My new favorite sport is antagonizing direct marketing guru (read "dinosaur"; JUST KIDDING!) Bob Bly, who suggests in his latest blog post that there are only a couple of dozen marketing blogs out there. I know there are a heck of a lot more out there than that, but I’m too busy/lazy to spend a couple of hours compiling a huge list of them.

So it occurred to me that maybe you’d all help me with the work. Please list your blog in the comments field if (and only if) it’s a marketing-oriented blog (I’ll delete submissions I deem off-topic). Feel free to add others you know of. (<a href> tags are allowed in comments.) And spread the word; if successful, this post can serve as a resource to those looking for such blogs. If enough participate, I’ll update this post with the list so it’s easier to scan.

Otherwise, I’ll just look like a dope if only four of you bother… <gulp>

UPDATE:

The response to this challenge wasn’t quite as overwhelming as I’d hoped, so like usual, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. Therefore, I spent the last hour surfing marketing blogs, and let me tell you something, there are a lot more than a couple dozen marketing blogs out there. Suffice it to say this is just the tip of the ice berg, but one that I’ll update from time to time (it’s a TypeList, so that’s easy).

Darren Barefoot

>From the "Now Why Didn’t I Think of That?" Department, blogger Darren Barefoot ("Technical Writer, Playwright, Raconteur, Miscellanist") has put his services up for bid on eBay with the auction item title "Rent a Blogger – Online Marketing and Technology Expert: Improve Your Company’s Online Presence and Bottom Line." Barefoot credits Jeremy Wright of Ensight with the idea, as Jeremy also has a similar auction going on.

Both writers are offering their blogging services for three months to the winning company, with 5-10 blog posts per week. More than two days left in Wright’s auction, but bidding is already up to $1,500, and with more than six days to go for Barefoot’s, bidding is up to $500, as of this writing (I’ll update on the close prices).

I suspect there will be more of these to follow and that these auctions will be cited in the future to gage the market value of blogging services.

UPDATE:
The first of the two auctions, for three months of Jeremy Wright’s services, ended today (Dec 3), with the winning bid at $3,350 by Inkspress.com.

FURTHER UPDATE:
Darren Barefoot’s auction had a big close (over $1,000 added to the bid in the last few hours) to close at  $2,025.00 by eKiosk (not clear who that is).

eBay: Rent-a-Blogger

I could be wrong about this (and I’m sure I’ll hear from you about it if I am), but as far as I’m aware, this in the first blog out of the Gray Lady. Sure took her time about it, no?

NYT Blog: Pogue’s Posts

Amusing. After lecturing us that blogs are stupid, Bob Bly has launched his own blog. Who’s surprised? Resistance is futile.

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Various blog stats. Use at your own risk.

ClickZ: The Blogosphere By the Numbers

This could easily be my favorite blog if they published one.

Well…okay, top 10, anyway.

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I have been woefully remiss in not yet pointing out this event, scheduled for Seattle next January 24-25:

This event will show you how your business can leverage current real-world blogging techniques, tools and platforms to promote and enhance your ventures.

Speakers include Brian Alvey, co-founder of Weblogs, Inc., Glenn Fleishman, old buddy and tech guru (I love the photo of you with hair, Glenn!), Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s tech evangelist and biz blogger supreme, Steve Broback, co-founder of the summit and formerly co-founder of Thunder Lizard Productions, where I had been a regular speaker ‚Äî among others. I had also been invited to be a speaker, but unfortunately with the new full-time job, I couldn’t get away. Lots of great sessions. Sounds like it should be a winner.

UDPATE:
I just read an email Broback sent me several days ago explaining they have a cool sponsorship policy offering multiple levels of recognition, from a link on their site to the ability host a reception, with a clever twist: while the high-end sponsorships cost up to nearly $10,000, they can also be had for free by bloggers, so long as you drive a certain number of visits to their site. At the low end, a "Blogger" sponsorship requires no amount of clicks, you just have to link to them. For the Platinum sponsorship, where you get all the opportunities to be recognized, including the hosted party in your name — a $9,900 value — you just have to drive a mere 25,000 clicks to the site.

