Social influencing. What is that? Are we only entitled to consider ourselves such if we have sixty thousand followers on Instagram, a similar amount on Twitter and stats to throw us through the roof of every chart going? Hmm, no, I don’t think so.

To me, a social influencer is just that. Someone who influences others socially. Now this can be on a grand scale and probably how we ‘most’ consider it to be… Someone who walks on star dust at press events, gets fawned over by the celebs in attendance and who demands a three figure sum just to get out of bed in the morning (and documents the whole sleepy eyed wake up, toe touching the cold hard floor, early morning rise for his or her Instagram story just to prove the point – but… not before they’ve ACTUALLY got up, tidied their dirty undies from the floor, wiped the gross gunk out of their eyes and replaced it with perfectly smudged eye liner for that perfect shot of them getting up AGAIN)!

Ooooor…

It can just be my mate Carly who posted about her wicked new top on her Facebook page inspiring me to go out and buy something similar.

One is making a job of it and the other is just being herself. Now, I’m not saying that the former is wrong. Quite the contrary. I work very hard at ‘being a social influencer’, a ‘professional blogger’ if you will. It IS my job too and though I don’t have thousands upon thousands of followers on ANY platform, I have enough to command a decent fee. And… For that fee I work hard. I don’t take it for granted. Nothing is free in life and if I am to be successful and hopefully more so in the future then I can’t simply churn out rubbish and expect people to be pleased with me.

Bloggers have a bad name for behaving badly all over the shop and show and P.R people, who we as bloggers moan about for not recognising our worth, must think ‘Who the ‘Hecky Becky is she? Expecting something worthwhile when all she creates is a re-hash of a press release or a shopping list style post about why she likes X, Y and Z’.

Don’t get me wrong. I have moaned about P.R people myself. Even so much as last week. We get asked to review something for free and often agree but then said item arrives and it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. I have found myself on the receiving end of a ‘luxury hamper’ which is actually a carrier bag containing perhaps a packet of out of date tea bags and some broken biscuits and yet I am expected to make a blog post about same said ‘luxury hamper’ to great aplomb. Why would I want to do that? Because nothing is ever REALLY free! If I am asked to write about a luxury hamper then I expect a wicker basket filled with yummy treats because, as bloggers say ALL the time, ‘blogging takes up my time, time that I could be earning money. I have to take photographs, edit them, spend time writing the posts and then promote them. This load of work simply isn’t worth the grand total of £5.94 which is the price of the goods in the (hamper) carrier bag’.

But… What about from the other side?

As a blogger I have managed to make contacts along the way which have afforded me a career shift. I now, alongside blogging, work as a social media manager and media outreach co-ordinator. As part of the latter I have found myself sourcing other bloggers for projects where by my hat is suddenly shifted to the other side of the fence. Now I have to tell ya, bloggers behave badly on occasion. VERY, VERY badly.

I myself (even when I’m not being paid), if I have agreed to take part in a campaign, will work my butt off for it. I’m never proud of writing straight reviews with simple good and bad points because frankly, who wants to read that?! If I find it dire enough to write in such a style then who could I possibly expect to read it? I always, always, always try very hard to put a personal spin on things and to write about something in an interesting way. Maybe I succeed and maybe I don’t but I do my darndest to try. Yesterday I wrote about a DVD release and of course I could have written ‘We liked it, it was good, we’d watch it again, it’s out on digital download, BluRay and DVD today, go buy it, you will like it’ but… Frankly that doesn’t float my boat.

The film in question is about The Beatles so I wrote about how I met my musician husband when he was singing karaoke for the first and only time in a pub. It was a Beatles song. I tried very hard not to make it just a bog standard press release type entry and it took time. Yes it took time, but why do something if you’re not going to do it properly? Personal blogs are just that, personal. They’re not advertorial dumping grounds and yet because personal blogs have turned into big business (HURRAH), hundreds and hundreds of bloggers treat them as such.

I read so many blog posts from so many other bloggers, some I like personally and others I don’t. Some I know well enough to have drinks with while lots I wouldn’t recognise even if we were to stand next to each other in the supermarket. And what I notice is that for all the bloggers ‘blogging’, very few are written well. An awful lot of them have grammatical errors, poor spelling, uninteresting drivel-like content and yet they do well. Some do well (ish) and others do tremendously. Perhaps they all know how to play the game? They all know something that’s for sure because blogging, though they may call themselves a writer, is not their forte.

