Maven Crowdfunded Guild - A Cowdfunded Guild Focused on Social Influencers

The focus of the Maven Crowdfunded Guild is organic growth and development of social influencers in the Steemit ecosystem. The guild’s target is to develop, foster and reward a tight community of consistent reviewers and social influencers, who produce in-depth, high-quality reviews on a variety of businesses, industries and products, and assist with developing these social influencers into recognizable mainstream brands.

The Economy of Social Influencers

According to the Nielsen 2015 report on Global Trust in Advertising, two-thirds (66%) of respondents surveyed felt they could completely trust or somewhat trust consumer opinions placed online (referred to as earned media) when making a purchase. It is a trend which reflects the growing dominance of social influencers in modern marketing. Collective Bias also released a report which illustrated this point by revealing seventy percent (70%) of Millennials polled highly preferred peer endorsements and were more likely to purchase a product endorsed by a non-celebrity blogger than a celebrity.

A comprehensive look at the social influencer market was performed by the company Tomoson in 2015. It surveyed 125 marketers about social influencers to determine how impactful they are at influencing customer purchases and quantifying the return on investment (ROI) realized from social influencer advertising spends. The results are eye opening.

• Fifty-one percent (51%) of marketers believe they acquire better customers through influencer marketing when asked to rate the average quality of customers acquired through the channel.

• Influencer marketing was ranked as the fastest-growing online customer-acquisition channel, beating organic search, paid search, and email marketing.

• When asked about the most effective platform for influencer marketing, thirty-seven percent (37%) chose blogs. Facebook was next, with twenty-five percent (25%), making it the most popular social network. YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter each got five to six percent (5–6%), failing to add up to the power of Facebook collectively.

• Influencer marketing and email tied for first place when marketers were asked for their most cost-effective online customer-acquisition channel, narrowly beating organic search. On average, businesses are making $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing. Seventy percent (70%) of companies are seeing a return of $2 per $1 spent, and the top thirteen percent (13%) of marketers are gaining $20 per $1 spent.

A 2016 report from Business 2 Community polled more than 40 brands about social influencer budgets. On a per campaign basis, social influencer marketing spends have averaged between test spends of $5,000 and more substantial budgets of $25,000. Furthermore, over eighty percent (80%) of brands polled planned to increase their social influencer marketing budgets in the coming year.

We have arrived at the age of the social influencer in modern marketing, and it is word of mouth advertising in the digital age.

Positioning Steemit in the Social Influence Economy

According to @ned, the stated goal of Steemit is to capture a larger share of the “attention market,” bringing advertising budgets from brands into the Steemit ecosystem. The data and current trends suggest the best method of achieving this goal is through social influencers. On average, established social influencers in fashion have median subscriber bases of 5,000 individuals and earn a couple of thousand dollars per month. For Steemit, logical reasons exist to recruit these people:

1. Attract new registrations and active users to its base, and
2. Attract the advertising dollars into STEEM to drive utility, scarcity and increase its value.

The easiest solution is recruit established social influencers to choose Steemit for their primary social media platform. However, the reality is Steemit does not provide a compelling argument for social influencers in its current iteration.

Comparison Steemit vs. Established Networks

Analytic data provided by similarweb.com

The Bounce Rate is the percentage of visitors who come to the site and navigate away after viewing one page.

Raw Traffic Comparison

A comparison of Steemit web traffic and engagement data to its social network contemporaries Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit, reveals larger, more active subscriber bases than Steemit by orders of magnitude (more than 1000x in most cases). The bounce rates are also about half of what Steemit currently experiences, suggesting not only does more traffic go to those sites, but when individuals hit those sites, they stay rather than navigate away without engaging more deeply. A social influencer on an established social platform such as Youtube has a larger pool of total users to draw from, permitting them to grow larger subscriber bases quickly and consistently. With advertising partnership revenue splits and brand sponsorship, this would imply social influencers earn far greater income streams on established social platforms than could be awarded on Steemit.

Raw Engagement Analytics Comparison

The engagement analytics show the average visitor stays on the website of the big four social media platforms between two and five times longer, and views between two and five times as many pages as they do on Steemit. Individuals who engage with more content per visit increase the likelihood a social influencer will acquire more subscribers, increasing their social credibility and their pricing power for sponsorship fees.

