Tris Hussey today posted about a debate that has gone through the blogosphere like wildfire.  I too have been following this furor about the social press release and can see that it is clearly at a crossroad in its evolution.  I hear screams of kill the press release and others saying that the press release is not dead and each side has its own strong beliefs.  So as business blogging advocates where do we see the social media press release and what is its future?  I’m sure we could have numerous opinions within the small ranks here.

It seems that everyone has a different idea of how they want information to be presented.  The mainstream media has long had the press release in it’s bag of tricks, but with blogging becoming more and more of an information portal, their appears to be new players in the game that bring with them their own rules.  Bloggers want the information quickly and in such a way as to relay that information in a format that can be easily posted. I, like Tris, can see that a new animal will be launched soon with a new meaning and with different rules.  Until that time the debate continues and I will be sitting back to see the lines drawn in the sand.  What side of the line do you stand on and where do you see the social media press release finishing?

Tags: Tris Hussey, Social Media, Press Release, PR Blogs

Another CEO has thrown his hat into the blogosphere, and decided that a blog is the best way to communicate with the customer.  Bill Marriott, CEO and Chairman of Marriott International had his initial blog post on January 16, 2007.  He realizes the importance of blogs by telling us up front:

I’ve checked out Jonathan Schwartz’s blog at Sun Microsystems and "Randy’s Journal" at Boeing. I’ve listened to Senator Barack Obama’s blog podcasts. I know blogs will be a hot communications tool in the 2008 Presidential campaign.

He finishes this thought after what I consider to be a rather long post, with:

Bottom line, I believe in communicating with the customer, and the Internet gives me a whole new way of doing that on a global scale. I’d rather engage directly in dialogue with you because that’s how we learn and grow as a company.

At the time of this publication, he had already received 49 comments.  It seems that he has already made a big splash on his first day.  This is a blog that should be added to your feed reader to see if he actually posts regularly and how he does with the communication tool. Welcome to the blogosphere Mr. Marriott.  I wonder if all of the Marriott’s will provide free hi-speed wifi to every blogger now?

Tags: CEO Blogs, Marriott International, Bill Marriott, Jonathan Schwartz, Randy’d Journal, Boeing, Barack Obama, Wifi

We have told many of our clients that ask us about the Blogger platform that we would rather they did not use Blogger as the application for their company blog.  The reason was simple, it was a matter of branding.  We felt and still feel that blogging can help strengthen a company’s brand.  The problem with using the Blogger application was not that it was a free service or that it is not as easy to use, it was because the domain that was required had to have "blogspot" in its address.  This required companies to share their URL with another brand. 

The people at Blogger have upgraded their service to include the ability to now use a custom domain.

If you already own a domain named, say, mysite.com and want your blog to be served at that address instead of at a blogspot.com address, we can host your blog on that domain for you — for free. Your old Blog*Spot address will forward to your new custom domain, so the switch will be seamless for your readers.

This is a good move by Blogger and will open up new and possible future customers that will be using their service.

Tags: Blogger, Blog Applications, free hosting, business blogging

According to Nick Wilson of Performancing.com, the proposed purchase of portions of Performancing.com has not come to fruition.  Nick stated in his post:

After much discussion, we’ve decided that the deal proposed by PayPerPost just isn’t right for us or our community. It’s regrettable that we should part ways as I still feel that Dan and Ted are stand up guys breaking new ground, but in the end, the deal was just not right for them or us.

In addition, Nick reports that Performancing is no longer going to support their metrics application and are releasing the software to the community for their use while Performancing continues to lend a hand where they can and to hosting the package.  In a classy move, Nick refers people to the new release of the Feedburner stats package which was just launched. I’m hoping to see a review of that service from a few of the contributors here.

Nick goes on to reveal the future of Performancing stating:

Well, more details to follow but the short story is that we will continue to develop Performancing Partners, our growing blog advertising network and focus the Performancing domain entirely to that end as well as our "grassroots" community — We’re proud of what we’ve helped build here, and want to continue to evolve, develop and help the community grow — the business of blogging isn’t always easy, but it’s easier when you can get some help from peers 🙂

Finally, it is stated that the Performancing blog editor for Firefox, now known as ScribeFire will launched separately under its own brand.  I think this is the perfect move for Performancing and a smart business decision to leverage this tool that has been adopted by a great number of bloggers both professional and amateur. 