Only strange thing is they don’t actually lay all this out on the site, so far as I can see. Broback emailed me a PDF that explained it all. Odd. Not really in the spirit of the blogosphere to make you request a PDF via email.

UPDATE:
The PDF describing the terms of the sponsorship thingy is now online.

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Michael Gartenberg, VP and research director at Jupiter Research, writes this piece with three key pieces of advice:

1. Know what’s being said about your company on other people’s weblogs
2. Go slowly when creating official corporate blogs
3. Establish guidelines for workers who identify themselves as company employees while doing personal blogging

Computerworld: Business Weblogs Are Double-Edged

AdWeek has gotten into the blog game, with something cheeky and Adrants-esque. Seems to be experiencing launch technical hiccups (domain AfFreak.com takes forever to resolve actual ULR adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/ and the page comes up with code garbage like this

‘
  document.write(markup)
–>

but we imagine that too shall pass).

Steve Hall at Adrants provides more perspective.

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I know I should just let it go, but I can’t.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a screed here in reaction to an opinion piece in DMNews about how useless blogs supposedly are for marketing by direct marketing copy writer Robert Bly. Then, DMNews’s editor, Tad Clarke, followed that up with another commentary about the stink bloggers raised in response to Bly’s column, in which Clarke said Bly found "not one iota of proof" that blogs were "the next big thing in marketing."

Well, I’m not sure who suggested blogs were the "next big thing," but the idea that Bly had since found "not one iota of proof" that they were a good marketing tactic, after I’d given at least one iota if not several to that effect, got me all miffed again. So, I wrote Clarke a letter to the editor with further a piece of my mind. Not only has he not yet published it, but he didn’t even acknowledge receipt of it. So, rather than let a good rant go to waste, I offer it to you, below:

I know that Mr. Bly read my blog post in response to his article (because he emailed one of my friends about it, with his panties all in a twist).

Granted, I was juvenilely sarcastic, but such is the prerogative of bloggers. Nonetheless, I cited more than a dozen examples of companies and individuals making money off of blogs or at least credibly citing their marketing power, from Bill Gates and Jonathan Schwartz (president of Sun Microsystems) down to several one-man brands. What would convince him, I wonder? This is his idea of being open minded? Who exactly has he interviewed on the subject who is credibly an expert?

Bill Gates, founder and chairman of Microsoft; Jonathan Schwartz, president and COO of Sun Microsystems; Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman PR; Stephen Jurvetson, managing director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (leading Silicon Valley VC firm); Mary Meeker, senior analysist, Morgan Stanley; Alan Meckler, CEO of Jupitermedia; Charlene Li, principal analyst with Forrester Research; George Soros, billionaire financier and philanthropist; Mark Cuban, billionaire entrepreneur; Seth Godin, best-selling author, marketing guru and former VP of direct marketing at Yahoo!; Jerry Michalski, president of Sociate and former managing editor of Esther Dyson’s Release 1.0: all bloggers and/or blog evangelists. All of these folks know less about marketing and the value of a dollar than Robert Bly?

No, blogs are not going to steal huge share of marketing dollars from traditional marketing tactics, but they don’t really need to in order to be effective, as they’re redonkulously cheap to operate. And granted, their best application may not direct marketing (despite a few examples I cite where they are being used effectively for that). I’m not aware that blog evangelists are claiming that’s what they’re best at. But they are good for many purposes in a marketing context, including brand evangelism/thought leadership (akin to Mr. Bly decision to advance himself as an "expert" by writing a column in your publication; "dead tree medium" was a joke he apparently didn’t appreciate), customer support, dynamic content for otherwise static site, Google fodder, and an opportunity to join in a genuine conversation with customers and prospects outside of the intolerable din of marketing garbage we’re all bombarded with every day (dare I say by the likes of Mr. Bly’s customers), which we’ve all been conditioned to ignore or at least treat with great skepticism.

Mr. Bly is presumably one of those died-in-the-wool DMers who sees the world in black and white: direct response good, all other marketing a waste of time. I don’t disparage direct response, but I believe that the way customers buy is a bit more subtle than that. I believe that trust in the integrity of a company is going to becomes ever more important to the bottom line in our media- and marketing-saturated world, which is exactly where blogs can be effective. He may want to stick his head in the sand and ignore the validation that companies like Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Nike, General Motors, Audi and countless other companies large and small have provided for the effectiveness of blogs because he feels personally threatened by them or whatever, but you’re doing a disservice to your readers to let him advance his evidence-free opinions on the subject without taking seriously the proponents of this burgeoning medium.

