Tap Influence Says Goodbye to Blog Frog Communities

Communities were originally a good idea, and it was one of the things I first networked on with Social Spark back in 2008 but in the end communities are hard and distracting for companies that broker promotion campaigns and relationships between bloggers and advertisers.  This is because they take staff time and resources just to keep up with the blogging community as they network with each other and this can distract from finding more advertisers for bloggers and vice versa.

So I wasn’t surprised when I saw Tap Influence which is the re-branded The Blog Frog send out the announcement that communities are being shut down on May 31st 2013.  Tap Influence and The Blog Frog have been a brand that I have worked with for over a year and have earned enough that I received a 1099-MISC from them which means you had to have earned more than $600 in income from a party in the United States.

Now Tap Influence is still growing and there are some things about the system that are still manual and haven’t matured yet, one is the payment system which is still based on the blogger receiving a paper check in the mail.  The good news is with photo deposit you get the check and you can deposit it without leaving your house and rest assured the team told me they are in the process of a rebranding and re-work and have online payment method which I hope include Paypal or Direct Deposit at least in the works.

Secondly the system is very passive as in you sign up as a blogger and you wait for an opportunity to be offered to you.  You don’t have a marketplace where you can apply for opportunities and they don’t have a lead system yet where you can get a notification of advertiser interest and volunteer or offer to accept it, but they do a fine job of content matching the advertiser campaign with their network of bloggers to make sure only high quality advertisers are endorsed and that the advertiser gets a great ROI from their investment in Tap Influence.

Tap Influence goes way above and beyond simple blog posts for advertisers and they already broker a whole social media promotional package, this is something no other system does that I have used.  Tap Influence is the only one that in a single campaign can work with an advertiser and bloggers to have some bloggers do blog posts, others do YouTube videos and still others run Pinterest boards, and all of them showcase on Facebook and Twitter as well.  The want to show that the advertiser and blogger are a partnership and it doesn’t just end with a single blog post but it encourages engagement with the advertisers, sharing experience, feedback and being more than simple static review.

Tap Influence caters strongly to personal bloggers and personality bloggers, and honestly I myself run campaigns for them here on my personal blog far more often than on my Dragon Blogger Technology blog because the advertiser content is more family and home centric.  They have high name brands like Walmart, Quaker, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Redbox and more, and they do occasionally have a software company like Microsoft or Intuit which makes the occasional match for my technology blog.

The thing about Tap Influence is they want bloggers who have engagement with their audiences, it isn’t all about the numbers of your site specifically it is about your engagement, professionalism and your personality.  Personality shines here, you have to love what you do, enjoy brands, enjoy promoting brands you enjoy and you never are asked or assigned something that you don’t have a choice.  You choose to participate in any opportunity that comes your way, or you simply choose not to participate.

Once you get an opportunity it shows up in your Opportunity Inbox and you get to see when the campaign runs, each opportunity has a publishing calendar and only a few bloggers are allowed to grab slots to publish on the same day.   This prevents 100+ posts from going out the same day and spaces comfortably a campaign over weeks or months so that it is a constant stream of information and awareness.  The cool thing is if you like doing media reviews, you can volunteer for doing the YouTube campaigns to accompany the blog post, if you are Pinterest junkie you can volunteer for the Pinterest board requirements.  All advertiser campaigns are different, some you get coupons to purchase and try the products you review, others are showcases.

All of the opps so far on Tap Influence I have partaken in pay a fair rate for your time and the compensation is better per opp than any other program except on rare cases Social Spark has an occasionally higher opp payout.

There is no referral or affiliate program for Tap Influence formerly known as The Blog Frog, so you will see it mentioned and I link to it but I get no referral benefits for sharing this information.  I wish they had a referral program at some point the future actually.

Bottom line if you are an advertiser know that you get some quality attention and careful pairing with bloggers who would best connect with and market your brand.  If you are a blogger you get paired with quality advertisers who fit in with your category and genre of blog and match your persona well, you get the freedom to choose which advertisers you want to work with and are passionate about and this is a win/win for all involved.