cents per follower, I think you need to just be able to give a brand that breakdown, if they ask for it.

  In the branding industry they often talk about a forever mark, a brand that is beyond their current engagement rates; it is a brand with a story, that is established and has a track record. That’s what I strive for. If every time you work with a brand, their sales shoot up, that’s far more valuable to them than mere likes. You want to work to a point where your involvement drives their business.

  There are plenty of very complex formulas out there. The South African digital marketing agency Nichemarket suggests working on an average of R70 CPM (cost per 1 000 impressions/followers) on its blog, but it also factors in a few other things: your engagement rate, a so-called brand-fit rating”, a target group accuracy rating (what percentage of your followers actually form part of the target market), as well as “content value” (what it should roughly cost the influencer to produce the required content).

  A lot of these are subjective or hard to quantify universally, but it does give you some insight into how agencies and marketers might get to the valuations they present to clients on what your voice is worth. On one of my own sponsored posts, I actually ran this sum:

  R70 × 100 (roughly 100 000 followers) = R7 000 CPM

  3 140 engagements: (3 140 ÷ 100 000) × 100 = 3.14% engagement rate (based on the actual post insights)

  Target group accuracy = 50% (I’m guessing)

  Brand-fit rating between 0.5 and 1.5 = 0.7 (I’m also totally guessing this!)

  Content value = R2 000

  R7 000 × 3.14 × 0.5 × 0.7 + R2 000 = R9 693

  Incidentally, this basically boils down to 10 cents per follower or 10% of my follower total. The American social media analytics company Klear says that micro-influencers across a variety of territories charged about R2 500 per post on Instagram, R1 000 per story on Instagram, and R3 300 per sponsored Facebook post in 2019. This was according to a survey of more than 2 500 influencers across Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. YouTube content’s cost of production and value in the international market is still comparatively high for the same bracket of influencers at R14 000 per video post, while an Instagram video, on average, earns only R3 300.

  In its 2019 “Price of Influencer Marketing” study, American analytics provider Klear found that men make up only 23% of the influencer industry but they get paid much bet
ter: women earned 77 cents for every dollar a man earned in the influencer industry.

  The study also pointed out how comparatively successful nano- and micro-influencers were, particularly on Instagram Stories. Nano-influencers with fewer than 5 000 followers, roughly 10% of the following of the average power-influencer, were earning roughly 20 to 25% of the fees that power-influencers earned on the same platform.

  The digital publishing platform Hootsuite, which allows you to auto-schedule posts to go out at a certain time on a certain platform, suggested $100 (R2 000) per 10 000 followers as a pro rata rate in 2019. Rachel Kolisi and Nadia Jaftha, however, both mentioned a 10% approach when I asked them about their formulas.

  Katinka die Kat elaborated on her recent experience in the influencer marketplace, which is that for a following similar to hers on Instagram:

  Someone the other day made R5 000 for a post and a story, as a package deal – I think it was to promote The Bachelor. Loads of people will also approach me with only R2 000 but then they want eight stories and six Instagram posts. [My audience] ... will hate me if I post six times about the same thing! I can’t do that, so then I’ll just explain what I’m able to provide and leave it up to them to make the call. I need to make sure people will still want to see my content, after all.

  Liesl says she relies on influencermarketinghub.com to get an indication about going rates before she adapts them to the local market and the brand.

  Your comments, likes, followers, engagement rate, the rate at which you respond, all need to be taken into account. My recommended fee there is much higher than what I charge clients, but I use it as a guideline. You need to keep in mind what’s happening in the market, our economy. With bigger brands I always point out that it’s negotiable if we can build a relationship over a few months, instead of a one-off deal. I also often ask my friends in the industry what they charge.

  When asked, Wian was very straightforward about his rates, explaining:

  Initially, when brands approached me to do this kind of thing, I was happy with just R2 000 for about three videos, but when a major beer brand approached me, someone suggested I speak to this guy who works in branding. He said the campaign should pay me at least R90 000 and they actually went for it! Another brand approached me and while we were negotiating, they told me that my valuation of my own account was too low, because I was willing to do a video for R25 000 for them. So, basically, I often ask other influencers for advice, or I wait until I can get a brand to make a price first.

  What you need to keep in mind, though, is that larger audiences or heavily branded content might yield lower-than-expected engagement rates, so even if your client is willing to pay that fee, your content might not generate the desired engagement or truly gain R25 000 worth of value. That’s why overcharging might be a shortcut that leads you to a dead end: no return business. Always play the long game: under-promise and over-deliver.

  Similarly, if you have fewer than 5 000 followers, you might not see offers of R750 per post. Brands might just offer a straight barter deal: R750 worth of product (you can, of course, negotiate this to be R750 cost price as opposed to R750 retail price – which would yield far more product) in return for a post and perhaps a few stories, as well as value-added tagging in a certain number of future posts.

  Please note, though, that if you are a niche influencer with a smaller but highly engaged audience, you might be able to charge far more than the R1 500 guide price mentioned earlier. If the product or service has a likelihood of seeing massive value – a serious return on the investment – it could be well worth their money to spend R4 500 per post.

