People will accept and follow a creator rather than the project itself, and this gap is actually the foundation of the KOL marketing business model, together with it coming with a certain level of risk. A follower who has confidence in a particular individual is probably going to skip the research which could have enabled them to save money. When a Web3 team pays that person to promote a token or a platform, some of the responsibility for what happens next is passed on together with the payment. It is up to the followers to carry out their own research and the teams should not give any reason for them to avoid doing so.
I don’t promote any particular crypto platforms on this blog, so what follows is presented from the reader’s point of view, just as your campaign will appear to them.
Regarding BTO Themes, even though I have written about a large number of different topics in various categories, I never promote any company or service. My objective is always to give my readers and viewers general awareness and educational information so they may make use of the internet in today’s world. The thing I always remember is that people should get useful information, not that I am promoting any third-party company.
That is why the framework considers the creator’s earlier work before looking at their price.
The one check that predicts the rest
A KOL’s rate card will show you their reach, while their last ten sponsored posts will indicate what happens to your name; the rest consists of different ways of interpreting those ten posts.
Six checks, in the order I’d run them
- Collect the last ten to fifteen paid posts in chronological order, with a preference given to the more recent ones rather than those that have received the most views. Also note any gaps that correspond to promoted projects which afterwards collapsed and as a result had their posts deleted.
- Look at where the disclosure is positioned. In the video, is the paid label displayed on screen or is it shown only behind the ‘show more’ item in the description? Is the label mentioned before the pitch or only after the viewer has been convinced? As for the text, is the disclosure placed above the claim or is it concealed among the hashtags? If a creator hides the disclosure from other sponsors, they will hide it from you too, and that will then be your problem.
- You should keep a record of all the projects which have been promoted. Is the project still running? Has the team been identified and can it be contacted? Are there any complaints in the replies? Having one inactive project is bad luck; having three indicates the presence of a pattern.
- If you want to compare your level of engagement with your audience, you should realise that the number of followers can easily be inflated; hence, you need to look at the number of views and the number of actual comments in relation to the number of followers, and compare sponsored posts with unsponsored ones. More informative than any dashboard are the generic emoji replies and the fact that the same accounts keep using the same phrases; it is in the ratio in which the figure is found.
I respect a YouTuber whose videos and vlogs I genuinely enjoy, but after I came across one of his videos on Telegram in which he was promoting a cryptocurrency from a number of Web3 teams—among them the crypto company that he is promoting in order to make money, a firm which turns out to be untrustworthy and appears extremely unprofessional—my confidence in that influencer has been completely lost, and for that reason I have decided to unfollow him. That is why I am asking and urging all those who follow social media influencers to be extremely careful in this matter, since these celebrities who promote such products are in fact fake tools designed to trick people into making financial investments. As everyone knows, our savings and money are of great importance, so one has to be cautious when following influencers.
Before you start looking at any creator, you should decide for yourself what your cutoff point is, so that a well-known name won’t have an influence on it.
- Be on the lookout for language that is inappropriate, for example ‘guaranteed’, ‘double’, ‘can’t lose’ or ‘before it explodes’. If someone uses that type of talk in connection with other projects, they’ll also use it with regard to yours and the liability will then be split between the sponsor and the speaker.
- State the terms before issuing the invoice, display the paid status on the first screen or within the first few seconds, include a simple risk statement, avoid allowing return claims, get approval of the script before it goes live, link the staged payment to those terms, and include a clause which permits removal. Since the rules about promoting crypto vary from country to country and are especially restrictive in some, you should check what the rules are in your own country before agreeing to anything.
A creator’s price tells you how widely they reach, and the things they have previously disclosed show you what they will do to your reputation.
What are the checking costs, and what are the skipping costs
It takes several hours to check each creator, involving the use of a spreadsheet and a phone. This causes a delay in the campaign, and because of that some creators will refuse to accept your terms, which means you lose a name that you had wanted. If you omit the checking process then you have to pay the fee as well as having your project’s name associated with someone whose followers end up losing money; followers who have carried out their own research will recognise the previous pattern, and in some areas the rules about paid crypto promotion are becoming more strict.
There is also a compromise regarding size. Although more well-known names have a wider reach, the disadvantage in such cases is that it becomes public and hard to undo. Those with a medium size are less expensive, and their comment sections are small enough for you to read them all. Whatever method you employ to find creators, the criteria listed above will apply to all the ones it identifies. Details on Web3 growth and marketing platforms can be found in a guest post on LuvKaizen.
The same read works for followers
There is no need for a marketing team if one is going to carry out the ten-post series; when a follower encounters a hidden label they realise just how much the content creator values them, and the reason why a familiar face is so effective at persuading is set out in a guest article on the psychology of communication in the digital age.
The verdict
That is the kind of thing I would say to a team or to a reader prior to any money being exchanged.
Now that the enthusiasm about social media influence has gone too far, people are following their celebrities or someone they admire who has a good image on sites like YouTube, and when these influencers promote crypto through the platforms of various Web3 teams, this becomes a serious matter. It is all right for them to promote it or to provide information on how to use crypto as long as the sources are verified, since we understand that self-education and self-research or study are of great importance. A great many users do follow their influencers, and when these influencers promote such crypto tools, it ends up being a scam for the users who end up spending their money in order to make it double. The influencers should therefore be made responsible for promoting crypto via the platforms of various Web3 teams’ platforms. Yet many people are still ignorant and simply follow their favourite influencer or social media personality.
Do the ten-post read first and then consider the disclosure; a creator who keeps a disclosure hidden is in effect having answered all the questions you originally intended to ask.
