As a small brand with a limited budget Social Cat offers a great platform to connect with content creators. Very easy to get on board and I had content within a week! Would highly recommend it.
HL
Hidden L.
Just no...
Poorly set up, mediocre "influencers", and overly priced with no payment reminders. Seems a superficial, greedy business thay doesn't put the customer first.
YA
Yamin A.
Full of bots
Signed up for the free trial just to have a huge portion of my time wasted. As another review stated, you are literally sending your products to people who boost each others engagement and followers artificially. Fortunately, I was sceptical and was able to see the pattern that 99% of these micro-influencers are females, often mums who all have similar comments and posts. This business is useless for customers unless they do a better job of vetting the micro-influencers. Glad I cancelled the subscription before paying the huge fee.
TA
Taryn
Avoid
This company states that “ We help small brands and micro-influencers connect and work together on gifted collaborations. Brands get promoted and access to user-generated content in exchange for free products.”
In theory this sounds like a good idea. And as a brand it is natural to assume the accounts with the highest engagement levels, are going to get your company better exposure.
This would be true if the vetting process was robust. However I have had to find out the hard way that it is not.
As a result my Instagram trust score has been diminished through my association with these “micro influencers” via The Social Cat.
After someone created a reel I noticed it had more likes than actual views, which is highly unusual activity that I am well aware the Instagram algorithm considers to be inauthentic, and your trust score is diminished as this is assumed to be from bot accounts.
And in doing my research; this is exactly what it is - a bot army of people who have joined a Network of “Mum’s Club” pages, wherein liking each other’s posts is mandated, so this is non organic exposure which is damaging to your business.
After reviewing the 5 accounts the creator tagged in the reel; I found the network mandate that all members have to like each other’s content, you have to like 5 other members in the link tree to join, they hold events called “Mega Story Loops” which suggests coordinated story viewing and liking, and they encourage members to like every post on a person’s account over a few days in order to get the same benefit.
In reviewing the accounts I was told I had to like in order to join this network, I found many of the “micro influencers” listed were “creators” introduced to me by The Social Cat, meaning my Instagram trust score has likely been penalised more than I was even aware of.
These “content creators” basically belong to a pyramid scheme: whereby their following and engagement is high due to this network, but they have also become part a bot like network of real users.
This renders the content they create for you meaningless, as instead of increased site traffic from a post where pages of the network were tagged; I mostly got requests from others from with this network wanting free products to review, AND I had my Instagram trust score reduced in the process.
On this basis I cannot recommend this company unless you want your Instagram trust score and business to be damaged in the process. I now find myself questioning whether it is worth sending out any more products for review, if these reviews are only going to damage my business further.
Bottom line: if my company were larger, I’d be seeking compensation through court after having paid The Social Cat, given away a lot of merchandise and paid for postage at my own expense, only for this promotion to have damaged my company rather than benefitted it.
Update Monday 20 June 22: it gets worse! Because I have explained to some creators that I cannot work with them due the large number of loop groups they are engaged in, they have been bad mouthing my company to each other. So not only has my Instagram been damaged, but now my company’s reputation has been tarnished by association with The Social Cat too. As nice as the owners are, I wish I had never got involved with them. As a business looking to grow their company, having a “creator” tell you to stick your head up your (impolite word for buttocks) and bad mouth you to all these loop groups, is paying for stress that no small business owner needs.
