From the trenches: Should influencers be compensated with fair value?
Notice instead of payment, we use fair value compensation. This is because compensation happens in many forms. Let’s begin with why compensation before speaking about fair value.
Note: Goodie bags don’t help cover travelling costs to events.
They have been doing it on their own will before marketers approach them.
This is are one of the few that we would hear often on why some choose not to have a fair value exchange with influencers.
The common spark that kickstart bloggers, instagrammers and social media influencers alike in their passion of creating engaging and shareable content is often personal.
For Jessica, Khairul and Yazid, it stems from the internal motivation of using social media as a medium to document their life stories…pretty much like a diary, just online. A diary that they could one day look back into as they age then laugh and talk about the different journeys traveled.
Of parents such as MommyJane, speaking of parenthood with her angels in the focal point. Her joy is to story moments of her angels growing up.
Lashesandstrokes, by Sarah started with the goal to better inform her peers on skincare and beauty products that are in the market. With her delightful personality, she prepares reviews and how-to’s on her social media channels.
So why should it change when they are offered products, invites and perks?
As marketers enter the picture to collaborate with influencers, they see a value in their content and how they are engaging their audience. Approach influencers in the form of media events, product reviews, and engagement activities to name a few. This mean commitment are required from both ends to deliver.
This includes taking personal time away from weekends, staying up at night after their day-job to complete content, providing their views on matters discussed with marketers. Just as how we consume the time of doctors for health related opinions, we consume time of influencers from content production to audience engagement.
Let’s one example on what goes into content: 1. Receive invitation to event (influencer gets curious) 2. Says yes and heads out for it. (Travelling involved) 3. Be at event, assess if event is story-worthy for audience and gathers notes. 4. Content produced. (Depending on text, visual or audio, time required may differ) 5. Reporting of content. (This includes submission of links on content produced and its engagement numbers)
While some may argue item number 5 is done by marketers, the depth of report would differ because by observing a blog post, one does not know how many reads it has gotten; by observing facebook page posts, one does not know the number of impressions made by the post; by checking youtube videos, would you know what is the average view percentage? Unless it is sufficient to know only the number of content produced.
Fair value — What do you mean by this?
For influencers, it’s:
1. Is this the right piece for my audience?
2. Does this help to build my portfolio? (There are influencers that are looking into building this into a career)
3. Does this help in exposure of my work to more people? E.g reaching out to more audience
For marketers, it’s:
1. Does the work of this influencer able to resonate and stir-up social conversation with my audience?
2. What is the potential outcome of the social conversation generated? Sales? Brand building?
3. Leverage on the voices of influencers to communicate their product/service experience with their friends, and their friends’ friends.
For influencers who are looking into growing this into a career, fair value would come in two ways. Paid work and/or in exchange for a barter. A meaningful barter would enable influencers to grow their reach and better engage their audience.
As fair value of exchange differ from work to work, the fairness of a collaboration is only best discussed between influencers and marketers.
