Today’s task is going over creation of Blog Sponsorships and Sparks! I will try and not be as long winded as I was for Sponsored Opp Creation, so here we go!
Let’s start with Sparks – Sparks are free Opps created in the Marketplace. You may ask, what’s the point of a Spark? There are many benefits for both the Advertiser and the Blogger.
Blogger:
– If you are new to blogging, or sponsored blogging, these are great ways for you to start to learn how to accept an Opp and create a Sponsored post.
– If you’ve been blogging for a while and have some writers block it could help ‘spark’ your imagination and get your creative juices flowing again!
Advertiser:
– You can get used to creating Opps and figuring out what information you need to provide to the bloggers to fulfill your expectations
Both Blogger and Advertiser:
– You can learn how to use SocialSpark. There is so much information and so many things to do within SocialSpark that a ‘Spark’ will help you familiarize yourself!
Ok, onto creation of a Spark.
Step 1: Setup
This is the EXACT same as Creating a Sponsored Post Opp just slightly shorter!
Step 2: Your Spark
Again, pretty self-explanatory; Title, Short Description and Full Description. The only thing that might slow you up on this Step is number 3, BlogYouBack. Sparks are free and provide no payment to the Blogger. You can choose to keep it free or provide incentive by selecting the BlogYouBack™ feature. If you select BlogYouBack™ you will need to write a reciprocal post for the blogger who posts about you. SocialSpark does not monitor, police, or enforce activity surrounding BlogYouBack™; they are strictly on the honor system. Please realize you must have blogs added to SocialSpark to have this feature accessible.
Step 3: Promote
This is where you would put in the information about Advertising your Spark in the Marketplace.
1.) Add an image: You can upload an image here that will be displayed throughout the Marketplace. Again, this image can only be a JPEG, PNG, or TIFF and can be no bigger than 2MB.
2.) Listing Upgrades: You can have your Spark be listed either with bold font or highlighted in the Marketplace listing.
3.) Feature Upgrades: This is REALLY cool!! You can pay a little extra and have your Spark as the ‘Featured Opp’ on the Marketplace Homepage!
4.) Search Tags: Here is where you would enter relevant search tags so if someone searches keywords in the Marketplace they will come across this Spark. For example, if we’re creating a Spark about toothpaste we could use Search Tags like ‘toothpaste’, ‘teeth’, ‘dentist’, etc. (Be sure to separate each of your Search Tags with a comma.)
5.) Channel: You can also search Sparks by channels to help you find more of a niche Opp. This is where you would put what channels you would like your Opp to appear on – you can choose up to 2 and should be relevant to what your Opp is about.
If at any point you need to go back and make any changes you can click on the ‘Previous’ button and go back to a previous step.
Step 4: Review and Launch
This page goes over everything that you have just done in the creation process. You can review anything you have created. Please realize that you CANNOT delete nor edit an Opp(again, may want to say Spark) once you click ‘Sumbit’!!!! Once you create a Spark it’s out there for good!!
That’s how simple and easy creating a Spark is!!
Now onto Blog Sponsorship Creation:
Step 1: Setup
Everything is the same in this Step as it is for all other creation EXCEPT you have the option of Sponsorship Type (number 3). Here are your 2 options:
Blog Welcome with Sponsorship Bar – this is a regular display ad on blogs, also called an interstitial. Bloggers are paid on a per day basis. When readers visit the blog, they are welcomed with this ad that is displayed for 10 seconds. When minimized, it stays on the bottom of the screen as a persistiant ad bar – if a user scrolls, the bar is always in plain view. This is what you would see when you visit a blog with the Blog Welcome:
Sponsorship Bar Only – This would be the persistent ad bar that is always in plain view at the bottom of the browser window.
On to…
Step 2: Your Sponsorship
The fun part of this step is that you can choose to include either a Sponsorship Image, 3rd Party Ad Tag or Video Embed Code. Although, you cannot choose all 3, you must pick only 1.
In this Step, you also include the Title, Short Description, Text, Informational Link and Sponsorship Credit. Sponsorship Credit is what will show up on the header of the Ad unit – basically, if I create a Blog Sponsorship it will look like ‘This Blog is Sponsored by Crystal’.
At this point you can click on the ‘Preview Sponsorship’ button to see what it will look like.
Step 3: Targeting
In order to not repeat myself I’m going to skip over explaining the Targeting again because it is the EXACT same as Sponsored Post Opp Targeting which I have explained in this post.
Step 4: Set Pricing
Here, you would set your Budget per day as well as the Offer Range Per Sponsorship. There is also a line in this Step that gives you the Average Offer per day today – cool huh??
Step 5: Promote
We tried to make this as easy as possible because this step is the same as Sponsored Post Opp creation and Spark Creation (check out Step 3 from above where I explain Spark Creation to get this information).
Step 6: Review and Launch
This page will go over all your creation details, as well as finances for this Blog Sponsorship. This page also lets you pick which credit card you have on your account that you would like to use!
TADA!!!! Finally we have reached the end of this Trilogy of Creation in SocialSpark!!!
As always, please remember if you ever need help you can always go to the ‘Help’ tab on the top right of your screen and submit a ticket to Customer Love – we’re always here to help you as much as we can. Also you can always access the Advertiser or Blogger FAQs from the ‘Help’ tab and get additional information. Finally, remember you can always contact the Account Management Team at Accountmgmt [at] Izea [dot] com if you need assistance in creation – we’d be more than happy to help you out!