I am going to try to follow up with Nick as this story progresses as I’m sure there will be more information that will be of interest to those in the blogging community. 

Tags: Performancing, PayPerPost, PPP, ScribeFire, Feedburner, Performancing Partners, Nick Wilson, blog stats

Over at SNCR, some of our fellow blog evangelists and experts are predicting what to expect in the coming year.  Our own Debbie Weil and Sally Falkow are quoted:

From Debbie Weil:

We’re unhooking from our computers and will be getting much more online info via our cell phones, PDAs, etc. Beware the marketer who doesn’t remember this and doesn’t format blog posts, etc. to be read
on a cell phone or Treo!

The corporate blogosphere has gone multi-media. If you’re not including podcasts, embedded video and cool images with your blog, then you’re soooo 2005.

From Sally Falkow:

This has been the year when RSS came into its own. The release of IE 7 with the reader built into the browser has finally made it really simple. Jupiter Research found that 30% of large companies are deploying RSS due to customer demand.

2007 will see an explosion of web content syndication with RSS and the sharing of content on social media sites. Already one in twenty web visits is to one of the top social media sites according to HitWise. And, these sites are driving traffic to search engines and verticals like travel and telecom.

Corporate communications professionals and PR agencies will have to wrap their wits around online PR and social media.

I would be curious what the rest of the group here thinks will be the outcome of 2007?  What are some of your predictions for the Blogging Future?

Tags: Debbie Weil, Sally Falkow, SCNR, Blogging, 2007

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Yahoo has announced and it’s reported by Marketing Vox that Yahoo is going to produce its own answer to social media and the market place by creating what has been deemed Yahoo’s "Brand Universes".  Marketing Vox reports:

Criticized for missing the social media explosion, Yahoo plans to leverage its social properties, such as Flickr and Del.icio.us, on behalf of advertisers in the hopes of partnering with "passion brands" to generate more ad revenue.

In the coming months, Yahoo will begin rolling out the first set of what it calls "brand universes" – dedicated areas on Yahoo for fans of a movie or product to congregate, share and connect with each other, reports Adweek. Unlike the brand areas on MySpace and YouTube, Yahoo is not asking marketers for ad dollars to build the sites. Instead, it itself has identified a batch of 100 "passion brands" to build dedicated areas for.

This seems like a logical step given the number of niche blogging networks popping up all over the blogosphere.  I have predicted before that a new advertising medium with blogs will be leveraging categories of blogs for specific advertisers.  Be it a category or in their term "universes" with the likes of blogging parents, health bloggers, and in their launch, gaming bloggers, it’s time for targeted advertising in Yahoo’s plans.

Tags: Yahoo, Branding Universes, Marketing Vox, blog networks

As I indicated in a comment in a post  I read today over at Kian’s blog,  I had to make my own sound in the echosphere. Yeah, I called an "echosphere" for a reason because Kian is experiencing something I have also experienced and continue to deal with like the feeling of having my eyes pried open with toothpicks and forced to watch I Love Lucy 24/7. I can only read Scoble’s take on a topic, or Winer’s thoughts about this and that, and what Doc told me today, so many times before I start to think about jumping out my office window.  In this case only 3 feet off the ground but nonetheless, totally whacked.

**Please note that I am completely  hypocritical in that statement 1. because I am envious of their traffic readership, and 2. the reason they are so easy to link to is because all I have to do is Google there last names, or in Doc’s case the word "Doc" and I get a first page search response.  This is a result of the echo chamber I complain of and using blogs to my preached point about SEO.**

With that said, let me explain the blogging echo chamber dilemma.  Blogs are real time.  As fast as something can be typed and the publish button pushed, words can be transmitted to readers all over the world.  When you have people that are gurus as I have mentioned above, everyone is excited to report what exciting thing they read today over at this popular blog.  If they are excited to report it, and you are also excited, and both of you blog it and make me click to go read it, you can see where you get caught up in that echo chamber or the "blogging fissure" (my phrase).

