Much has been written recently about the rising influence of third-party bloggers. When consumers are researching brands and products, bloggers are among their most sought after resources.  This growing trend hasn’t been lost on marketers, either—37 percent of marketers say blogs are the most valuable type of content marketing.

Questions about Blogger Marketing

This led the experts at K&A to start asking questions. How do marketers find the right bloggers? Which bloggers are the most influential? Which ones know the most about building materials and construction? What kind of compensation do they expect?

In the spring of 2014, Kleber & Associates began our research. We made it our mission to identify the top bloggers for construction and building materials, and develop a definitive method for estimating their value. The result: after 10 months of work, we believe we have the most complete blogger list in the industry, as well as a unique compensation scale we call the “K&A Fair Market Value.”

Analyzing the BlogosphereBarGraph

With more than 172 million Tumblr pages and 75.8 million WordPress blogs on the web, our first step was narrowing our focus to the best blogs within our niche—construction and building products. We compiled a comprehensive list based on Alexa rankings, Klout scores, networking, word of mouth and other sources, then carefully analyzed and scrutinized every blogger on our list, using 10 separate criteria.

Then, using good ole’ fashioned detective work, we whittled the list down from over 5,000 bloggers to our current list of the top 500 home improvement and building product experts. Every blogger has been fully vetted and assigned a fair market value score.

Assessing Blog Value

We prefer keeping our fair market value formula confidential. However, we can tell you it factors in web traffic, independent SEO/Search rankings and social media stats with a focus on engagement rates.  Our Blogger Network is already being used with tremendous success by several K&A client brands. For example, WoodTrac ceiling systems have been featured on three highly influential blogs in the past 90 days. Before our research, it would have been a guessing game on what a client should pay or how to approach a blogger. Using K&A Fair Market Value, we had the leverage we needed to help ensure the best rates.

To learn more about the K&A Blogger Network, shoot us an email: info@kleberandassociates.com