Social Cat Review: Grow Your Brand with Influencer Marketing

I wrote this Social Cat review to highlight its potential in connecting small brands with micro-influencers, a key aspect of modern digital marketing.

Small businesses often struggle to find and contact suitable micro-influencers. Searching online yields limited results, and even when influencers are found, checking their numerous social media platforms is time-consuming. 

Moreover, reaching out is challenging as many influencers either don’t list contact information or are too inundated with requests to respond.

Social Cat aims to resolve these issues by linking small brands with micro-influencers. 

This review will explore how effectively it accomplishes this, examining its features and pricing based on my in-depth experience with the platform.

Social Cat Review: What is Social Cat and Why It Matters

This Social Cat review highlights the platform's efficiency in bridging the gap between micro-influencers and brands. Offering a straightforward sign-up process, it serves both creators and small brands seeking to collaborate.

Whichever option you choose, you’ll be able to create your profile in 3 to 5 minutes. You’ll need to answer a few basic questions that highlight what you are looking for. Based on your profile, the influencer marketing platform will match brands and micro-influencers.

Social Cat provides brands with exposure in front of micro-influencers daily, via a Daily Digest email system. The micro-influencers express interest in working with brands, and if the brands accept the collaboration request, it's a match!

As soon as a match happens, Social Cat makes an intro between the brand and the micro-influencer on email, and they can take the discussion forward. For brands, the beauty of this is that the micro-influencers are already engaged, since they find out first about the brands.

Pros and Cons

If you are looking for a quick Social Cat review, just look at this list of pros and cons. You’ll have a better idea of what to expect from the platform.

Pros of Using the Social Cat Platform

• It is easy to get registered on the platform
• Their pricing is very transparent, with a cancel anytime policy in place
• You can set up gifted collaborations, along paid or affiliate ones
• You can check brand reviews for different creators
• Their customer support team manually monitors the reporting system
• You can check previous campaigns with other brands for each creator
• Pre-vetted micro-influencers

Cons of Using the Social Cat Platform

• Operational in limited countries [USA, UK, New Zealand, and Australia]
• Has micro-influencers from only Instagram and TikTok currently

Pricing

Social Cat's pricing is designed for small businesses that want to get started with social media marketing but don't have the big budgets of larger companies. For just $49/month, you can start with Social Cat and look for the right micro-influencers.

What’s more, they offer a 7-day free trial so that you can get a feel of the platform before committing to it full-time.

Here are the details of all their pricing plans:

Start-Up Plan: $49/month

• This plan is great for those brands that just want to get started with influencer marketing campaigns. With this plan, you can get up to 10 micro-influencer matches every month.

Growth Plan: $99/month

• This plan is great for those brands who want to add more user-generated content, brand awareness, and sales. With this plan, you can get up to 25 micro-influencer matches every month.
• It includes: Exposure Boost – get your brand in front of more creators regularly which means more creators to pick from. Top Brand Badge – your brand will be highlighted as a top choice brand in your niche. One Dedicated Session with a Social Cat Expert.

Pro Plan: $179/month

• This plan works great for brands that are looking to scale their influencer marketing campaigns. With this plan, you can get up to 50 micro-influencer matches every month.
• The Pro Plan also includes all the features in the Growth Plan, and two dedicated sessions with an expert.

Social Cat’s pricing plans have no compulsory contracts. If you don’t want to use the platform, you can cancel it immediately. Think of it as a month-to-month subscription service for your influencer marketing campaigns.

Special Offer: Use code – SHANE25 – to get a 25% discount for your first month on Social Cat, available for all monthly plans.

Social Cat Key Features

I want to focus on the key features of Social Cat for this review. Why? Because when I tested it, I found that they are what makes the platform unique and worth using.

There are other platforms out there that do similar things, but Social Cat has a few key features that make it stand out from the rest.

Simple Matchmaking Process

Finding the right influencers can be daunting, especially if you're just starting out. You can spend hours scouring social media platforms, only to come up empty-handed.

That’s where Social Cat comes in. The platform will match your brand with the most relevant creators. You can focus on other tasks while they take care of finding the right influencers for you.

They have a database of over 10,000 pre-approved Instagram and TikTok micro-influencers across multiple niches. Take a quick look at the most popular niches in their creator database:

Good Vetting Process

When any influencer signs up on the Social Cat platform, they go through a vetting process. Their team manually vets each applicant to ensure that only quality profiles make the cut.

