Sydney based tech start-up and Australia’s newest influencer marketing platform, Blog Avenues, has officially launched in Australia.
Founded by marketing duo Lisa Johnston and Rachael Ballard, Blog Avenues was created to make it easier for businesses and influencers to source effective partnerships and build campaigns that engage the right audience. The start-up aims to create a ‘Black Book’ of bloggers for businesses, displaying an unbiased view of the key influencers across the top categories in Australia.
After a successful soft launch to bloggers in late 2015, Blog Avenues has now launched to brands and agencies who can sign up the website. To date, the platform has seen over 370 influencer registrations, with a combined reach of over 16 million followers across all the major social media channels. Registrations of Australia’s most influential bloggers continue to grow daily.
How did Blog Avenues come to life?
Lisa, who regularly attends speaking engagements as a leader in her field, is considered an industry expert on social media analytics and strategy and noticed a gap in the market for a platform that allowed businesses to discover, connect and engage with the influencers that can help grow and engage their communities.
“Having worked with over 500 businesses, I’m still seeing a lot of confusion around concept of influencer marketing. That’s what inspired the need for a web platform that made collaboration simple” she says. “Through intuitive filtering and tagging, Blog Avenues takes the complexity out of influencer marketing.”
Rachael is a marketing, PR and events professional with over 10 years of experience working with local and international brands including McGrath Estate Agents, Toyota and Thrifty Car Rental.
After planning numerous events and marketing campaigns and struggling to connect with bloggers and influencers in an efficient and effective way, Rachael learnt of Lisa’s idea and immediately recognised the potential benefit for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Her corporate marketing experience and her ability to understand commercial objectives brings a unique set of skills to the Blog Avenues team.
How exactly does Blog Avenues work?
Unlike other websites and apps on the market, Blog Avenues is completely free for bloggers and influencers; with no commissions or fees charged to sign up to the platform or even once a successful partnership is secured.
Bloggers and influencers with a minimum of 5,000 followers on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube or Pinterest can sign-up to create a personalised profile to become immediately discoverable by businesses looking to engage their audience. Bloggers register under a specific category (Food & Drink, Hair & Beauty, Fashion, Home & Interiors, Lifestyle, Parenting, Travel, Health Fitness & Wellbeing or Wedding), enabling businesses to search for candidates using the platform’s intuitive filtering and tagging technology.
For businesses, a six month subscription will cost $155 (incl. GST) which includes access to the database of bloggers in their industry or category of choice and the opportunity to ‘Post & Pitch’ one campaign. The website’s ‘Post & Pitch’ functionality enables businesses to create campaign briefs and targeted opportunities that bloggers can engage with, allowing them to pitch ideas and concepts of their own in response to the briefs.
Businesses can also choose to access additional blogger categories and list subsequent Post & Pitch’ campaigns for $50 (incl. GST) per category or post.
With businesses continuing to spend more and more of their marketing budget on creating branded content to engage social media ‘influencers’, Blog Avenues aims to simplify the process of collaboration, allowing businesses to easily connect with influencers and to source effective partnerships to build campaigns that engage the right audience, for only a fraction of the cost of traditional media channels.