The data would suggest, at this time, Steemit cannot create a compelling argument for established social influencers to choose Steemit as their primary social platform.

YELP as a Template to Organically Grow Social Influencers

Tomoson’s survey (referenced earlier) states that blogs are still the most effective platform for influencer marketing, even surpassing Facebook by a double-digit margin. Looking back to the previous web traffic and engagement stats, Steemit does have some similarities to a micro-blogging site full of social influencers: Yelp.

While Yelp does hold a distinct advantage against Steemit with inbound traffic and average page visits, the bounce rates are almost identical, and Steemit holds an advantage with average duration per visit. Another significant area Steemit could hold a great advantage is author rewards.

The Yelp Template

In 2006, Yelp was still a scrappy startup showing some serious organic user and subscriber growth. Referral Candy had a very candid article which had some insights into how this micro-blogging site focused on customer reviews grew so quickly and retained their most valuable commodity - their social influencers:

Yelp wanted to create a tight community of consistent reviewers and high-quality reviews. It rightly guessed that people were more likely to write in-depth, well-crafted reviews when their names appeared alongside them. So it offered special recognition to users who were first to review a business, and let other users give kudos for reviews that are useful, funny, or cool.

And the numbers in 2006 show that most Yelp reviewers got hooked on the site:

Users who contributed 6 or more reviews:
CitySearch – 4.8%
Yahoo Local – 11.1%
Yelp – 65.8%

Users who left only one review:
CitySearch – 71.2%
Yahoo Local – 56.4%
Yelp – 9.2%

The most engaged Yelp users are elevated to “Elite” status, visible by a shiny Elite badge on their account profile. By 2006, a full 44% of reviews on the site were contributed by Yelp Elite.

Yelp also retained elite social influencers (the Yelp Elite Squad) by hosting exclusive, invitation-only events. These events have become the hottest tickets in town, encouraging others to generate high-quality, consistent, first-reviewed content, which can earn that Prestige and Elite Squad Status in the Yelp community. From the Yelp blog:

Past event venues have included places like museums, restaurants, parks, beer gardens, art galleries, bookstores and at least one aquarium. Sometimes we provide food; oftentimes we’ll provide drinks ranging from wine to slurpees. Sometimes Yelp foots the bill directly for the venue, food or drink; oftentimes we look for sponsors to help defray those costs (e.g., Peroni Beer comped the beer I drank last week in New York). The venues themselves typically provide the space, some staff and sometimes food or drink. This arrangement is great for yelpers because we can visit a new place and meet each other affordably. And it works well for the venues and sponsors because they get exposure to a group of local adventurers who, if they like what they see, may become future customers.

Yelp deliberately tilted its support to the reviewers. Jeremy Stoppleman said, "we put the community first, the consumer second and the businesses third."

The effect of this philosophy created a sense of pressure and urgency for businesses to participate in the discussion, so Yelp developed a set of fee-based services specifically for them.

Businesses can pay to have their companies listed first on search pages (identified as sponsored listing). And they can pay to add photos and other information to the page about their business.

Responding to criticism from business owners that some reviews are unfair, Yelp also recently introduced a way for the business owner to send a message back to a reviewer. If the reviewer doesn’t write back, the business owner can’t send a second message.

I worked in the tech industry for some years. One of the mantras repeated was: adopt and adapt. Look to competitors and leaders in the industry, copy what they are doing successfully, then develop a novel feature or new business practice to either take market share or develop a new, profitable niche. I would suggest this is a clear direction Steemit should move and the Maven Crowdfunded Guild would be a definite first step.

Social Influencers in the Steemit Community

There has been a strong push in the community towards making @steempowertwins the first social influencers and mainstream brand connected with Steemit. In a recent blog, @fyrstikken, in a sense, became their first “brand” to provide sponsorship, declaring in his post, he will donate 25% of all future block rewards from fyrst-witness to SteemLIVE, a live talk show hosted by @steempowertwins.

Looking at the Steemit community, I see other potential social influencers who could become something more mainstream with some more resources behind them.