In keeping up with the blogging fissure or echo chamber continue reading this article at Bloggers For Hire.

According to a recent press release Google has agree to purchase YouTube for $1.65B in stock.

The press release:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., October 9, 2006 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction.  Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community.

The acquisition combines one of the largest and fastest growing online video entertainment communities with Google’s expertise in organizing information and creating new models for advertising on the Internet. The combined companies will focus on providing a better, more comprehensive experience for users interested in uploading, watching and sharing videos, and will offer new opportunities for professional content owners to distribute their work to reach a vast new audience.

"The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,â€? said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google.  “Our companies share similar values; we both always put our users first and are committed to innovating to improve their experience. Together, we are natural partners to offer a compelling media entertainment service to users, content owners and advertisers.â€?

“Our community has played a vital role in changing the way that people consume media, creating a new clip culture. By joining forces with Google, we can benefit from its global reach and technology leadership to deliver a more comprehensive entertainment experience for our users and to create new opportunities for our partners,� said Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube.  “I’m confident that with this partnership we’ll have the flexibility and resources needed to pursue our goal of building the next-generation platform for serving media worldwide.�

When the acquisition is complete, YouTube will retain its distinct brand identity, strengthening and complementing Google’s own fast-growing video business.  YouTube will continue to be based in San Bruno, CA, and all YouTube employees will remain with the company. With Google’s technology, advertiser relationships and global reach, YouTube will continue to build on its success as one of the world’s most popular services for video entertainment. 

The number of Google shares to be issued in the transaction will be determined based on the 30-day average closing price two trading days prior to the completion of the acquisition. Both companies have approved the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006.  

In other news, our own contributor here at BBC Jeremy Wright and his group at b5.media have secured financing from Brightspark and Rick Segal’s group at JL Albright Venture Partners for $2M.  This has caused quite the conversation to take place about the funding and Aaron Brazell has a good recap of what is being said about the funding.  Congratulations to Jeremy, Darren, Duncan and Shai on this great news.  I for one am excited for the prospects and I am also excited to see what blogging brings next.

Tags: Google, YouTube, Jeremy Wright, b5.media, Brightspark, Rick Segal, JL Albright Venture Partners, Aaron Brazell

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Shel Israel has put it eloquently in his post about Charlene Li and her attempt to measure blogging’s return on investment.  This is probably one of the most often asked questions when discussing business blogging.  Many executives today are always wanting to quantify blogs and stack them neatly in the corner and count them with the rest of the widgets to be indexed and categorized and their value put on the bottom line to report in the year end accounting.It’s just not quite that simple. 

Sure we can quantify traffic numbers through the use of site tracking applications, but how can you measure the return you get from communicating your company message to potential customers?  You could ask them how they heard about your service through surveys and questionnaires but is that really accurate?  Charlene discusses this:

One of the hardest things to do with blogs is to quantify the benefits, mainly because there’s a blog for almost everything under the sun. For example, you cant compare the ROI of Direct2Dell.com to Microsoft’s Jobsblog as they have completely different goals. Hence, measuring just traffic to a blog or the number of comments on a post means little unless the traffic or the comments are linked to value creation. This gets at the task of measuring intangibles – what does it mean for an additional visitor to come to the blog or contribute a comment?

Charlene breaks down blogging’s ROI into three different categories;

• Benefits;
• Costs; and
• Risks.

As I began to think of the benefits, costs and risks, I was able to make my own mental list of things that companies should consider in the measurement of success of a blog and its return on investment.

These of course are basic categories but for the most part it is a good model to get started. She raises some good points to consider in these areas, and I am looking forward to seeing the results of her study.  If you have any metrics you can provide to her for her study she is asking for feedback and a discussion.

