Blogging 101: What does #Gifting Mean?

My one year anniversary of being a blogger is quickly approaching, and as I reflect upon the last year I’m struck by all that I have learned. One of the things that I learned early on that became a game-changer for my social reach was utilizing hashtags. Now, I don’t know if any of my followers pay attention to my hashtags, but if you do, you will recognize these:

#Ad

#sponcon

#sponsored

#gifted

#gifting

#complimentary

Basically, these hashtags are indications of some sort of collaboration with a brand. Even though I have been blogging for almost a year now, I have been fortunate enough to be able to use these in my posts. And I use these because I am required to. The Federal Trade Commission or FTC, requires that influencers, bloggers, content creators – whatever you want to call us – disclose that we are being paid or gifted product for the post on social media. In fact, if you do not disclose the partnership you can be fined by the FTC. Now, I’m not a blogger with a huge following, but I do want to follow the rules and avoid any type of penalty.

Now, what do these individual hashtags mean? Well, let me break it down for you.

#Sponcon, #Sponsored, or #Ad

#Sponcon, #sponsored, and #ad indicates that the collaboration is paid. #Sponcon is a shorthand version of sponsored content. Content creators use this whenever there is a monetary transaction taking place. That transaction can be $15 for a dedicated grid post and a story (I was actually paid this for my first ever paid collaboration) or you could be a really big blogger with high engagement from a dedicated audience and charge $1000+ for the very same thing. Either way, if there is money involved, you’re going to use/see #sponcon, #sponsored, or #ad.

#Gifted, #Gifting, or #Complimentary

The other type of transaction that takes place in the influencer marketing world is giftings. Giftings is when a brand is providing you with free product in exchange for a dedicated grid post, story, blog, IGTV, review, etc. In my first year of blogging, I have seen and taken part in more giftings than sponsored posts for two reasons: The smaller brand that I have worked with do not have a budget to pay the creators they work with yet and I was selling myself short. So, #gifted, #gifting, and #complimentary all indicate the same type of relationship – free product in exchange for promotion. You will see less of #complimentary than #gifted or #gifting. In my experience, #complimentary is almost exclusively used by the Influenster program, but it does mean the same thing as the other two hashtags.

There you go! Now you know a little more about the lingo content creators use, specifically when we are working with brands. If you have any questions about #sponcon, #gifting, collaborations, or blogging as a whole, please let me know in the comments. I am more than happy to answer your questions, and you never know you might inspire me to write a dedicated blog post about it.