Have you heard of Fohr Card?
If you’re an American influencer or marketer you’re probably familiar with the platform, but most of us in the GCC region have never heard of it.
Fohr Card is a membership network that connects brands with influencers, and aims to bring transparency into the world of influencer marketing. It’s especially useful for influencers that are big on Instagram, as the platform can provide an in-depth look into audience demographics.
Founders James Nord and Rich Tong launched the platform in 2012, when influencer marketing was starting to take off. Both were convinced there was a better way to measure an influencer’s level of collective influence across all their social media platforms, instead of simply speculating which bloggers had or hadn’t bought followers on Instagram.
While Fohr Card is a great way for US-based micro-influencers to connect with brands, it’s the Instagram Follower Health score that truly provides value to those who sign up (and anyone can sign up, regardless of their location and size of their following).
While other free tools like Social Blade and Instagram Analytics can show an influencer’s follower growth and give some insight into their audiences, the data isn’t nearly as detailed as the statistics Fohr Card provides its members.
With the information Fohr Card provides influencers can find out who their audience is following, along with their personal interests, line of work, religion and much more.
How Does It Work?
Once an influencer signs up for Fohr Card, they give the platform access to all of their social media accounts, blog, analytics, etc.
Fohr Card then takes all of the data and provides detailed insights on an influencer’s audience – right down to the kinds of music their followers enjoy.
For influencers on Instagram, Fohr Card has created an audience score, ranging from -8 (the worst) to 8 (100% real and engaged), and can assess the “Follower Health” of an account by categorizing followers into one of three categories: Active, Lurkers and Bots.
“Active” followers are users that are engaged and interact with an influencers content. “Lurkers” are users that passively follow an influencers, and rare interact/view their content. ‘Bots are robotic files that can be categorized as fake followers (although legitimate can accidentally amass them without knowing it).
The platform is then able to provide an overarching score (0 to 100%) that reflects the overall quality of an influencer’s social media accounts and their entire collective followers.
The data can also be exported, so an influencer can share their up-to-date stats with marketers and potential brand sponsors.
Follower Fraud: It’s A Problem
Fohr Card was created to encourage transparency in an industry where so many influencers falsify the amount of influence they have over their audience. Between buying fake followers to Instagram Pods, many “influencers” boast more influence than they actually have.
“I think it’s similar to taking steroids in sports,” James Nord said in an interview with Julie Solomon, on The Influencer Podcast. “You’re not only stealing and defrauding the advertisers that are sponsoring you . . . you have taken that [proverbial] gold medal away from somebody else, which is worse in some ways.”
Platforms like Fohr Card aim to crackdown on this, by making it easy for influencers to access statistics on their followers – and easy for brands to see just how much influence an influencer actually has.
Our Thoughts on Fohr Card…
While Fohr Card is based in the USA it’s still an excellent tool for influencers around the world.
Are you an influencer? Do you use Fohr Card? Let us know in the comments below…