If you’re trying to grow your brand, Influencer Marketing is one of the best ways to do that.
But there are so many platforms and tools out there for it. It can all seem like too much.
So if you’re wondering what the real deal is with Influencer Marketing platforms, I have a review of one of them for you today: Social Cat.
This Social Cat Review will help you understand the differences between Social Cat and other influencer marketing platforms. I’ll give you a behind-the-scenes look at how it works, but I won’t just leave you there–You’ll also learn how you can grow with Influencer Marketing and what results to expect.
Because, at the end of the day, a Social Cat review isn’t going to do you much good if you don’t know how to grow your brand with influencers.
Let’s go!
What is Social Cat? Is it legit?
Social Cat is a platform that helps brands grow with Influencer Marketing. On their platform, you can create campaigns that raise awareness for your brand, give you licensed UGC, and/or boost sales.
They’re also the most affordable influencer platform out there, which means working with them can save you thousands in fees.
You might *think* that this means they cut corners on quality, but that’s not the case–only about 15% of influencers who apply make it on their platform, and it’s packed with features that make it super easy for you to find and match with influencers.
Psst… If you’re a nano or micro-influencer with over 1,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, you can apply to work with brands on Social Cat for gifted and paid collaborations today.
How is Social Cat different from other platforms?
Okay, okay, we know what you’re thinking:
Another influencer marketing platform?
There are so many of them! How is this one different?
Social Cat is super different. Let me explain why:
Key differences between Social Cat and other platforms
Here are some of the ways Social Cat is different from other options:
- Influencers are vetted and opt-in. When influencers sign up for Social Cat, their team approves them manually–and only 15% make the cut.
Other Influencer Marketing platforms scrape social media for information and import profiles onto their databases. Then, brands try to find influencers and reach out via email. Often, influencers don’t even know they’re on those platforms—can you imagine?
- You can communicate directly with influencers. Instead of cold emails or DMs, you can reach out to influencers on Social Cat via their built-in messaging system. Not only is it super easy to connect with influencers, but you can also draft and sign contracts.
On other platforms, it’s pretty common to need to export email addresses, send emails to influencers, and hope for a response. Yep, this is still happening in 2024—hard to believe, I know!
- Pricing is clear and flexible. You can choose between gifted, affiliate, and paid collaborations, all in one place. Influencers know your terms when they apply to work on your campaign, and you can see how much they want to charge before you agree to anything.
If you’d like to try gifted influencer campaigns, Social Cat is the ONLY platform that facilitates a high quantity of gifted collaborations with influencers–so it’s the best place to go.
- It’s affordable. There are no crazy fees for paid collaborations, the influencers on their platform are affordable, there are no contracts or hidden fees, and you can cancel at any time.
- The platform has all the features you’ll need. Looking for metrics, contract templates, or your very own content library? Social Cat has it. You can also filter and search through their database of 30,000 influencers–although you don’t *need* to because influencers will come to you, too.
- Licensing is included. We checked, and content usage rights for all of the content created by influencers for your brand are available at no extra cost. Say goodbye to the surprise licensing expenses that come with other platforms!
You don’t have to take my word for it. They have over 1,500 verified reviews from brands and creators saying how awesome it is to work with them. In other words: Social Cat is legit. If you want to check them out, these are the reviews.
What else can I say? Wow!
How does Social Cat work?
Here’s how Social Cat works: Their platform allows you to manage your brand’s entire Influencer Marketing process.
I’m talking about finding influencers, communicating with them, setting up collaborations, making & agreeing to contracts, seeing the posts going live on social media, and getting UGC-style content uploaded on the platform.
They cover the process end-to-end.
Let’s talk about how to get started…
How to sign up for Social Cat
First, head to Social Cat and register as a brand. (If you are an influencer, you’ll need to register as an influencer instead)
Once you fill out some basic information about your brand, you’ll jump straight into their onboarding. They’ll ask you how you heard about Social Cat (you can tell them it was from this review!), and then you’ll see this screen:
It’s important to make sure the information you enter on this page is accurate and thorough. It’s how influencers will know how to talk about your brand.
Then, you’ll be asked to pick your business type and industry–don’t worry, they have options for you to choose from.
Followed by a little bit more:
Then, they’ll ask some details about your company, such as:
- The size
- Whether you’re operating on behalf of one or more companies
- How many influencers you want to work with each month
- Where you do business (you can choose from US, UK, AU, NZ, CA)
- Which platform you’re looking for influencers on (currently, they offer Instagram and TikTok)
Then, they’ll start to ask about your influencer preferences. Check out this screen, where you’ll pick the most important thing to your brand when it comes to influencers:
You’ll also pick a minimum follower count for influencers you’d like to work with, based on your goals, and demographic information for your audience (like gender, ethnicity, age, location, and niche)
On one of the last screens, you’ll see this beauty:
This is where you’ll get to choose what kind of campaign you’ll create. As you can see, they have three options to choose from: gifted, paid, and affiliate.