Tags: Shel Israel, Charlene Li, ROI, Blog Investment, Corporate Blogging, Blog Risk, Blog Benefits, Blog Costs

Niall Cook yesterday posted about CIOs and their thoughts about corporate blogs in an article by Andy McCue at Silicon.com.  He and I both agree that perhaps CIOs are a little paranoid when referring to blogs, but in their defense, it is scary for companies to try something new.  Many businesses don’t want to be the leader in new and different ways of corporate communication.  They like to be copycat for the things that work.  Until companies begin to embrace blogs as an online marketing tool and a way to communicate with clients and customers, they will tread lightly, making sure that the water is warm before jumping in the pool.  The best example of the fear is exemplified in the comment by Rob Wharton, CIO of Colt Telecoms:

“Blogs are popular because they tend to represent personal opinions and personality rather than corporate messages. Therefore we need to take a great deal of care to ensure appropriate use so we don’t devalue the blog concept, whilst avoiding mayhem in what essentially needs to be a controlled message.”

The first part of the comment is spot on, that blogging is a personality of your company and what it represents, and that can be a frightful thought.  What Mr. Wharton needs to realize is consumers and customers want to see that personality and they don’t want the corporate speak of the controlled message.  The “mayhem” he discusses can be controlled if the personality is proper.  Until they see it in action blogs are still the boogey man of corporate communication.

An interesting development transpired here at BBC, a blog conversation broke out.  BBC contributor Stephan Spencer’s post PR Firms Comment Spamming? began a small conversation with the VP of Connors Communications.  Stephan had assumed a comment left on his blog about the long tail was a PR firm touting the latest client’s software program.  Although Stephan was mistaken in his assumption, through the use of blog mining or RSS (now I’m assuming), Mike Levin the person that left the comment, was able to correct his mistake.  In fact Mike was touting the application he had developed for Connors Communications. 

An open conversation was the result, and although Stephan and Mike may disagree on the use of comments on a blog, it is clear that their exchange was civil, and exactly what companies can use a blog to develop, an open commuincation with their customer or clients. 

Sorry Mike, now it’s my turn to provide some feedback.  After going to the Connors website, I wanted to rush to read your blog since you had indicated you were a passionate blogger in your comment.  I looked far and wide and could not seem to locate that blog.  On a whim I decided to check out the hard to find navigational site map link and searched a long time again before I found the link to your company blog.  You are correct by stating in the comments here:

I read many blogs, and sometimes I am compelled to leave comments, just as comments on our blog are welcome. I think if you read a few of my blog posts, you will find me to be sincere and on the level.

I read a few of your blog posts and you are definitely on the level and sincere.  The problem or at least what made it difficult was the navigation to your blog.  If you don’t make it easy to access those blog posts people may never get to find your wisdom.  A simple “Read Our Weblog” button or link in the top left with the rest of the navigation would prove to be beneficial to you and Connors Communications.

Great job gentleman and lets keep up the blogging conversation.

Kate Kaye of ClickZ reports that spending for marketing budgets for real estate is waining in the regular newsprint of old. Realtors are spending more and more of their ad budgets online. Citing a study performed by Classified Intelligence she indicates:

So, if 58 percent of real estate agents surveyed are raising ad budgets this year, where is the money going? Where they are spending the bulk of the money online, in fact, is on their Web sites. Twenty-six percent spent 10 percent and 29 percent spent 20 percent of their budgets there. Just 6 percent did not spend at all on their Web sites.

Impressive numbers but where are they actually spending the money? Andy Beal believes he knows where the revenue is going and that is to blogs. In fact as Mr. Beal states:

While Realtors are reducing their offline spend, the report shows there is no clear winner for online ad spend.