Future Social Influencer in Premium Cigars @gregm

@gregm has continued to produce consistent and robust reviews on cigars week after week. While I may fear for the long-term pulmonary health of @gregm, he has discovered a niche which could have some serious long-term value associated with becoming a recognized social influencer.

Let’s take a look at the web traffic for two of the largest cigar review publications in the industry.

Cigars International in November 2016, Cigars International had 1,150,000 visitors hit their site. Over the last six months, this site has averaged 1,100,000 per month, with 90.25% of the traffic originating from the US. While only 1.35% of their inbound traffic is generated from social media (about 14,850 individuals), 41.15% of that traffic is generated from Facebook alone (roughly 6,110 people).

Cigar Aficionado in November 2016, according to similarweb.com, Cigar Aficionado had 300,000 visitors hit their site, and over the last six months, have averaged 304,000 each month, with 62% of the traffic coming originating in the US. Contrasted against Cigars International, fully 33.71% of their inbound traffic is generated from social media (about 101,130 individuals), with Reddit generating 68.90% of their traffic (roughly 69,678 people) and Facebook generating 26.69% of their traffic (approximately 26,991 individuals). Moreover, this company does not use display advertising as part of their advertising campaign.

On the surface, this data would suggest @gregm could have a very solid niche to positioning himself as a social influencer. First, consider Cigar Aficionado receives just over one-third of its inbound traffic from social media and the lion's share coming from Reddit. The data illustrates the potential positioning @gregm could have in this market as a social influencer.

According to similarweb.com, Steemit received around 38% of its web traffic from the United States, which aligns well with inbound traffic for both Cigars International and Cigar Aficionado. According to MarketBizResearch Reports.biz in a report titled Global Cigar Market,

The United States and Western Europe – that is Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom – together account for a combined 96 percent of global demand, with Western Europe accounting for 55 per cent and the US for 41 percent of the market.

Again, the geographic data showing the largest market for premium cigars suggests a substantial alignment with where traffic to Steemit originates. There are many other factors which would play into the long term success of making @gregm a recognized social influencer (content quality, subscriber engagement, etc.). Paid sponsored advertising campaigns, guest posts, and other paid advertising tactics could position him with an excellent opportunity to become an organically grown social influencer of Steemit. The knock on effect would be to bring in larger subscriber bases to Steemit, who have interests in related subjects, such as whiskey which correlates strongly with cigars.

Check out one of his more recent cigar reviews: A Brief Cigar Review - El Mas Chingon by Room 101

The Ask (Initial Fundraising)

The initial fundraising target would be for 300 contributors, targeting 30,000 STEEM. The first round of fundraising will close once 300 contributors have contributed funds to the Maven Crowdfunded Guild. I would propose the possibility of two future fundraising campaigns as the direction demands more resources.

Minimum Contribution (Floor)

This initial round of fundraising will have a minimum contribution of 50 STEEM initially. At key milestones, the minimum contribution requirement will increase. This minimum contribution cannot be satisfied with installment contributions (i.e., five 10 STEEM contributions over a period).

Any initial contributions below 50 STEEM will be deemed donations not eligible for inclusion in Redistributed Curation Rewards calculations (below).

Maximum Contribution (Ceiling)

A cap of 1,000 STEEM per contributor will be imposed in this first round to prevent concentration of power/rewards and dilution of contributors overall. Once a contributor has established their position with an initial contribution, the contributor can increase their total contribution through installments up to the cap (1,000 STEEM). I would propose this cap will adjust higher as the path forward demands more resources and more opportunities present themselves.

All contributions more than 1,000 STEEM will be deemed donations not eligible for inclusion in Redistributed Curation Rewards calculations (below).

Redemption of Contributed STEEM

The contributors would have rights to redeem their total contribution (a return of contributed principal) on a STEEM token to STEEM token basis - meaning if the contributor provided a total contribution of 1,000 STEEM, the contributor would redeem 1,000 STEEM tokens.

Given that Curation Rewards are currently paid out in STEEM Power and power downs now take three months for a full power down, all redemptions would be on a four-month term, subject to change based upon changes made to the terms and conditions to Steemit power down periods.

