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http://thefuturebuzz.com/2008/12/17/paid-bloggi...
Not worth it for bloggers. Way too much risk. Not nearly enough payoff. Don't do it.
In principle, I agree with you. In reality, I know paid posts will continue and probably find a happy home in some industries and niches.
I read alot of blogs and forums Jason and I will tell you sponsored posts are never taken well by passionate communities, they simply don't like it. Not necessarily when the COMPANY is writing it (pure advertorial) but if the editor is writing it, it is definitely viewed as selling out and seen as influence.
Companies are already being talked about in the blogosphere - more than 80% of bloggers mention brands already according to Technorati. Injecting yourself via money into the conversation isn't the answer if you aren't being talked about. This is a weak tactic at best. Far better approaches I've done (and others have) for years.
The reason this idea upsets me is because yes to a degree I feel like this cheapens approaches that naturally generate conversation for brands. Although I do not think Izea and others will ruin a good thing for pay per post, I think the most influential sites and bloggers wouldn't do this. Can you imagine Seth Godin or Mike Masnick taking money for a post? Doubt it.
It depends on why you blog, really...if you just want to make a buck go for it, but IMO people put in too much work to risk selling their brand down the river for a gift card.
Great post. Thanks for writing. My two cents below.
I think the future of advertising is Conversations. Whether those conversations are instigated by PR, Advertising or simply occur organically and a brand uses SM to participate... conversations will drive brand growth in the future.
Advertising on blogs: Honestly, I wouldn't want to advertise on a blog. The real value for my client is the commentary the blogger ads not the commentary my copywriter will write. Bloggers should figure that out. Paid vs Free commentary -- that is up for grabs I guess. If a blogger is clearly shilling for the dough, his/her readers will see that and eventually if he/she does it enough, the readers will stop following and find another thought leader in the space. If he/she is simply saying, hey I really like this product/service, and the brand is paying them to review the product/service, that is fine by me provided the product/service is within the sphere of why i read that blog.
Thanks for the input.
You're right, PR folks are starting to know that finding those small but active niche audiences is effective and therefore even small trafficked blogs are worth investing some time in. But the advertisers only see total eyeballs and not eyeballs of influencers. Believe me, I've made the case for brand managers before and they still respond with, "yeah, but that's not very many people."
The Izea was more experimental which is why it had critics. If it becomes a common thing, it will just seem more natural. The content is what matters, and as long an not intruding on the content, no one will care, and bloggers can earn money that way.
I don't think the more shotgun approach to PR will die out completely, but will take a hit. Conversations and relationships are key and it's more of a favor than a dead on pitch at that point, but takes a long slow time to develop and feel the level of comfort. Curious to see how things develop.
Ultimately, if your goal in your marketing is to both influence the right people in sufficient numbers, AND keep everyone 100% happy, you're going to find yourself an extremely disappointed marketing practitioner.
I've been advocating for a while now that there shouldn't be any walls when it comes to getting the word out about a product, company or service. It's like saying there's a difference between "traditional PR" and "online PR" - why not just call it PR?
Wouldn't it be more productive to gel PR, advertising, marketing and more into one overall bracket that gets the best of all worlds? After all, we're all in it for the same result - exposure.
(you're freakin' right and dead on and they should but let's be real)
Thanks for chiming in.
Excellent article, I see I was the First to Digg it. Hope I captured the essence in the description
With regard to paid-per-post and Chris Brogan, for us watching how the events unfolded I applaud Chris for 'having a go' as social media and online pr is all about learning. Surely through testing and seeing what works, what rings true and false with consumers we get closer to understanding and honing our craft and the discussions that have occurred from this allow us to debate best practice.
Great post.
Thanks for stopping by.
Now, in the new-fashioned PR world, it's the same with bloggers but it has to be looked at differently. It's not trying to get in a newspaper that may or may not reach your targeted consumer, but it's about researching the blogger AND the audience now. If you take the time to do so, I believe the time is better spend and the results will ultimately be better. However, while this makes logical sense, it's hard to prove still. As tracking and monitoring gets better and better I anticipate BIG changes here though and ROI will be much easier to find.