But I know the answer. Want to know where real estate agents are investing their online efforts? Blogging! Yep, I lose track of the number of new blogs that I see each day that relate to the real estate industry. But don’t just take my word for it, take a look at these charts…

Andy makes a good point about the discussion of real estate, but what is interesting to find are blogs about real estate that are being tracked by Technorati have reached nearly 1000. The reason I find this interesting is because less than a few weeks ago I did the exact same search for a presentation to a real estate agent and it turned up only half that number. Real estate blogs are popping up all over the blogosphere and Google shows that over 91,000,000 search results come from searching blogs for real estate. After doing some other snooping around it looks like some in the real estate businesses are spending huge amounts on pay per click campaigns and for paid search. Of these companies I was unable to find any of them working natural search through blogs. Being the investigator type, I was curious if I could find a blogger on Google that was in the denver area. Real estate always seems to be on the rise here in Denver so a realtor can be found on every street corner. I searched Denver Realtor. At the time of this writing, I was able to find that the number 2 search result turned up Kristal Kraft. It just so happens that Kristal is a realtor in Denver that has a blog. Today she has a beautiful picture of balloons being launched in the blue Colorado sky. I’ve not personally talked with Kristal but rest assured, if I was looking for a realtor in Denver, she may get my call only because I was able to find her easily.
Realtors in the real estate business are clamoring for a piece of the online pie, but those realtors that hop on the blog bandwagon will find themselves out ahead of those still trying to attract the home buyers and sellers via that thing rolled up on the driveway. A very small investment has given one blogger a leg up on the competition.

You never really know what good something is doing in the blogosphere until it is broken and you don’t have it anymore. Over the weekend, the popular spam assassin Akismet was down and out. I only knew this after logging in to my site and seeing over a 1000 comments. At first I thought I had been the newest news story out there and my popularity had soared through the roof based on something that was said in the land down under. I was far from that fantasy.

With as many as came through the filters in that period of time, I was convinced that Akismet would be worth it even if I had to pay for the service (my site does not make enough money to be paying for the service yet. They require big companies to buy a license fee). I spent most of the day cleaning up the comments and the trackbacks and wasted a better part of my day.

The folks at Akismet had the same thing to say on their blog:

“I’m really sorry about this, when things are working smoothly it’s easy to forget how much vile junk is actually being blocked day to day.”

The better part of this lesson is that the folks at Akismet could talk to me about their problem. I don’t mean to say that they called me up at home while I was cursing all things spam, but when I went to their blog they had the information right there on their site and I was able to know what happened in real time. I knew that the glitch came after an upgrade or some similar technical backend move and it caused the system to fail. I was given the problem, the solution and an apology. Here is a company that understands the power of a blog as a communication tool.

Reading an article today in Media Buyer Planner regarding the latest flap in online marketing and advertising, it became clear that not everyone can determine the traffic success of a website or blog. Even the experts have difficulty determining what stats and traffic a site has and the numbers behind them.

I use a number of stats packages and try to blend the results as I can. There are many companies offering a stats software package, and none of them seem to agree on one method and none of the numbers seem to equal the other. This is probably not a problem for the likes of business blogs that are not talking about millions of page views a month, but for the media buyers out there it is big business. Paying for eyeballs is what it’s all about.

How do you measure the traffic of your blog and what is the significance? These are some very often asked questions of clients wanting to know if their efforts are worth their time and money. They want to know what the return is for their investment.

Here are some of the packages available to businesses that can help them see what the numbers are and packages that provide invaluable metrics to blog publishers.

Google Analytics

StatCounter

Performancing Blog Metrics

Sitemeter

Mint

My Blog Log

Measure Map

This list is certainly not a a list of the entire realm of packages, but it is some of the more popular software packages available.

Tracking your blogs performance is important from a business standpoint because you can find out who is talking about you, find out who is visiting, how many are visiting and many other worthwile metrics that can help you with determining your blog’s success.

What makes a blog a success? Once you have hit your goals for what you are trying to accomplish with the blog, you will know. Stats are important to track, but they don’t make a blog a success or failure. That measurement can only be established by the publisher. My advice is to set out your goals and follow your stats.

We have been posting a recent theme here about monetizing blogs and how to make money with blogs and blogging.  We have ourselves jumped into marketing and advertising on this blog with ads.  For the average blogger off the street, it is difficult to understand the math associated with the various models of payments, be it “pay per click” or “cost per page views” or the many other models available.

Tom Hespos takes a look today at the math behind the direct response model of advertising and earnings and he had me hooked with his opening line:

“Take it from a media buyer. The blogosphere will not be able to sustain itself on the direct response “buy my crap” model that large sites use to cover their costs. Let’s do the math, shall we?”