But what are the criteria for vetting micro-influencers on the Social Cat profile? They include:

• Profile Content: While Social Cat isn’t necessarily looking for heavily edited photos and sophisticated decor, they do need quality content.

Here are their judging criteria for profile content:

• An aesthetically pleasing feed
• Profile content that shows an influencer’s passions and interests
• Products reviews where they can see a certain level of involvement in brand collaborations
• A concise bio that reflects an influencer’s personality and interests
• Recent Reels or Stories related to product reviews

They look for authentic engagement in the following ways:

• Descriptive captions
• Relevant hashtags
• Conversational and genuine comments

They accept profiles with fewer followers if:

• They have a high number of posts along with above-average content quality
• They have a high and authentic engagement rate
• They have good post captions
• They have relevant hashtags
• They have up to five brand collaborations already done

Ideally, they are looking for profiles that have a ratio of 3:1 on the number of followers vs the number of accounts followed.

One of the most important rules to get accepted on their platform is that an account with 3000 followers must follow less than 1000 accounts back, ideally less than 500. They claim that exceptions to this rule are rare.

• Post Count: The Social Cat team reviews the number of posts on an influencer’s profile. They only approve the ones that have a minimum of 100 posts, Feed, or IG Reels.

If a profile has excellent content and a great aesthetic, they also approve profiles that may have 50-100 posts

Content Ownership Rights

As a brand, you always want to protect your investment. When you pay an influencer to promote your product, you want to ensure you can continue using that content even if the relationship ends.

On the Social Cat platform, brands have the ownership rights to use created content by the micro-influencer in perpetuity and on any marketing channel, including ads.

Check Previous Campaigns

Before you sign any influencer, you want to make sure that the content they create is on-brand for you. It’s important to know that they understand your target audience and can produce content that resonates with them.

To ensure that you find the real deal, Social Cat enables you to check an influencer’s previous campaigns on the platform. So if you're looking to work on an important campaign, make sure to check an influencer’s other brand collaborations before you match with them.

Create Gifted Influencer Campaigns

Gifted collaborations are a great way to get started with influencer marketing without breaking the bank. By partnering with an influencer who is willing to promote your brand in exchange for free products or services, you can reach a larger audience.

The Social Cat platform recognizes this fact and provides an option to create gifted influencer campaigns.

While I’ve seen a lot of other popular influencer marketing platforms, this is a unique feature that I haven’t come across often.

Creator Content Library

Want to protect your brand's reputation by ensuring that influencer content is accurate and free of any offensive or misleading statements?

The Social Cat platform has got you covered. They have a special content space where influencers can upload their content. Brands will receive the content here for download in HD to repurpose.

Creator Reviews

As a brand, it is important to see what other brands think of the creator before signing them up. This will give you an idea of their work ethic and whether or not they are reliable.

Reviews from other brands can also provide valuable insights into a creator’s creative process and their ability to execute briefs. It will help you gauge if a particular creator is a right fit for your brand campaigns.

Manually Monitored Reporting System

Brands can access Social Cat’s manually monitored reporting system to keep a tight eye on the campaign numbers. If something goes wrong, their team steps in to help you navigate through any issues.

How To Use Social Cat

Now that you are familiar with the main features, I want to show you how to use the Social Cat platform. For this Social cat review, I created a free account to give you a basic idea of the registration process and what you can do on the platform.

Please note that I haven’t actually collaborated with micro-influencers via the platform. The purpose of this review is to talk about the interface and the functionality of the platform.

On the Social Cat platform, you get two options:

• Sign Up as a Brand
• Sign Up as a Creator

For this Social Cat review, I am only focusing on what it is like for brands to sign up on the platform.

Step 1: Pick Your Target Audience

The first step is to pick the target audience that you want to target for your influencer marketing campaign. You can select multiple options from the ones given. For this review, I am going to choose women and men in the age group of 25-44.

Step 2: Select Relevant Topics

The next step is to select relevant topics based on your business niche. There are a lot of options so you are sure to find something related to your niche.

Step 3: Choose Your Location

In this step, you can choose the location where your business operates. Keep in mind that Social Cat will show you content creator profiles based on the location you enter at this stage.

So, if your business is US-based but you want to work with creators in Australia, you should choose “Australia” as your choice here.

Step 4: Enter Your Business Location

When you enter your business location, Social cat tries to match you with local creators. You can also choose to skip this step if you want.