  This brings me back to Robyn Donaldson @almost_everything_off_ebay: she shows that one can buy really interesting decor and beautiful interiors without breaking the bank. If eBay wanted to run an influencer campaign, particularly in the United Kingdom, they would be able to bank on her audience being all in on whatever she posted. Her followers wouldn’t even mind because this is what they are there for: gorgeous but affordable interiors.

  Of course, as soon as a series of posts – or a longer campaign involving produced video and a mix of content across more than one platform – comes up, you can certainly scale down the cost per post in favour of building long-term relationships and brand association.

  Rachel Kolisi also makes an interesting point when it comes to the opportunity you might get to use your platform to help charitable organisations and small businesses.

  I allocate posts to charities and posts to small businesses where the rules don’t apply. I really believe in the contribution of small businesses to the economy and I know the struggle of young entrepreneurs.

  For her, it’s all about trust:

  I have earned the trust of my followers and I can’t keep it if I am promoting things I wouldn’t actually recommend. I like to understand why they chose me to represent them and the intention behind the campaign. I turn down a lot of brands that I can’t align myself with and I am very proud of the brands I have partnered with.

  You don’t want to be promoting one skin-care range at the top of your (digital) lungs for three weeks, only to have to switch to its competitor a month or two later, because your influencer business needs to maintain a certain number of sold posts to pay your rent. You need to allow for the fact that if you work with one brand in a particular market segment this month, you probably won’t be able to legitimately pull off partnering with a competitor in the same space for the next few months. This is why negotiating a series of posts at a lower rate per post – but in the hope of setting up a relationship that leads to a consistent income over a number of weeks or months – is more sustainable.

  How to build a media kit

  We often think of influencers as people who do not have real jobs, so you might think that once your influencer ship comes in, you will never need a CV again. You would be dead wrong, though!

  In the industry, we refer to an influencer’s CV as a “media kit” and it is even more important than a CV, because you’re constantly interviewing for new jobs. I always feel as though every bit of work I do is an audition, since as a freelance content creator, I invoice for every bit of effort. In this industry we have to maintain a level of performance, a certain kind of dedication to excellence that keeps us fit, disciplined and ultimately employed.

  A media kit is a compilation of information that professionally presents your business and your strengths, and outlines your follower profile and the audience with whom you consistently engage. It can even outline your standard rates. If you are adept at using Photoshop, you can easily create a media kit, but even if you’re not, you can find simple, free and user-friendly alternatives on the web.

  Webfluential.com offers this as one of their free resources: you can simply let the platform do the hard work and build you a generic, digitally hosted media kit, which automatically updates your engagement rates based on recent posts and information on your audience demographic.

  Mine looks like this:

  You can also build a fully downloadable one using a free media kit template available on canva.com. This gives you the opportunity to really fine-tune and customise:

  Websites such as later.com also have free media kit templates you can download. One of the great – and I think essential – sections that they offer in their template is one where you can add testimonials from people you have recently worked with or for. Of course, you can simply build this into any other template you already have as well.

  Facts, statistics and other quantifiable contributions are incredibly important. This is something I picked up from Maps Maponyane.

  I ask businesses to tell me about their key performance indicators, their agenda. I want to see the numbers after a campaign. I want to see what it did for their bottom line. We have analytics on the back end of everything we do now; it’s good to see what that does. I want to see what the difference is t
hat we get to make.

  I take it very personally when I get asked to do something – in them having hopes of a particular outcome. If it doesn’t look like it’s working, I’ll just do the rest of the campaign at no cost. With a lot of brands, the value add will be: “Let’s have a meeting; let’s sit down; let’s plan how we can do this.” I don’t think this is the right approach. This is where the market is at; this is the audience. I recommend these people to join this, so we can find more success.’ I try to be as hands-on as possible. I’m probably more of a consultant than just an ambassador. I try to add real value.

  Really flex the great value you have created for your partners; don’t only focus on who you are and who your followers are. Let your previous clients tell your prospective collaborators all about you, in their own words. In fact, if you had to include a trackable link in sponsored content – to keep an eye on how many followers clicked through from your posts to a client’s website – ask for the insights on that click-through rate and include these numbers in support of their opinions.

  6

  AND WHEN I START MAKING MONEY?

  Traditional media lessons apply

  A close friend once asked me what my policy is when it comes to how much sponsored content I carry on my feed. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I still remember exactly where I was when we had this conversation. She was complaining about an influencer who seemed to feature sponsored content in eight out of every ten posts. She loved following this person for the other two posts but couldn’t ride out the heavy commercial load any longer.

  I have to admit that I hadn’t thought of it as a hard number, or even a percentage, until she asked. It was just an intuitive balance I consistently kept an eye on and diligently maintained. I realised that I would probably pin my maximum number of sponsored posts at about three for every ten pieces of content – roughly 30% overall. But I must have got that idea from somewhere, right?