Webfluential gets brands and agencies talking to over six million South Africans

Webfluential, the web platform that connects brands with consumers via credible social influencers, now offers brands, marketing communications agencies and media buyers access to over six million online South Africans, via the 620 social influencers who have registered on the platform since launch in October 2013.

These influencers – including bloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubers and Tweeters with over 1000 legitimate followers each – have a combined influence of over 10% of the South African population.

“Our intention was for Webfluential to provide social influencers with a means of quantifying their influence in order to generate a new revenue stream off the media and content they create,” says Mike Sharman, co-founder of Webfluential.

“At the same time, brands and the marketing communications industry, including marketers, advertisers, public relations agencies and media buyers, would be able to identify the most relevant influencers to promote their campaigns while being fairly remunerated,” he says.

More than 200 brands, advertising, marketing and public relations agencies have signed up to Webfluential to obtain access to its resource of credible social influencers, with the number of active campaigns registered on the site already exceeding targets.

This noteworthy success has been achieved in just four months. “The platform is changing the way that brands interact with social influencers by providing quantitative, impartial data about the true reach and value of the various social media properties they’re active on,” he adds.

Social influencers are measured through Webfluential’s algorithms and data analysis, in terms of their reach, resonance and relevance:

• Reach measures the size of an influencer’s audience (following) per social media network

• Resonance is a measure of how widely the content that an influencer shares reaches outside of their own community

• Relevance is a measure of the response from the influencer’s community in the form of likes, comments, retweets.

“Webfluential is changing the face of social marketing by making it possible to measure the true influence of individual social platforms because its objective measurement is completed purely using algorithms – there is absolutely no human element involved,” says Murray Legg, co-founder of Webfluential.

The rapid uptake that Webfluential has seen in the past four months clearly indicates that brands, agencies, and social influencers were ready to embrace a formal, impartial way to measure and reward online influence. Brands that have used Webfluential as the starting point for their social media campaigns include companies as diverse as Burger King, the multinational fast food company, and SeeSayDo, a local start up, among others.

“And judging by the rate of uptake that we’ve seen in the last few months, the platform is going to become the standard for social media and online campaigns in South Africa – and further afield,” Legg says.

If you are a social influencer with over 1000 legitimate followers, sign up to Webfluential here. Brands and agencies interested in signing up, can do so here.