How the Curation Rewards Will Be Used

As the Maven whale from the crowdfunded guild grows and acquires more curation rewards. The funds received for curation rewards will be used and distributed as follows:

50% of Curation Awards to be Redistributed to Crowdfund Contributors

The Maven Crowdfunded Guild should provide a win-win scenario for contributors and future social influencers. Consequently, half (50%) of the curation awards earned shall be distributed to the crowdfund contributors based upon their percentage of contribution relative to the contribution pool. For example, if an individual has contributed 1,000 STEEM and the total contribution pool is 30,000 STEEM, the individual would be entitled to (1,000/30,000) = 3.33% of the monthly curation awards to be redistributed to crowdfund contributors. Greater contribution to the crowdfund means larger distributions received.

Distributions will be calculated at month end, and distributions will be released the first week of the following month. Contributors who have not reached the cap can opt to reinvest their redistributed curation rewards back into the guild if desired to increase their pro-rata share of future rewards.

25% of Curation Awards to be Distributed as Additional Rewards to Specific Influencers

Initially, the most valuable influencers will be those who provide the greatest curation rewards. As the guild becomes more solvent and acquires more Steem Power, I would anticipate this metric would change from most curation rewards to most page views.

Most valuable influencers will be determined after the close of the month. Curation rewards will be tallied, and awards will be distributed on a weighted basis based upon total the full curation reward pool (perhaps to the top 3 initially). I anticipate as social influencers bring more audience into Steemit and brands begin to bring money into the community, the 25% reward calculation formula will change.

25% of Curation Awards to Fund External Sponsored Campaigns and Operations

Building mainstream brands will take time and resources. Initially I foresee these funds being either locked up as STEEM power or held in the wallet as liquid STEEM, until the value reaches a point where it can be converted into other currencies as needed for external advertising and operations expenses such as:

• The purchase sponsored article space on more mainstream media pages (such as CNN, FOX, Travel Channel, Vogue, etc.) for featured social influencers, through services such as Outbrain.

• Boosting featured content on social media platforms (such as Facebook and Twitter).

• Contract with social influencers to generate Steemit exclusive content.

• Create events similar to Yelp for elite Steemit social influencers.

• Development costs for badges and other digital assets.

• Cover operating expenses associated with the Maven Crowdfunded Guild.

Current State of the Maven Crowdfunded Guild

The Maven Crowdfunded Guild is not a proof of concept nor is it simply a proposal waiting for funding. Some key components are already in place.

I have already secured the @maven account and have funded the first max contribution of 1,000 STEEM.

I have created the Facebook account Social Influencers of Steemit, which has been featuring some of the social influencer articles posted on Steemit. I would ask everyone with a Facebook account to please like and follow to grow the organic reach. Ideally, I would like to promote some featured posts with paid promotion on Facebook.

I have created the Twitter account Influencers of Steemit and will begin re-tweeting the content featured on Facebook here as well.

Tangible action has been taken, and while it is currently small, I believe it is still significant. I would respectfully ask everyone to please consider contributing to this crowdfunded guild. I believe it is possible over time to bring STEEM into a more mainstream presence through social influencers. I would ask for your help to make it happen.

References

Neilsen. “Global Trust in Advertising.” N.p. September 28, 2015. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2015/global-trust-in-advertising-2015.html

Tsang, Melissa. “How 8 (More) Successful Companies Fought for Their First Customers: ASOS, Uber, Yelp and More.” ReferralCandy. N.d. http://www.referralcandy.com/blog/8-successful-companies-fought-first-customers-asos-uber-yelp/

Hansell, Saul. “Why Yelp Works.” The New York Times. May 12, 2008. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/why-yelp-works/

Morrison, Kimberlee. “Survey: Nearly 60% of Marketers Plan to Boost Influencer Marketing Budgets.” SocialTimes. March 27, 2015. http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/survey-tomoson-influence-marketing-budgets/617753

Tomoson Blog. “Influencer Marketing Study.” Tomoson. March 2015. http://blog.tomoson.com/influencer-marketing-study/

Latrell, Brendan. “2016 Influencer Marketing Budget Trends: How do You Stack Up?” Business 2 Community. June 13, 2016. http://www.business2community.com/marketing/2016-influencer-marketing-budget-trends-stack-01570106