Step 5: Choose the Right Social Media Channel

Next, decide if you want to get matched with creators on TikTok or on Instagram. You can also choose both social media platforms here. For this review, I am only going with “Instagram.”

Step 6: Choose the Type of Creators You Want to Work With

Select the niches for the influencer profiles that you’d like to see. Make sure this choice is in sync with the option you chose in Step 2.

Step 7: Choose Appropriate Collaboration Types

You can choose the type of collaboration you’d like to have with influencers. Would you like them to showcase your product via Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories, Photo Grid, or Video Grid?

You can choose all options too if you are open to all kinds of collaborations. If you’ve chosen TikTok as your preferred social media channel, these options will look slightly different for you.

Step 8: Add Your Public Review Link

If you want creators to leave you a review on public review sites, you can add a link here. As a small business, it can help you gain credibility. You can also choose to skip this step.

Step 9: Select the Minimum Number of Followers For Creator Profiles

At this stage, you can choose the lowest number of followers you would like your creators to have. You can even find creators who have above 5000 followers.

Step 10: Describe Your Product

Write a short description of the product that you’d like influencers to promote for you. It is recommended that you add price details here so creators can have a better idea of what you are offering.

Step 11: Choose Your Campaign Goal

Pick a campaign goal that best describes what you want to achieve with your campaign: Create more user-generated content, boost awareness, or increase your sales.

Step 12: Choose How You Would Compensate Influencers

Would you like to gift your products, pay a fixed fee, or offer a commission on each sale to your influencers? Pick whichever option works for you. If you are open to all three options, you can select all three as well.

Step 13: Pick a Plan

At this step, you can choose which plan you’d like to sign up for. Social Cat gives you a 7-day free trial for all three plans listed below. The free trial involves 0 risk, if you are not happy with it, you can cancel before it transitiones to a paid subscription.

Once you enter your credit card details, you can access the platform for free for a week. Social Cat starts charging you at the end of the week based on the plan you choose here, if you would like to continue.

Special Offer: Use code – SHANE25 – to get a 25% discount for your first month on Social Cat, available for the monthly plans.

The whole registration is super straightforward and took me about 3-5 minutes to complete. Pretty smooth, I must say. So, what’s next?

Here is a quick overview:

Once you sign up, Social Cat matches your brand with creators in their database. These matches are based on the products that creators are using and what kind of brands they are interested in. The platform also takes into account your niche, location, budget, campaign goals, and other details.

They repeat the process every month until you find relevant matches. When you start getting proposals, you can decide which collaboration requests you’d like to accept.

Social Cat sends you both an introductory email to break the ice. From there, you can take the conversation forward.

Customer Support

For assistance, Social Cat has a special Help Center on their website. While I was testing the platform, I checked out a couple of articles and they are very informative. But if you’d like to write about a specific problem, you can use the Contact tab on their website.

You can also send an email directly to joe@thesocialcat.com. They typically respond within a few hours. You can also call them at +44 7933 441 043 or send them a message on Instagram.

Comparison with Other Platforms

Social Cat is unique among the best influencer marketing platforms because of its unique matchmaking process. The profile is set up such that their algorithm can understand the needs of businesses and creators.

It’s like Tinder for brands and creators, but likely to be more effective! They make a match such that both parties will be happy with the arrangement.

Upfluence, and Heepsy may be the top influencer marketing platforms out there but Social Cat has a completely different target audience.

The cost of influencer marketing can go into thousands of dollars or more. But what about those businesses that don’t have a huge budget? That’s Social Cat’s main audience.

The platform has a strong focus on small businesses that may not have a big budget but still want to reach a wide audience.

Their gifted campaigns allow businesses to get their products or services in front of potential customers at no cost, which is a great way to get started with influencer marketing.

Social Cat’s pricing model is affordable so small businesses can get started with influencer marketing more easily.

FAQs

Social Cat Review: What’s My Verdict?

Wrapping up this Social Cat review, I firmly believe this platform it's a great solution for businesses planning influencer marketing campaigns. Its ease of use and the extensive range of features it offers are particularly beneficial for small business owners. I definitely suggest considering Social Cat for your influencer marketing needs.

If you have any inquiries regarding the details shared in this Social Cat review, please post them in the comments. I’m here to help with any questions you might have.

Special Offer: Use code – SHANE25 – to get a 25% discount for your first month on Social Cat, available for the monthly plans.