Social Spark Now Released

IZEA released Social Spark Today. I was one of the first to hit their site and see if it promises to live up to all the hype.  The one thing I did notice off the bat that the control is now in the business owner’s hands.

I was a little disgruntled that they offer a video tutorial. Click the link. No tutorial.  That said, I love a challenge. I created a dummy account and went on a mining expedition.  Within minutes I saw something that no other advertising site offered. I could pick posts one at a time. No minimum campaign. No minimum number of posts. No down payment. There were even more than 30 ‘free’ opportunities.

I clicked through to a blog and took  my first look at the controversial pop up. It wasn’t as bad as I expected.  We’d been made to believe this popup resembled the Devil’s own attempt at viral marketing. Instead I saw a neat, clean lined box with a YouTube music video on one side, and an invitation to join Social Spark on the other.

This is the perfect opportunity for the small business owner. Do you want to promote a new book to sites that are industry specific, and even narrowed to your niche?  Small business owners are allowed to hand pick the blogs their bloggers appear on,  and approve the blogs. This reduces the number of bloggers who take the small business owner’s money and then stick the link in an unrelated blog post.

It could become confusing for new small business owners who expect a press release or review of their site. This is not how the blog advertising works. The ad should blend into the blog, making it look like the blog owner found it organically. Forcing bloggers to write press releases, or telling them to lie, is one way sabotage your campaign’s success.

Advertiser’s Profile

This was a pleasant surprise. When the blogger clicks the opportunity they are taken to the instructions. This page includes previous approved posts. This lets the bloggers see what the business owner gives. Unfortunately, it also lets the bloggers leave comments, including disgruntled ones from rejected bloggers.  There is also a thumbs up, down, feature.

The friends feature, very similar to blog catalogue gets a 10/10 on my scale.  Bloggers are familiar with this feature – it is organic.  Within a short time small business will be able to use this to find multiple bloggers within a specific niche to ‘invite’ to an opportunity.

There is another feature that I liked. The profile lets advertisers view the profiles of bloggers who visited the opportunity. This tool includes a ‘friend’s list’ that lets advertisers keep track of potential bloggers to target for future campaigns.

Blogger Profile

The one thing I saw lacking was the IZEA RealRank. I expected this to be in the blogger profile so advertisers could rank bloggers. I am not pleased at being forced to go to the blogger’s site to rate it.    

The profile did show a list of 30 recent blog posts, including the date. This is a valuable tool. I was able to separate the blogs from the splogs.  It is very easy to skim through the blogs that are built for paid posts and no real content to attract an audience.  I was pleasantly surprised to find the IZEA rank, and Alexa ranks on this page, but that is all.

My Rating?

This is the first tool that is made for the very small advertiser with $50 a month in his pocket that actually promises to offer something valuable. A blog post, even a paid one, is 100x more valuable than a testimonial that may, or may not, have been written by a professional writer.

The only thing that I was disappointed with is the opening box. Advertisers have been told that their advertising would appear here. I expected to have a post in the blog, but at least a summary appearing in the box for a minimum of 12 hours.  I will let you know if this changes.