And P.R people are used to this. Media outreach co-ordinators know that what they get back from the blogging community is not, on the whole, worth giving too much for. So they don’t. Understandably. This in turn will pee the bloggers off who will work less hard which then again makes the P.R people angry and offer less still (while expecting a little bit more).

As a blogger I say ‘But why should I blog really well about a carrier bag half empty with rubbish I don’t want?’ and the P.R person says ‘Well, you agreed to it so you should make a good job’. There’s a sense of entitlement on both parts but… Having worked on the other side of the fence on quite a few occasions I think I have to say I’m not on the side of the blogger primarily.

Think about it like this. The P.R person has a job to do just like the blogger and they have to accept what the blogger will give. If this is simply copy and pasting a press release into a post that they won’t promote – but the blogger has the stats – then have to go with it. It’s supply and demand. But… Why doesn’t the blogger WANT to do a better job? Make sure they’ve written it well, it’s a little bit different, shows they have something unique and then hope that the next time their worth will be recognised?

I mean come on, if it never is, if the same company continue to take the Mickey out of us then bloggers shouldn’t stand for it but I do think we might have become so consumed with our own self-worth we are forgetting why we’re blogging in the first place. Whatever the reason, be it to make money, document our family, show the world how flipping fabulous we are, I don’t care… Shouldn’t it at least be done ‘well’ because sure, these bloggers might be riding high right now but sooner or later everyone will cop on. ‘Oh crap, ANOTHER advert for something they probably barely used’, ‘oh look, another review of a restaurant with a shopping list of what everyone ate’. If you wouldn’t read it, then don’t write it I say and if you DO write it, please write it well…

We don’t have to be in two camps, the P.R people and the bloggers. We can work together, we can say ‘You’re paying me so I will work hard’ and ‘I’m expecting this of you so I will show you how much I value you’.

One P.R company I work with regularly explained to me, after years of working with bloggers on Twitter parties that they have had to start stipulating a minimum amount of Tweets per party. And it’s not a high figure… Now I, regardless of the fee I am offered, will schedule a Tweet (usually with a picture) for every five minutes of a party. On top of this I will join in during the real time and reply to other people adding Tweets where and when I think it’s good to do so. Whatever fee I have accepted, I HAVE accepted it, so I am going to do my best; I will try and push as much (good quality) output as I can. If I’ve pre-agreed what they’re paying me then I am agreeing that this is enough to do my said best and I can’t just sit and think oh… Well this one is only £30 so I’m only sending 3 Tweets.

THAT’S NOT WHAT IT’S ABOUT!

This company shouldn’t have to give me a minimum amount of Tweets to create and I shouldn’t be thinking about doing as little as I can. The whole ethos of such a party is to get the brand in question trending. As a good blogger, doing my job and not just sticking to my sense of entitlement, I will work towards that. But… The fact this company have had to stipulate rules means that they know not everyone feels the same as me and I know, first hand from picking bloggers to co-host parties, why!

I have come away from some of the experiences of wearing my media outreach hat with a list of people I could never trust to work for me again. And all other P.R people will do the same. The thing is, it reflects badly on every single other blogger out there who IS trying to do a good job, who WILL work hard and give value for money and who DOESN’T think ‘Well, I’ve got what you want so I can do what I like’. If nothing else that’s just plain bad manners! On the flip side I have a list of people (a dream team as my partner in crime and I call them) that I will call on again and again. I know they will do what I ask of them and if we agree a fee in advance then it’s agreed because they are as happy with it as I am.

I’m not saying I’m a perfect blogger, far from it and I know (I’m ashamed really) that in the past I have created boring content and rehashes of press releases because that was what was expected of me but not anymore. I’m setting my own standard and a higher bar and I hope that everyone else will too because at the end of the day if we all work together, no matter what hat we’re wearing and when, then we will bring the average up. UP I tell you.