Being a professional blogger and a person that derives income from my blogs I was immediately interested in why Tom felt my business model was headed for the drawing board.  As he runs through the numbers, I find myself nodding in agreement with the formula and his reasoning.  Then he hits me with the reality of my situation:

“AdSense and other pay-per-click programs that cater to direct response advertisers tend to pay for beer money to all but the biggest bloggers.”

Actually I don’t drink that much beer, and although I am not what he considers a big blogger, I think I get the gist of his statement.  Unless you are one of the A-list bloggers, you are merely wasting your time if you want to have any return on your blogging investment. The investment of time, effort, and perhaps a little money. What Tom does offer is a solution:

“If you do the math, it becomes obvious that in order to support itself, the blogosphere needs to sell itself not on response-generating ability, but on something else.”

“To me, that “something else” is audience engagement. And not the audience engagement the advertising community has been struggling to define.”

Thanks for the wake up call and your shot at a solution Tom. 

When I speak to client’s, they always want to learn about “Return On Investment” or ROI.  They want to know how many eyeballs they get and how much it will cost to get their campaign noticed using the blogosphere.  They don’t seem to understand the conversation that takes place in a blog model.  Hespos is discussing exactly that model.  The PPC model will soon run its effectiveness and with everyone on the planet with a blog, real estate will be easy to acquire. 

What companies need to focus on in their campaigns are the “egagement” of their potential customer’s attention.  Once you have the attention of the customer, the ROI takes care of itself.  If everyone in the room is engaged in a discussion about your product, chances are you will have an easy sell and hence your return.  Now as a company how do I get them to talk about my product?  My obvious answer is to bring the conversation to them and allow them to engage and discuss your product or service.

I agree with Tom that their will need to be some changes in the way companies are using online marketing in their advertising campaigns.  The person that comes up with the best and most inspring model that can show some ROI will be the person out front.  For now, blogging is nothing but math to the companies writing those online marketing checks. They want the hard numbers and a bottom line.  Perhaps, as Tom suggests, we can influence the way they do business.

I’m not quite ready to give up my beer money just yet Tom, but you are on to something.

 

Good quality content is like the gold standard to companies wanting to be found through organic search. Many SEO experts will all agree, after you have a website optimized for search there is nothing better than good quality, relevant content to make you successful. This is what drives the robots and spiders used by search engines to find information about you and your company and eventually to your site. If you don’t have constantly updated and quality content on your site, the spiders and robots will stop visiting and stop telling the world about your business.

Why do I continue to mention quality content? This question is often asked by my clients that want to merely throw up some stuff on their website about their company without really having a voice or direction to the content. The first thing a business should recognize is that their website is often the first chance they will have at an audience for a potential customer. The content on their site should be relevant to the customer’s needs. A customer wanting to look for a replacement battery for their latest gadget doesn’t want to come to your site to learn about the history of your company and why you started business, they want that battery and they want it now. If your company is on the cutting edge of that technology you should be talking about that gadget and why your company is providing the best replacement batteries for the best cost and can have it to them when they want it. This is what the search engines can root out and find for their searching customer.

My good friend and colleague Dave Taylor has coined the term (and I wish I had done it first) “Findability.” This may seem to basic and it is beyond simple, but many companies don’t understand the concept. Taylor describes findability in his latest speech during the Affiliate Summit in Florida thus:

 

“…findability is the concept of how easily can people find you when they’re looking for your service or product.”