In terms of advertising and how it can be done, I actually think that Daily Candy does a good job of this. They have a "Dedicated Email" that is marked as such that comes out every so often. It's a paid placement but they strictly ensure it's a product that their readers will be interested in and it's kept in the same vein as the products/topics they cover. With the disclosure right up front, it's clear to me what it is and it's up to me to scan it. I don't mind the ads and have even bought things from them just because their ususally things I'd like (and they usually have some good promotion that goes along with it). As you say, ultimately it works because it ads value to me for being a member.
That's what it will always be about. Adding value. If advertisers can figure out a way to work with a blogger, e-newsletter, e-zine, etc. then they can come up with a creative way to advertise, I think. However, I'm in PR and not advertising so for now, I'm just about sharing the information love.
Not chuckling at you Jason (really!) but at the notion that developing a relationship with a blogger, reporter, journalist, etc. is "NEW." Is it new because PR folks keep hitting a brick wall once again? I remember "whack a flack" from the 90s (a game that journalists created on-line to whack PR flacks) and now they are moving to 140-character pitches to get even.
Stop the madness PR people!! Just know that you WILL need to develop relationships with these people or agencies like Doe-Anderson will wipe you off the PR map.
Phew! Okay. I can breathe now.... Oh yeah, and for anyone who's interested I recommend "The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR" by Al Ries and Laura Ries.
@AdamSinger, love and respect your passion here...but it really does depend on community. The thing is, if we aren't the community we are just guessing at what we think the community wants/thinks/feels. I am not part of the Dad-o-Matic or Motrin Mom community...because I am not a dad (obviously) or a mom. Or put another way...I am not the "target audience." I belong to non-marketing communities (socnets) also and I can tell you a sponsored post is completely overlooked if it's a product that the community loves/admires/would kill for (talking about luxury brand purses in this example, in case you are curious).
Happy holidays!
First of all I want to congratulate Chris Brogan for having the guts to write his sponsored post and for your support of it. I thought Chris's post was well done -- it's obvious he put a lot of work into it with an actual visit -- by the whole family, no less! -- and photos, etc. I haven't been in a Sears or KMart store in years, but that post intrigued me enough that I might actually think of them next time.
I do want to respectfully push back a little, though:
(1) Online advertising is effective, especially for branding. I think we need to get it out of the realm of direct response, and expecting to see an immediate and direct payback (click through to sale). That's not expected from PR, so why hold advertising to the same standard? The fact that online advertising is growing shows advertisers think it has value.
(2) I don't buy that "your blog is too small for ads, Mr. or Ms Blogger." If the blog is big enough to hire an expensive PR firm to go to work pitching the blogger to get them to write about your company or your product, then the blog is "big enough."
(3) The real impediment to advertising on small blogs is structural. It's hard to cost-effectively put ads on small sites. Doesn't mean the ad wouldn't be valuable, and doesn't mean it couldn't be different. But today it would cost more for a brand manager to work through the bureaucracy via the company’s ad agency and corporate ad manager, than a $500 ad itself would cost.
(4) Every business blog is commercial in some way – I don’t understand all the hubbub. Even the consultant who “doesn’t accept ads” is really advertising his or her own services, or his or her personal brand. I have no problem with that – in fact, I’d have far less respect for them if they weren’t a good business person first and foremost.
(5) Finally, I think bloggers need services like IZEA. I don’t plan to sign up for IZEA – but for smaller bloggers who want to monetize all the hard work they put into their blogs, IZEA is a more realistic way to do that than ads (see the realities of point #3). To me it’s worse for bloggers to work hard and starve to death, than to work hard and earn a better life for themselves and their families.