So this is what I did last week when something didn’t go to plan. I was offered some cheese and fizz for a Christmas review. I sent the P.R girl (a very nice lady) a few examples of posts I have done in a similar style for another brand. For the older posts I have always been sent a substantial enough amount of vouchers to make my posts good enough for my own set standard because a simple ‘I bought this food and it tasted good’ just doesn’t work for me any more’. I showed this P.R girl that I like to create new recipes and take (what I feel) are beautiful pictures of the meal as well as some chat and of course the recipes. I want to make my posts about food a bit more like that and a lot less like an advert for the reasons I’ve stated above.

Because of the way I work, I’d assumed when they’d said ‘Christmas Cheeses and fizz’ that there would be enough to make a brilliant post out of it, something really interesting and lovely to photograph too. I assumed (and we know what they say about THAT word) that we were on the same page and that having seen my other posts in the same vein that she would want something equally as interesting but…

I was sent a bottle of Cava, a bottle of Prosecco and two very bog standard looking cheeses. The total monetary value of the products came to about £20. This is a LOT less than I charge for a sponsored post and a fair amount less than I expect in vouchers for something similar so I was a little bit perplexed as to how I could make this work for both the company AND myself because I’m not a flipping charity. I was annoyed. I wrote to her to tell her I was disgruntled and to point out that I couldn’t possibly make a decent post out of JUST this?!

She understood and asked me instead to just add them into another post where I might be talking about lots of foodie things. So, I thought about this…

And it sounded REALLY boring to me.

I don’t want to slip items and links into blog posts. I don’t want to work for less than I am worth but I want my blog posts to be really cool, really interesting and REALLY fun for me to create! So I sucked it up. I found a way of making the products work so that I COULD do a post to the same standard that I would ordinarily. I used the cheese and created a recipe that I would eat over Christmas. Was it worth it financially? No. Not really! It took ages to create the end result as I had to create the recipe, buy other ingredients, cook it, photograph it, write it up and edit the pictures. I didn’t get paid enough in goods but what I was left with was a post I am proud of and a reply from the P.R girl that went like this:

This is really fab, it’s great how you have incorporated the products into the post – we are all drooling over the pizza cups! I also just wanted to let you know that we shared your Christmas in July post with the internal team last week and the team were delighted with your post and were singing your praises in the catch up today – so thank you! 

She’s a nice girl, that was never in question but what was in dispute was what she expected from me and was prepared to offer me in return (very little on both counts) and then what I expected from her (a lot more) in order to keep my end of the bargain. I was never going to give very little regardless of what I got for it. I’d rather do nothing than a half arsed attempt at something rubbish and as a result now (I hope) I have proved myself to be worthwhile. Next time we work together (if she can forgive me for writing about this here – it’s a gamble I know) we will both be singing from the same hymn sheet. Her expectation of me will now be higher and hopefully this will have sealed how she values me in return.

If we continue to give out crap we are going to get crap in return. This works both ways, whatever hat you wear and however much you think about it and I personally prefer to be on the side of the hard working for both stances. I Instagrammed a picture of my recipe for the above mentioned post and though I didn’t feel valued enough in the beginning to create it, something happened which wasn’t anything to do with either bloggers or media outreach managers but in fact, to do with what it’s all about, which made it worthwhile.

It reached someone who isn’t anything to do with being a blogger or employing them and I influenced them with something I created. Blogger happy. P.R happy. And essentially, customer happy. I’m as pleased as punch with this one little comment – THIS is what blogging is all about!

So… Essentially what I’m trying to say is threefold. Firstly I agree, P.R people CAN expect too much from us for far too little but we, as bloggers, surely have to work our way out of that and not just expect something for nothing as well. Secondly, we have to make our own luck and do it politely. If we want to be bigger in this world of social influencing (I know I do) then we have to graft. Nothing is handed to us on a plate and even if it is from time to time that plate can easily slip if we don’t hold on to it. Then… Thirdly, we don’t always have to GET something to make something worthwhile and worth using to do the actual influencing. If we buy something and like it then why not write about it, perhaps that has more worth than anything else!

A wise blogger said to me today, while I consulted her about this post, that if we write about something we love, this in turn will show up when someone else wants us to write about something similar. If we’ve done a good job and enjoyed writing it so that it can be seen as proof in the pudding then we’re far more likely to be asked again and this time be rewarded for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch but there are definitely bloggers who try to leave the restaurant without paying!