So you may have seen it in the news but, earlier this week, a man blasted a blogger pitch on social media. Although I don’t feel comfortable sharing the post (I refuse to give him any publicity, bad or good), the comments on the post were truly horrifying.
For some back story…
The blogger in question sent a pitch to this man, who owned a hotel. She asked for a 5 night stay at his hotel in exchange for coverage on social media and YouTube. After reading the pitch, it was clear that the blogger did not do her background research. A simple scroll through the hotel Facebook page would have revealed that this man continually ridicules those who give his hotel bad reviews. He’s even “banned” vegans from his hotel and requires doctor’s notes from those with gluten intolerance. Maybe it’s just me, but seems like this guy is intolerant of anyone that isn’t just like him. Now, power to this guy, his constant ill-tempered attitude has driven away an less-than-ideal clientele and attracted his ideal audience. There is something to be said about that.
Now, this man screenshotted the email and posted it on his Facebook page with an entirely inappropriate response. He claimed that she was asking for a free handout, and asked her “how he would pay his employees.” He essentially cyber-bullied this 22-year-old blogger, who has really created a valuable social media presence for herself. In the email he posted, he blacked out the blogger’s information, but he did not do it properly. If you turned up the brighness on your screen and zoomed in, you could see her information clearly. However, I was not most appalled with the man; I was actually appalled most with the audience. Granted, his audience is primarily people who share his same views, so it wasn’t surprising that they agreed with him.
The audience called the blogger a “disgusting,” a “free-loader,” and even a “skanky bitch.” The hate speech was honestly unbelievable. You may not agree with what the blogger did (even though it was completely harmless), but that is no reason to call any woman a “skanky bitch.” On top of that, many people told the woman that she should “get a real job” or “pay full price like anyone else.”
So, acknowledging that there was wrong done on both sides, I wanted to share some insight on what bloggers really do and what makes us so valuable.
Well why can’t she pay like everyone else?
What the blogger proposed was an exchange of services. It is extremely common in the marketing industry. Often, brands reach out to influencers or influencers reach out to brands when you think there would be a possible good fit between your two brands. Regardless of what people may think, she was completely within reason to email this company. It it the industry norm for things like this to occur.
Now, what she asked for was not a free stay. I want to emphasize this. She did not ask for a free stay. She offered to include the hotel in social posts and videos in exchange for a stay at the hotel. Now, I don’t know how much work goes into her videos, but I can tell you that between taking photos, editing photos, writing blog posts, editing blog posts, and promoting it across social media, each blog post takes between 3-10 hours depending on what research needs to be done and how extensive the posts are.
When brands reach out to me, I do mental math to see if the collaboration is worth it to me. All of these things go into account when I accept collaboration proposals. The last question I ask is: is this on brand and something that will resonate with my followers? Us bloggers don’t just accept anything that comes our way to make a quick buck. Although sometimes we may miss the mark with a few collaborations (I can think of a few that did not go as planned), we think long and hard before we partner with any brand.
Influencer marketing isn’t free (for anyone).
Influencer marketing is still relatively new, but it is proven to be one of the most effective forms of advertising. The key is just knowing which partnerships will be a good fit.
In this hotel had accepted this collaboration, it honestly wouldn’t have been as big of burden as he indicated. He insinuated that hosting this blogger would mean that he couldn’t pay his employees, which is a flat out lie. He is already paying the housekeepers, the electricity bills, and all of the employees at the hotel. If he expected the hotel to book up, then the cost of hosting the blogger would have been the opportunity cost of being able to rent out her room. However, if his hotel was not at full capacity, it wouldn’t have cost him anything since the employees already have to work for everyone else staying there.
Now, when a brand asks a blogger to do work without pay, the tables have turned. We might already be creating content, but we aren’t already creating content for them. We have to go out of our way to purchase product, style it, and show it off in a way that resonates with our followers. In addition, the content we create can be reused for their own marketing, which means we are within our rights to charge licensing fees. There’s more to the story than meets the eye.
Moral of the story:
Brands, do your research on effective influencer marketing. Bloggers, do your research before you reach out to a company. Brands and bloggers, let’s keep this professional, shall we?
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