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Collective Blacklist

August 30, 2021

Our customers often ask us to deal with cases when freshly accepted bloggers take their products and leave their brands without a single post. As much as we would like to believe there is an explanation for such behavior – in most cases it turns out to be a simple form of products theft.

And unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there! Same individuals lay down for a while and then they pull the same tricks on other brands. And why not? Since worst that could happen – cheated brands won’t let them back in. What a big loss?

We’ve even heard that several managers were sharing a list of those blogger names publically to prevent other content creators from the same faith.

We hear your pain! No one would like to invest 30+ hours into designing, styling, and shaping their product just to put it out there and realize it was brutally stolen with no consequences. So as much as unpopular this topic might be among the blogger community – we had to do something about it!

PRODUCTS BLOGGED / PRODUCTS TAKEN RATIO

This ratio is being calculated for every blogger within a scope of a single brand using the following formula:

R = x / y * 100

where:
x – number of products blogged. Product blogged means there is at least 1 successfully accepted blogpost that features a particular product. If one product is blogged multiple times, it still counts as 1.
y – number of products taken. Demos do not count.

For example, a blogger joins a BRAND and takes 3 products A, B and C. Then he/she delivers two blogposts with product A. The ratio is calculated like this: 1 / 3 * 100 = 33%.

EDIT (September 1st, 2021): Starting from today the system additionally registers whether in a moment of a product taking blogger is VIP or not. Products that are taken during blogger being a VIP – won’t get included in ratio calculation. Unfortunately, anything that VIP bloggers took before this date – go as regular products due to their VIP status data was not captured. 

MANAGERS WON’T BE ABLE TO BLACKLIST JUST ANYONE

There are only two scenarios in which the system will offer manager to blacklist a non VIP blogger:

    1. Blogger misses a deadline and got suspended by the system;
    2. Blogger intentionally has left the brand.

If at any of these two moments blogger’s “products blogged / products taken” ratio is below the system’s safety value of 35% – the manager will have an option to blacklist the blogger. In other words – the system has detected that blogger has taken significantly more products than products he/she blogged and the blogger’s status within this brand won’t let him/her submit more posts (due to being suspended or leaving a brand).

Manager will be notified browsing Suspended or Left bloggers lists:

MANAGERS SHOULD EVALUATE EACH CASE

Each case is individual. There might be a reason why a blogger has ended up with an active blacklisting option under his/her name. That alone doesn’t mean the manager will blacklist the blogger immediately. This is more like a waving flag, a signal to take a look and find out what’s happening.

We ask managers to investigate each such case before making any further decisions by contacting a blogger inworld, trying to settle and find a compromise. If however manager decides to blacklist a blogger, he/she will have to confirm the following:

THE POWER OF COLLECTIVE BLACKLISTING

So what happens if a blogger gets blacklisted? First of all – a blogger won’t be able to join back the brand that blacklisted him/her already. That’s easy, but it doesn’t stop there.

True collective power lies in the fact that each brand has an option to choose whether they want to receive applications from bloggers that are already on someone’s blacklist or not.

For example: if a manager doesn’t want to receive applications from bloggers that are already blacklisted by 3 other brands, he/she sets the threshold value to 3. This is also the lowest possible value knowing that there might be single disputable blacklisting cases. However, if a blogger got blacklisted by 3 brands already – that tells something is going on.

A threshold value can be adjusted under Brand->Settings. The default value is Off, which tells the system to work with your blacklist only.

NAMES ON THE COLLECTIVE BLACKLIST WON’T BE REVEALED

To preserve privacy – managers will only see the names of bloggers they blacklisted within the scope of their brand. Not the bloggers coming from other blacklists under the brand’s set threshold value.

HOW BLOGGERS WILL KNOW THEY GOT BLACKLISTED?

If a blogger gets blacklisted by a particular brand – this information becomes available under “Your Brands List” with filter value set to “Blacklisted“.

If a blogger is already blacklisted by enough other brands that trigger the threshold for the brand he/she wants to join – information will be presented instead of displaying an application form. The only way to join this brand in this case would be if brand owner sends you an invitation.

In both cases – bloggers should reach out to managers inworld and find a way to settle things so the brand is willing to remove a blogger from the blacklist.

FINAL THOUGHTS

While this feature is still in its early development, we truly hope it will encourage bloggers to take products more responsibly. As well as will give enough power to our customers (brands and events) to collectively make Blogotex even better.