The yellow pages in my home is taking up wasted space. I simply do not use them to find a business or product. I use a search engine like Google, MNS or Yahoo to get me what I want when I want it. Recently, my wife and I needed a plumber to take a look at our water heater. Where did I go to find this plumber? I went to Google and stuck in the search phrase “water heater, maintenance and plumber and Longmont, Colorado”. Within minutes of that search, I had a plumber on the way to my home and he was gone in 4 hours (I’m definitely in the wrong career option). Now imagine if you were the hot water heater guru in Colorado and every day posted a little something about water heaters, maintenance and plumbing, you could guarantee you would probably be very high on the list in the natural search results. You didn’t have to out bid that other company that came up in the paid search results. Your company was front and center on the screen because you provided that search engine quality content that was updated constantly and robots and search spiders where there waiting in line to gobble up what you have to say about your industry. Taylor in another portion of his talk in the affiliate marketing conference made me chuckle with:

“I don’t care whether you’re a marketing and affiliate program, or you’re marketing products as an affiliate, either way, if I’m searching for your product or service, and I can’t find you, you really have a problem. And for most small businesses, I think it’s absolutely the case that they’re already dead, and they just haven’t noticed yet.”

Thanks Dave and those of you that are interested in the rest of what Dave has to say about “Findability” you can see his whole presentation at the Affiliate Summit 2006 East and at his own site at The Intuitive Life Business Blog. 

Content is the gold standard of blogging.  Keep it fresh, keep it relevant, and keep it contstant.  You won’t be one of those small businesses out their walking around with the walking dead.

Advertising in the blogosphere is becoming more and more prevalent in the advertising world. We are seeing more and more companies launching into campaigns involving blogs such as the recent purchase of ad space using Blogads on 400 published blogs by the Ford Motor Company. This is beginning to show more popularity among the media buyers at agencies.

Blogads was given a request for the proposal from Ford directly. I spoke to Henry Copeland of Blogads about the newest trend in blog advertising. When I asked him why this trend was changing and becoming more popular he remarked:

Marketeers are gradually waking up to the idea that blog readers aren’t just “cool and/or affluent” which are the kind of buckets that traditional publishers peddle. Blog readers are cool, affluent AND at the heart of the Internet bee hive. So a target company are those that have a unique proposition that resonates intellectually or some story to tell… commodity products/services need not apply.

We see bloggers becoming a new media and where people are going for their news. Some traditional media players are beginning to see the writing on the wall as outlets like the Washington Post has begun it’s program called Blogroll as reported by Jeff Burkett. This is allowing bloggers in certain niche markets to sell their advertising real estate through the Washington Post and they will of course be revenue sharing. This is not unlike Blogburst which was launched this year, although Blogburst has yet to announce its plan for paying bloggers.

Henry Copeland had some advice for those media buyers out there that are not on the blog bandwagon yet:

The best blog advertising goes beyond trying to sell stuff to blog readers, focusing more broadly on swaying this uniquely hyperlinked and influential swarm. Overt selling can be counter productive. And in this context, traditional ad units (banners, buttons) can also defeat your purpose — if your company’s messaging is cookiecutter and one way, then your company is probably that way too. To reach bloggers and their readers you want to employ the idiom of the blogs — multiple links, arresting images.

I myself have used the Blogads system on my personal blog as well as my business blogs, and I have been surprised by the types of ads I have seen, but there are a few companies that are cutting edge and are recognizing the power of blogs in their media campaigns. Copeland is seeing some companies focusing solely on blogs as their source for advertising, such as book publishers and those looking for a specific target area. Blog advertising is becoming the latest in online advertising and it appears that for now at least it is the new black.

Bacardi Canada has joined the blogosphere, but in a somewhat unorthodox manner. They have hired Dave, in a move that is similar to other campaigns such as the Captain Morgan Blog (now visiting Davy Jones’ locker). I have heard the term coined as character bloggers by my partner and colleague Tris Hussey in describing this type of blogger. Dave is not a representative of the company, in fact they are apparently paying him partially in product to be their blogger.

Rick Bruner, our fearless leader here at BBC states:

“If you think of blogs outside of the marketing context — just your ordinary person writing a journal online — they tend to be nothing more than honest and transparent, individual and personal.

“And when companies try to fake that for marketing purposes and try to, in a sense, hoodwink readers into thinking it’s something it’s not, in many cases bloggers tend to react very badly.

In fact a contributor here Dave Taylor boils it down to:

“I think it’s a little naïve to think that … every blog has to be real and genuine from a real person that you could meet on the street or go have lunch with,” notes Taylor.