You’ll then have the option to choose your campaign goal (if you’re doing an affiliate or gifted campaign, the goal will be set for you to “awareness.”), and the content format you’d like the influencers to use. For format, you’ll have the choice between Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories, Instagram Posts, or a TikTok Video.
After that, you’ll also have the option to pick the type of video you’d like made and add any details about the campaign creators should know before they apply.
After that, you’ll be given the option to start your 7-day free trial for Social Cat.
Yep, that’s right–they let you try out their platform BEFORE you pay them a dime. You have full access to the platform, and if you aren’t happy with it, you can cancel before it transitions into a paid subscription.
Influencer campaigns require lots of communication and information, but they’ve managed to streamline this process down to 5-10 minutes, max. Immediately after that, creators start applying to work with you!
It literally could not be easier.
How to grow your brand with influencers
Okay, now that you’ve learned about Social Cat and how to get started with it, there’s one crucial piece of information left: How can you grow your brand with influencers?
In this section, we’ll explore two options that have to do with sales. One is a more direct approach, and the other will require some work on your part. We’ll also talk about how to increase your brand awareness with influencers.
Let’s dive in!
Generate more sales for your brand
While this method *does* require testing and understanding what type of messaging works best to bring in sales for your brand, it can pretty quickly become a game changer.
Just look at this brand–they increased their sales by 10% just by working with influencers!
Here’s how to work with influencers for sales:
- Work with influencers who have an engagement rate of greater than 2%. This rule works equally well on Instagram and TikTok. It doesn’t necessarily matter how many followers they have. It’s more important that the followers they do have are engaged.
As a brand, you’d rather advertise to a smaller, more engaged audience that is interested in what you sell than a large audience that has a ton of interests and doesn’t care, right?
Social Cat will calculate this automatically, so you’ll know if their engagement rates are good. - Use Instagram Stories. Stories have a link where you can swipe up and link to your product and where you can also include a discount code to increase sales. If you pick an Instagram Feed post or Reels, how are you going to direct people to your website? It’s much harder to get people to buy from a Feed or Reels post.
This is where a lot of brands get it wrong: They assume that because Reels and Feed posts last longer, they’ll get more sales over the life of the post. They won’t, and you won’t either.
If you do get sales from a Feed or Reels post, the vast majority of them will happen in the first 24 hours–so there’s no need to worry about missing out on sales by opting for the story format.
- Test all your product features. If your product is organic, made in the US, and brings results in 7 days, which of these features is going to bring more sales? Have influencers talk about each one and see which generates the most interest.
Okay, now that you have the insider scoop on how to increase sales with influencers, let’s discuss another strategy you can use: UGC.
Get affordable UGC photos and videos
On top of sales, you may be able to get UGC (or user-generated content), too, if you know how to do it. And you WILL know how to do it because we’re about to teach you.
For best results, start by guiding creators: Don’t just throw a campaign idea out there and expect to get the perfect UGC back. Instead, be specific about what they should talk about in their videos. If you’re opting for photos, give them some scenarios or ideas.
If you follow this process, you can slowly build a pipeline of UGC for your brand that you can use for your marketing channels. Just look at this 1-800 Flowers: They generated 100+ pieces of UGC! You need to be patient if you’re going to get to that level, of course, because it’s not going to happen in the first week. But 1-800-flowers did it in a few months.
Imagine having content for your social media: TikTok, Facebook, and/or Instagram for such a small fee–and in a way that generates new content every month! It takes a lot of stress off of you to feel like you don’t have to come up with new ideas to generate content constantly.
But you don’t have to stop at organic social media. UGC content from influencers can also be used in advertising on both Meta and TikTok to generate great returns on sales.
So yep, you guessed it–with a little extra work on your part, this is the second method that will help you generate sales on top of working directly with influencers!
Discover new audiences and increase brand awareness
With influencer campaigns, you’ll get more eyes on your products, which will eventually lead to more sales.
However, this comes with a big caveat–brand awareness is hard to measure, and it takes time to grow it to a level where you see an increase in sales.
Usually, you can measure it by seeing occasional spikes in your traffic on your website, but it’s hard to know if that’s due to influencers.
The best advice? Focus on getting good UGC and sales. Awareness will come naturally as part of that.
Conclusion – should you use Social Cat?
When you consider all of the features, the value, and the fact that they have over 30,000 influencers in their pool, we recommend giving Social Cat a try–especially since most of the alternatives take a LOT more money to get started and force you to sign a contract.
Social Cat is a very low-risk option. You can organize a free demo with their team to chat more about the platform if you have any questions.
Also, I emailed their team and they provided a generous 25% discount for the first month for readers of our blog. You can use it on any of their monthly plans–just type the code UGC25 at checkout to redeem this offer!
And–make sure you book the free onboarding call with an expert from their team offers during your one-week free trial. That way, you’ll know if it’s a good fit for your brand.
