Does Facebooks "Brand Collabs manager" spell the end of the Influencer tool industry?
Does Facebooks Influencer search tool signal the demise of the Influencer tools industry?
Facebooks new "Brand collabs Manager" is Facebooks Influencer search and creator market tool. It allows you to search for Influencers whose audiences match your brands needs and presents you with various Influencers to choose from. As discussed before in my social posts, this matches the methodology of advanced Influencer tools like @HYPRbrands, and while I cant see it challenging tools like HYPR - they are way too advanced and have a wealth of other functionalities - it will definitely affect the less robust Influencer tools out there.
Its is currently only available for select brands and Influencers in the U.S but I have had a sneak peak...
Firstly, the key thing to note is, its...free - for everyone - brands and creators alike.
Facebook has offered it for free as its is trying to make sure creators see Facebook as a revenue generator, currently most of the money is made for creators from platforms like YouTube / Twitch etc, this is Facebooks big play to help creators make money. and keep them engaged on the platform. Its combined with their new Creator App that allows Influencers to sell "Ad space" such as As breaks in the middle of their videos and have Patreon style subscriptions paid to them - DM me if i'm talking gibberish
You search by things like interests, gender, age range etc. The minimum follower size it will display is 25,000 and it will show you the Brands the creators have worked with and the history of branded content posts - it also shows you if they own a home..
Being Facebook, the performance metrics are decent, it also gives you a percentage match to show you how much your searched for audience matches that of the influencer - just like my "Influencer Match Tool" from 2014 - come on facebook - slowcoaches!
The Facebook tool also shows metrics for branded and unbranded creator posts, this reminds me a bit of what @campaigndeus do for instagram evaluation, and its smart, so you can see the difference in engagement and performance levels between branded and un-branded posts - an important metric.
Another cool little feature for creators is that they can "like" brands, this displays their willingness to the brand that they would like to work for them - nice - it creates a flag so that brands can see that "x" creator likes them.
So all in all I don’t think this is a massive revolution, but when it stretches into Instagram - which is will - then I think it will create some disruption in the marketplace, for now though, it's the first big salvo in the oncoming battle of Influencer platform tools and the Platforms themselves.