Seed funding for Indonesian influencer marketing platform SociaBuzz

Indonesian influencer marketing site SociaBuzz announced today it recieved a seed round investment of US$62,500 from an angel investor who prefers to remain anonymous. The investment will be used to drive SociaBuzz’s business development and grow the team.

SociaBuzz is a platform that makes it possible for advertisers to tap into the power of “buzzers” – people with popular social media accounts and a high number followers – in order to promote their services or products on social media. Since its launch in March 2012, SociaBuzz claims to have built up a network of 2,700 such buzzers and served large local clients such as Honda, Toyota and Bank Central Asia.

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SociaBuzz co-founder Rade Tampubolon claims that “influencer marketing” is becoming increasingly important for successful marketing. According to Tampubolon, many brands have made influencer marketing a central aspect of their marketing strategies. However, Tampubolon believes reaching out and working with a large number of buzzers is not an easy task and results in a lot of work. He adds that SociaBuzz’s mission is to make influencer marketing easier so that it may become possible to do with just a few clicks. This way, marketers can focus on more important tasks.

“We will keep increasing the number of our buzzers, so that advertisers can have more options and can pick the buzzers who are most relevant to their promotions,” explains Tampubolon.

The Jakarta-based startup faces competition from IdbuzzNetwork, which is part of IdblogNetwork, and indirectly competes with Zocko, a platform which invites buzzers to promote items by via link-sharing.

This article originally appeared in Indonesian, written by Lina Noviandari. Information for this story was translated and modified.