Best blogger/Influencer Agencies in India of our times

As the social media landscape evolves rapidly, I began pondering about good old days of blogging. Most bloggers had other sources of income and wrote blogs as a hobby. Blogging communities brought people together, blogger meets and events were eagerly awaited for an opportunity to meet and interact with other bloggers. Blogger focused agencies or communities played a major role in the evolution of India's blogger community and ecosystem. 

1) Indiblogger

Indiblogger is probably the best thing that happened to Indian blogosphere. Most of my friends agree unanimously on this. Indiblogger gave most of us a platform, helped us gain visibility, conducted events where we could meet other bloggers, win goodies and held several campaigns where qualified bloggers could get paid.

Bloggers and Indiblogger core team members had built personal relationship. Even without any financial gain, the fun of interaction and being part of the community was paramount.

Unfortunately Indiblogger is in a dormant stage right now. Site is life but no one is managing it- no new initiatives, campaigns or plans. I have written about Indiblogger in this post. One year since they went dormant, their popularity is still intact and retains #1 position.

2) Blogchatter

Blogchatter is the current favorite of most bloggers. They conduct regular twitter chats, guest post offers, paid campaigns and other initiatives to engage bloggers and connect brands with bloggers. Respect for bloggers, prompt payments and genuine campaigns win them praise. Wishing them more success. 

3) Blogmint

Lasted for a short while and Blogmint was very good at what they were doing initially. Campaigns were nice, payout was good. Blogmint took 20% cut from influencer's earning. But they were probably too fast and too greedy- towards the end their campaigns deteriorated, payout dropped and soon company went shut, defaulting lots of money to influencers. Towards the end they were offering like 10 Rs per tweet (8 Rs in hand after 20% commission) and there were desperate people who agreed for it too.

Blogmint team had a well established ecosystem of connecting brands and influencers, but it is unfortunate at some point they lost focus. I heard blogmint founders have started a new agency with similar models and different name.

4) Blogadda

Blogadda is another popular and long term blogger and influencer platform. They were around since the time of Indiblogger but were probably less aggressive in their operation. I have done several Book reviews and few blogger activities with Blogadda. Couldn't attend Zest Drive as I had to be in Singapore on exact date. 

When Indiblogger went dormant Blogadda had great opportunity to introduce some new features and engage bloggers aggressively. But I didn't see any such initiative. But the platform is active and hopefully they will bounce back.

5) Blue Ocean IMC

Started by former Blogadda employee and operating in a smaller scale but with dedication and effectiveness. Best wishes to them.

6) dinfluencer.com

A Chennai based influencer marketing firm, headed by Sorav Jain who runs social media training and consulting firm EchovMe.

7) influener.in

Another Chennai based firm, Social Beat runs this platform. They conducted Digital Chai Pe Charcha and few other events. I have done a few campaigns. 

8) Influglue: Another agency that sells "connects" to influencers- like you've to pay INR 999 and buy 10 connects- then you can apply for 10 campaigns. But number and quality of campaigns I saw were not tempting enough to buy these connects, so I haven't pursued this much. You get 2 free connects upon signup using which you can apply for 2 campaigns and see if everything works for you.

9) Eleve Media: Seems like a well established agency but didn't work for me till date. 4-5 different employees approached me for details, quote etc but no response thereafter. May be I quoted too high or may be campaign didn't materialize or may be client rejected my profile. No idea. 

10) Skreem: Skreem is a new age platform. I created an account there but haven't done any campaigns yet. Skreem wanted me to give access to all my social media accounts so that it can post on my behalf etc- I wasn't comfortable with that as I prefer to post manually. A few campaigns I checked I felt a bit ineffective. Like there was a campaign that you can save 7000 Rs on a luxury resort. But upon checking I realized that one has to spend over 32500 for 2 nights+ tax+transportation to save 7000, that is only about 10-15% effective discount,. So I didn't pursue this further.

But this is just my personal opinion. Many of my friends hail Skreem. You can give it a try. May be things would have improved over time. I will check again later.

Then there are 100s of emerging agencies which were trying to build database of bloggers/influencers and trying to get brand deals. I remember signing up with several of them, filling forms etc but nothing materialized out of it over time. The new companies need to project to brands that they have an army of influencers while to bag influencers they need to project they have brands lined up. Truth often is that they neither have brands/nor enough influencers. Without the dedication, patience and commitment shown by firms like Indiblogger, many of these firms expect short time success and money, which is difficult to achieve. So after trying for 6-9 months most firms give up, often with unpaid dues to influencers and undelivered promises to brands.

There are several agencies now but most of them only want instagram followers and don't even have a category for blogs. One new age agency said "those who have less than 20k followers don't qualify for any paid campaigns, they can work for free and if we take pity they will be considered later for paid campaigns". Several facebook groups are also active connecting brands and influencers and many established bloggers deal directly with brands or their PR teams, not depending on any intermediary agency.

Which blogging community/influencer agency has worked best for you? Aware of any other good ones that is worth a mention here? Do share your thoughts in comment.