In the latest of our PRmoment Tool Reviews Vix Leyton, PR manager at Decision Tech rates Tribe.

Tool name and maker

Tribe.co

What this tool does

Tribe is an online self-service influencer engagement platform allowing you to put forward a brief for influencers (defined here as anyone with over 3,000 followers) to draft up a post for you as it would appear on their platforms based on your product offering – it allows you to include what your key messages are, a mood board of the type of pictures you’d like to see, and your call to action. These posts appear in the dashboard alongside the influencers’ vital statistics in terms of reach and engagement. There is no minimum spend and you can approve or decline any as you see fit.

Price as reviewed

Variable – but post proposals for our brief started at around £30 and went up to £500. 

The test

I used Tribe to brief in a campaign for www.sellmymobile.com, inviting influencers to check in drawers for old mobile phones and consider our key messages, recycling is surprisingly lucrative and good for the environment.  

How it performed

It was super simple to get going, with a lot of helpful advice on how to create the best performing brief. You submit your campaign brief for approval and a helpful account manager gets in touch with feedback for improvements, then sets it live. Entries started coming in within minutes of the brief being posted. Some really imaginative post from influencers who really put time into the brief. Inevitably, as the ease of the platform goes both ways, you do see some chancers, either submitting photos that fit in barest terms or taking no time at all, but these were dwarfed by those that were a great fit.

You do need to do your homework – do not take the numbers at face value. As you would expect, some of the influencers are happy to go off their own personal brand for cash and, despite there being category choices, you could tell on the click-through that they will be unlikely to inspire anyone to do what you need. Picking categories narrows it down but it’s still very broad and if – like me – what you offer is service led as opposed to FMCG – then you need to be very selective of who you choose.

As an extra boost to brand awareness, this is a quick and fantastic tool, and case studies for brands like Bacardi back it up, but if you have to demonstrate ROI beyond brand then it can be a little bit tricky, and the onus is firmly on you. One potential way to tackle this is asking for Instagram stories instead of posts, where some ‘grammers’ have access to the ‘swipe up’ feature and can link. There may be some negotiation and communication with your chosen influencers here as these stories are only live for 24 hours before disappearing. Another possible route is providing your chosen influencers with a discount code/voucher, which makes tracking a lot easier. The influencers I have dealt with have been quick to respond and receptive to feedback and suggestions, giving a really professional service.

For me, with a complicated proposition, it didn’t drive the volume I had hoped and the visual medium is probably not quite the right brand fit for us, but as a quick piece of test activity, it really did all it said on the tin in terms of simplicity, price and speed. If you are not sure influencer activity is for you, it is a good starting point.

Likes

• Straightforward
• Excellent quality on some of the submissions
• Good for small budget test and learns. It is possible to give your stakeholders a sense of scale on a relatively low spend and is a really good toe in the water

Dislikes

• Mainly insta-based at the moment, which is obviously all in the visual, so if your product is not sexy or a physical entity, you have to rely on the caption to do the work for you, and too many words can be a turn off.
• Proving ROI beyond brand awareness is complicated.
• Personally, I was uncomfortable with the level of effort some influencers put in, knowing I only had a limited budget so unable to take them all, even if they were brilliant.

Star rating

Written by Vix Leyton, PR manager at technology company Decision Tech