The World Leader in Sponsored Conversations

A sponsored conversation is a social media marketing technique in which brands provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchange for posting social media content about a product, service or website on their blog. IZEA created the sponsored conversation space in 2006 and has initiated nearly 1,000,000 sponsored conversations to date.

We have created a quick overview video that describes how sponsored conversations work. Click here to view The Caveman’s Guide to Sponsored Conversations.

Quote from “Why Sponsored Coversation-aka Paid Blog Posts- Can Make Sense”,
Forrester Research’s Groundswell blog, March 2009. View

Why Sponsored Conversations?

Guaranteed Posts
Unlike traditional public relations, sponsored conversations are agreements between the advertiser and blogger. The blogger is provided compensation in exchange for exposure to their network. Advertisers pay based on a completed post.

Trackable Results
Sponsored conversations enable our advertisers to embed tracking links and pixels. We are able to report actual traffic and conversions delivered to a client’s destination site. We track clicks on blogs, Twitter and Facebook.

Perfomance Driven
Advertisers can utilize CPC, CPA or standard cost per post options based on their target ROI.

Scalable
IZEA has over 250,000 bloggers in our network, allowing us to seed a conversation on thousands of blogs overnight.

Social Media Search Optimized
Sponsored posts, tweets and status updates appear on search engines and other discovery sites.

Forms of Compensation

Any agreement between a blogger and advertiser where value changes hands is considered a sponsored conversation. Value can be exchanged in everything from trips to cash, but all of these transactions fall under the same requirement for disclosure and transparency. Examples include:

• Products & Services: Cars, televisions, video games, cameras, software, etc.
• Experiences: Trips, tickets, etc.
• Cash or cash equivalent: Cash, gift cards, points, etc.

While IZEA initiates sponsored conversations with all forms of compensation, we prefer cash. Cash is the only method of compensation that is scalable, has universal value and mitigates the possible tax consequences.

The Social Media Marketing Matrix

Sponsored conversations are a mix between public relations and advertising, offering unique benefits at a relatively low cost. A comparison of marketing tactics by Forrester Research:

Social media and the blogosphere in particular can be an incredibly powerful marketing channel. IZEA leverages influencers in social media to deliver campaigns that are measurable, scalable and persuasive.