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Meet the Boss – Exclusive Interview with SocialMedia.Market CEO Dmitry Shyshov

Interview with SocialMedia.Market CEO Dmitry Shyshov

SocialMedia.Market is the world’s first decentralized ecosystem that focuses on creating, analyzing, performing, and facilitating the discovery of advertising campaigns with social media influencers.

Based completely on the blockchain technology, the SocialMedia.Market platform aims to establish a transparent, safe, and streamlined method of interaction between brands and social media bloggers.

At the same time, the platform aims to provide an accessible, transparent, and competitive marketplace that will open opportunities for thousands of influencers and brands all over the globe while enabling widespread audience exposure and engaging consumers effectively.

In the words of the platform themselves:
SocialMedia.Market will create a new generation of advertising accessible to millions of novice and growing influencers, startups, small and medium businesses. We recently sat down with Dmitry Shyshov, the CEO of SocialMedia.Market to have a chat with him about the project as well as finding out his thoughts and insights.

Hi, Dmitry. Thanks for joining us today. Can you describe your project to us?

socialmedia.market logoSocialMedia.Market is a decentralized marketplace that connects both advertisers and bloggers (or influencers) across major social networks.

We do this to provide convenient and transparent tools for all parties involved to interact with each other easily. SocialMedia.Market uses the blockchain to simplify integration and at the same time, reduce fraud and costs for all market participants.

Essentially, it is an ecosystem for every marketer, advertiser, and influencer to connect and mutually benefit from each other’s roles.

What problems will SocialMedia.Market solve?

The problem plaguing the influencer advertising market right now is that it is very vague and chaotic with no regulations; scammers and shady agents are also not uncommon in this industry.

Besides that, there are 4 major problems in this industry that needs to be solved.

  1. There is a huge disparity in pricing structures and agent fees consume a large portion of the influencer’s revenue as well as the brands’ marketing budgets. For example, the average fee charged by agencies are 30% of the campaign budgets and that’s only the part where it’s explicitly stated—there are hidden fees that buyers do not know until they get the bill.
  2. Influencer marketing campaigns are very time-consuming and a large portion of marketers believe that it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of launched influencer campaigns.
  3. Influencers frequently encounter get into sticky situations when working with agencies. For example, a project brief or proposal may abruptly change during the content creation process.Most of the times, if a dispute happens, the agency will side with the brand instead of the influencer which leaves him or her stranded.
  4. As mentioned earlier, campaigns are often ruined by scammers who claim to be managers or agencies. Again, this is happening because the market is not transparent at all.With all of these problems in mind, we built SocialMedia.Market to solve them and improve the influencer marketing industry as a whole.

With all of these problems in mind, we created SocialMedia.Market to solve them and improve the influencer marketing industry as a whole.

  1. SocialMedia.Market, being a marketplace, will introduce a competitive ecosystem with transparent pricing and fair conditions to all participants, regardless of what their roles are
  2. We will also host influencers from all around the globe as well as businesses of varying sizes and industries.
    This is improved a step further with the provision of tools and analytical instruments for businesses to get a full view of the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and decisions launched within the platform.
  3. In the case of disputes, we’ve developed a blockchain-powered dispute solution where the community can vote to decide on the outcome or resolution of cases within the platform. This is a fair system as the decision is determined by the public, not by a centralized party or authority.
  4. We will also provide features such as ownership validation, rating systems, as well as smart contracts for services to provide fairness, compliance and fraud protection in the platform

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Why is the blockchain essential for your platform?

Our Marketplace uses the blockchain to simplify integration and at the same time, reduce fraud and costs for all market participants

First of all, the blockchain allows us to use smart contracts, implementing the escrow services as well as automating the contracting process and processing payments instantly.
The decentralized disputes platform is also very reliant on the blockchain for it to work properly.

We plan to build a platform that will help to establish secure, transparent, and beneficial connections for businesses and influencers by using the blockchain and smart contracts which we believe are the key solutions to the industry’s problems.
We also want to provide a transparent ecosystem for all parties involved so we can get rid of the vagueness of the old system which does not bring any benefits at all — the blockchain allows us to do so.

What were your previous experiences before you founded SocialMedia.Market?

I am an entrepreneur as well as the CEO and founder of two well-known companies in the e-sports and gaming industry.

I also led the creation of the popular in-game items marketplace, CSGO.CASH, as well as leading one of the biggest private game retailers in the industry with over 10 million of games sold in the past 3 years. CSGO.CASH has nearly a million active e-sports players on the platform every month.

The gaming and esports industries were the early adopters of influencer marketing. Because we started so early, we learned through experience the problems and issues of the influencer marketing, which is why we’re so determined to solve them.
Also because of our experience, we have unique and invaluable insights of how the industry operates and how to make everything better for everyone involved.

socialmedia.market monetize influencer

What can we expect next for SocialMedia.Market?

The next stage of the SocialMedia.Market platform is to release the beta version which is expected to be launched in Q1 2018.
After that, we’ll focus on gathering feedback to improve the platform and make our tools better for influencers and businesses.

The full release of the product is expected in Autumn 2018. We’ve already covered all the details and stages of the project development in our roadmap and we’ll live up to our promises.

How will the platform be monetized revenue-wise?

Our platform will be primarily monetized through charging 10% of the total value of all contracts successfully completed within the platform.

We will also provide custom solutions such as advanced tools and analytic services to interested parties.

How is SocialMedia.Market different than its competitors?

The solutions available on the market today are either manager-driven (which means that interactions between parties are managed and controlled by the manager of the service) or using an agency-based business model which is not much different from the current state of the industry.

SocialMedia.Market, however, is a decentralized marketplace, where marketers and influencers have the flexibility to choose the opportunities they want and then connect with each other easily.

We are also the first platform to implement the blockchain technology in such a service, hence, ensuring full transparency in all communications as well as utilizing smart contracts for every agreement made — our platform’s transactions (payments, purchases, etc.) are also confirmed and processed with increased speed.

socialmediamarket monetize influencer

What are the benefits for the platform’s token holders?

Token holders will gain from the rise of token’s value which is directly related to the growth of the market.
We will also boost the token value by buying the tokens from the open market and then taking it out of the total supply to increase it’s value.

The tokens bought will also be used to make payments for influencers as well as resourcing the platform’s features and services.

As mentioned earlier, token holders can also access our platform’s decentralized dispute solution system and as a result of their efforts, they can receive tokens for taking part in the voting process.

Early backers of the ICO are rewarded with 30% bonus tokens which is significantly more than what we’ll offer during the main token sale.

Why should investors believe in the project?

There is absolutely no doubt that the influencer marketing industry will only continue to rise exponentially in the near future.
Over 90% of today’s customers are more likely to trust brand recommendations going from their favourite bloggers and celebrities instead of traditional advertising strategies.

A rarely mentioned aspect of digital advertising is that more and more people are installing ad blockers in the browsers and even mobile devices, limiting the effectiveness of traditional online ads.
Hence, more and more businesses are implementing influencer marketing in their strategies and budgets as it’s more effective and much more cost-efficient.

Experts suggest that the market could easily reach the $10 billion mark by 2020 which is not long from now.
However, the market is still in its infancy and there are several key problems that needs to be dealt with before it can really grow into something special.

There are no platforms today that can solve all those solutions effectively in one platform but that’s what we’re for; SocialMedia.Market has the skills, means, and passion to build such a platform and we’re confident in ourselves to deliver the best to our users and the industry.

That concludes our Interview with Dmitry Shyshov

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