Continuing to demonstrate that it understands and values blogs, Microsoft has launched a blog to complement its new search service.

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This piece speculates that the big money in blogs will be in the blog tools. Maybe, but I don’t understand why any company would pay $50,000 and $150,000, according to the article, for blog software from KnowNow, a company I’ve never heard of, when it could pay for a multi-seat site license from Six Apart for Movable Type for just over $1,000. The company also mentions Open Text, another blog publishing system I know relatively little about, as well as Cymfony, a PR tool for monitoring blog posts, among other things (with a name that stupid, I am willing to predict its imminent doom). The article also perpetuates the myth that AlwaysOn is a blog. (I used to keep an open mind about that, but I’ve come to agree with most bloggers that AlwaysOn is so not a blog.)

BusinessWeek: Betting on Tools that Power Blogs

As B.L. noted in her post about a CBS MarketWatch interview on the subject, Forrester Research’s analyst Charlene Li has released an 18-page report that concludes blogs are an effective business tool. From the executive summary:

Although Weblogs (blogs) are currently used by only a small number of online consumers, they’ve garnered a great deal of corporate attention because their readers and writers are highly influential. Forrester believes that blogging will grow in importance, and at a minimum, companies should monitor blogs to learn what is being said about their products and services. Companies that plan to create their own public blogs should already feel comfortable having a close, two-way relationship with users. In this document we recommend best practices, including a blogging code of ethics, and metrics that will show the impact of blogs on business goals.

Forrester: Blogging: Bubble or Big Deal? When and How Businesses Should Use Blogs

Direct marketing copywriter Robert Bly argues that blogs are a big waste of time:

Should marketers add blogging to their arsenal of tactics? Will it help sell more products and services? Or is it, as I suspect, a complete waste of time ‚Äî a pure vanity publication that won’t pay you back even one thin dime for your effort?

How quaint. Apparently quite the online marketing expert (his own brochureware site uses frames; hoot!), Bly writes:

I have yet to find a single marketer who says that a business blog has gotten him a positive return on investment. I know plenty of online marketers who make millions of dollars a year from their Web sites and e-zines, for instance. But I’ve not seen a blog whose creator says that the time and effort spent on it has directly put money into his pocket.

Blog ROI. He cracks me up. For starters, this is like arguing religion or politics to try to talk to an die-hard direct marketer about anything one click-through removed from a sale. Why not talk ROI about public relations or public speaking or customer service or brand advertising, for that matter. (No, it isn’t branding that sells Nike (a company that has seen the wisdom to invest in blogs, incidentally), it’s all that great telemarketing, direct mail and email newsletters, I’m sure.)

But I’ll take the bait.

Let’s be pedantic: ROI of course stands for “return on investment.” So, what is the investment in setting up a blog? Hmmm. Using Blogger.com software and Blogspot hosting, the cash investment is a big fat zero, of course, like many other blog softwares, but let’s assume you go all in and buy a multi-seat licence for Movable Type 3.x and you pay for hosting above and beyond your existing web site, plus an over-priced web developer, you’re talking an investment to get set up of $2,000 to maybe $10,000 if you’re a complete idiot and hire the most expensive blog designer on the planet. More likely, if you’re a largish company, you’ll get someone in IT to set it up for nothing in a few hours. Beyond that, the only other “investment” is 10 minutes here, an hour there, as you’re inspired to write. Or, maybe you hire someone, but most bloggers don’t know the value of a dollar and can be had cheap. (I know of what I speak: I run a web site call “Business Blog Consulting.”) Point is, it’s an extremely low-cost medium. Makes running an email newsletter look like an expensive proposition, not to mention a royal pain in the ass.

So, can blogging earn back the “investment” ranging from nothing to a few thousand bucks? Bob writes it “won’t pay you back even one thin dime” and he hasn’t “seen a blog whose creator says that the time and effort spent on it has directly put money into his pocket.” Sounds like his research was exhaustive.