“A blog is just a tool. There’s nothing special about it. There’s nothing magic. It doesn’t re- invent corporations. It doesn’t fundamentally change anything.

“It’s up to people and up to companies to come up with interesting and creative ways to utilize the tool.”

Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion and Senior VP at Edelman says the right way to use the tool as referred to by Taylor is to have some executive in the company be the blogger:

“Corporate blogs, whether they come from the executives or employees or customers, are tremendous.”

This wouldn’t be the first time I disagreed with Steve, but I think that hiring a blogger when you don’t have the ability is a smart move. Some companies don’t have the manpower or someone in the organization that is equipped to handle the duties of a blogger. Blogger are at the moment a rare breed. They are a mixture of writer, public relation specialist, advertiser and IT person. Not every company has this in their arsenal of employees.

I agree completely with Rick’s thoughts:

“If you’re doing something trying to be funny, then be really funny, not just kind of mild funny that the marketing department and the legal department and the HR department are going to sign off on as funny,” he says. “That’s not funny.”

Give this blogger a little time to perform, but as a character blogger goes, I find him to be amateurish towards his approach and the quality of the conversation lacking. Perhaps when he is in a drunken stupor from the client’s product or it is wages, he might actually submit something that is his own and not just another blog that is trying to act like a myspace.com knock off.

Tags: Rick Bruner, Dave Taylor, Steve Rubel, Bacardi Mixx, character blogs

I have been following the conversation in the blogging world of “Google’s Embarrassing Mistake” started by Dylan Tweney.  It seems that he as well as others feel that the nofollow tag was a patch that failed the blogoshpere and in fact may have been a detriment to bloggers:

Worse, nofollow has another, more pernicious effect, which is that it reduces the value of legitimate comments. Here’s how:

Why should I bother entering a comment on your blog, after all? Well, I might comment because you’re my friend. But I might also want some tiny little reward for participating in a discussion, contributing to the content on your site, and generally enhancing the value of the conversational Web. That reward? PageRank, baby. But if your blog uses the nofollow tag, you’ve just eliminated that tiny little bit of reciprocity. Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather just comment on my own blog. And maybe, if you’re lucky, I’ll link back to you.

Jeremy Zawodny makes his own statement about the Nofollow tag with the cavalier attitude of “Kill em all let God sort em out” with his statement:

Look. Linking is part of what makes the web work. If you’re actually concerned about every link you make being counted in some global database of site endorsements, you’re probably over-thinking just a bit. Life’s too short for that, ya know? Link and be linked to. Let the search engines sort it out.

This is actually decent advice that Jeremy discusses as stated by Nick Wilson at Performancing and I would have to agree.

Comment spam continues to be an ever increasing problem in the blogosphere, and there have yet to be any applications that are the end all solution.  Dylan does come up with a fairly simple solution to the problem in his step by step tutorial:

In fact, the solution to comment spam is simple. I’ve used it both on this blog, and on my haiku site. Here’s the step-by-step solution:

Step 1. Automatically moderate any comments that include hyperlinks.
Step 2. There is no step 2.

Moderation of any and all comments does pose somewhat of a problem in the fast world of the blogosphere.  I have moderation of comments on my own blog when a hyperlink is placed in the comment, but the problem is when I am not in front of the computer making sure comments are moderated in real time.  I could miss out on a great conversation if after 2 days I finally get around to allowing a comment. 

One thing about the discussion is certain, comment spam for the future is here to stay.

Have you heard about that great conference you wish you could have been a part of but found that it was sold out or had already passed?  Eric Weaver of BrandDialogue.com was that person.  He decided to make a full list of the Web 2.0 or Marketing 2.0 conferences taking place in 2006.  Eric notes:

NOTE: These are conferences from May 15 to December 31, and related specifically to Web 2.0 and new marketing concepts. A lot of good ones have already come and gone. Got any corrections, clue-ins to existing conference lists, or notices of additional events that are Web 2.0-related? Drop me a line at eric @ this URL.

Go and check out the list and maybe we’ll see you at that next event!

Tags: blogging conferences, web 2.0, marketing 2.0

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