Just to clear the palate, let’s give at least a nod to ad-supported blogs: I know that Rafat Ali, Tig Tillinghast and Steve Hall are making more or less full-time livings off of their business blogs, not to mention Nick Denton, Jason Calacanis and Henry Copeland who are betting on much bigger commerical ad-supported blog plays, so far with every sign of success.

But Bly is talking about marketing, so let’s stick to marketing. How about BizNetTravel, a travel agency (and former client of mine), who credits its blog (more than a year old) with driving a significant amount of business (I was paid regularly for more than a year for my blogging services; I can’t see this small business regularly flushing money down the toilet without seeing a return on that investment). Denton recently bought the rights to a film with an affinity to one of his blogs, as noted in a story in the New Yorker, and his director of business development (yes, he has a director of business development) told me the other day it’s selling like hotcakes. MightyGoods is taking an affiliate marketing spin on a blog; I don’t know details of how her business is doing, but I think it’s a great idea. T-shirtKing.com says its blog is the best direct marketing program it has in its arsenal, out-performing its email newsletter, which was burning out. Keiko Groves is making enough money selling her original clothing through her blog to put herself through college.

But these are all small businesses. Earlier today I noted that Jupiter Research claims that it has tracked several business leads to its blogs. I know something of Jupiter’s prices: one contract would be more than enough to justify all the development costs and hours of its analysts’ time. Or, if that’s not compelling enough, what about Sun Microsystems, whose president and COO, Jonathan Schwartz, writes a blog and told Business Week he “first suspected that his blog was a success when his salespeople began reporting that customers were reading his posts and sealing deals faster.” Not convinced? How about Bill Gates, a man who knows the value of a dollar, raving about how great blogs are. Oh, and let’s not forget Howard Dean who raised millions of dollars though his campaign’s blog and basically revolutionized politics forever in the process.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. In fact, that’s exactly why I started this blog: to catalog all the evidence of this trend. I have to agree with Steve Hall’s reaction to Bly’s column: he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. One gets the sense he’s only read about blogs in magazines. What else explains why he’s still writing in that archaic dead-tree medium? (Yeah, blogs are a waste of time with no provable ROI, but writing a one-time opinion piece is a magazine, whose web page doesn’t even hyperlink to Bly’s crappy site, is ROI-riffic.)

Oh, and how did I discover Bly’s article in the first place? Through DMNews.com’s email newsletter? Har! Like I need to subscribe to another email newsletter (or that I’d trust my email address to a company with “direct marketing” in their name). No, through a blog — duh.

DMNews: Can Blogging Help Market Your Product?

If you can get past the corny lead without puking, the story suggests that Jupiter Research’s blogs are actually driving real business leads:

The at-times offbeat journals are stirring sales leads from clients who otherwise might not have contacted Jupiter, says David Schatsky, chief of research at JupiterMedia’s Jupiter Research unit.
“One example is tech vendors whose marketers are checking to see if Jupiter mentions their products and what we say about them,” Schatsky said.
The company can’t say just how much business the blogs have generated. But Schatsky says scores of potential clients have contacted Jupiter because of the blogs.

Investor’s Business Daily: Blogs Bring A Boost To Jupiter Research

When it comes to making money off a blog, Columnist Lou Dolinar says it perfectly:

The odds of making a living by writing a blog are a lot like the odds of a garage band turning out a hit album: It can happen, but you better enjoy the music and hang on to your day job in the meantime.

Much attention to Blogads, which he calls a “brilliant idea,” which may be a bit hypish, but I’m all for my buddy Henry’s service.

NY Newsday: Bloggers Adopt a Revenue Stream More Lucrative Than Panhandling

This is big: the biggest car company in the world now has a blog. Coming on the heals of Mazda’s boneheaded faux-blog embarrassment, GM shows the way for companies to blog right: transparent, honest blog about cars clearly coming from GM. I would appreciate a mission statement or About This Blog kind of page somewhere (I admit, as someone who hasn’t owned a car in 20 years, I don’t know what a "smallblock engine" is exactly, and I don’t know who Ed Koerner, the site’s main blogger, is either), but it’s a pretty good start for such a huge firm. Stay tuned.

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