First, some online advertising is effective. In general, however, "effective" is 2-5% click thru rates? (Yeah, I've had some commentors claim 25% for what they do, but whatever.) The residing "good" metric is less than one percent click thrus ... that's plain crap. If I'm a brand manager either my creative sucks or banner ads suck ... I'm betting it's the latter more so than the creative. Online advertising is growing because off-line isn't turning in much better performance. And I get your argument for branding, but again ... I can't tell you the last time I even looked at a banner ad and the only ones I can remember lately are the ones that jump out, force you to close something and those piss me off. (Remember ... I work at an agency. I'm supposed to dig that. But I don't and I'm sure others don't either.) You have a point and I'm not trying to discredit your stance, just think there's more to a determination that online advertising is effective than it's growth.
2 - It's cheaper and more efficient to pitch than spend the time to execute advertising. That and for smaller blogs that charge, say $250 or $500 for a monthly ad, most national brand managers are going to say, "WHAT? Come talk to me when you have a need." Those are buys that are normally handled by regional or local marketing folks, not national brand managers. They talk in seven figure ad buys. $250 isn't even a rounding error to them. It's what they spend on working lunches 4-6 times a month.
3 - Agreed and covered in 2.
4 - Agreed
5 - Agreed as well.
Thanks a ton for the thoughtful comments and time it took to plug it all in. Much appreciated.
First, small isn't necessarily bad from an advertisers POV. It's relatively easy to get big mass channels but the wasted circulation is huge. If the audience is small, but of high quality, then it is worth the investment. Advertising is becoming less homogeneous every day and the WOM generated from a small high-quality audience extends the message nicely.
And when you use blog networks like @FederatedMedia (we buy them and I know their CEO @JohnBattelle but other than that I don't have any relationship with them) you can efficiently advertise on blogs even small ones.
Finally, as suggested by @anita response isn't the only game in town. I love response, I've spent 20+ years in diirect markketing, but awareness, engagement and involvement are also valid advertising objectives. That said, a recent test on Federated's blog network for a CPG new product launch generated superb CTR and 25% conversion to trial coupons. The Product Manager was thrilled and this channel will play a key role in '09.
James
There's one key thing that you hinted at but didn't focus on in this exchange, and it's the reason why this kind of bargaining arrangement works (and has done for donkey's years in trad PR and media)...
When you offer up this kind of exchange there's a huge incentive for the blogger aside from cash: exclusive content. Bloggers - like every other media outlet - struggle for scale and inventory... therefore the gift of free, interesting content is always attractive... the have a hungry audience to satisfy just like the WSJ, and not much horsepower to help them.
Beyond that, whether its paid for, assisted or just good old fashioned home brewed, the question - as you rightly say - is whether or not the content is good. As a reader so long as its interesting and relevant, I don't give a damn... and nor does anyone else.... So - well said. You're spot on.... Incentivised blogging will continue and grow....
However, you seem to be talking about a bigger distinction between advertising and public relations. Yet you don't come right out and make the conclusion.
Every traditional definition of advertising contains the word "mass," as in a mass audience. You seem de facto to pick up that definition. Simply put, a blog cannot garner advertising dollars because it is not mass.
However, as an advertising professor, I refuse to lose ground to public relations simply because of quantity. There is a separate function for each, and each has its place. Although it is quite possible that many ad buys simply are not worth the time of a media buyer to make them, paid advertising can still be effective whether it is mass or not.
As a former reporter (admittedly weird for an ad prof), I greatly valued my public relations contacts. They were invaluable. But the two functions are separate. Intertwined but separate.
The fractionated audience makes mass communications difficult; however, there is still an important role for paid, clearly labeled persuasion.
I would have great fears for the entire media enterprise if every effort of persuasion came through not quite out-in-the-open public relations.
I would argue that good public relations is out-in-the-open. It certainly is becoming moreso in the blogger era when first contact is written about. There's little hidden in some blogger's minds because full transparency is important to their audience.
But I would also like to ask an advertising professor, when you look at the conversion rates of online ads, the misleading effectiveness of ROI numbers on traditional ads (I still contend Arbitron and Nielsen, plus other "how many eyeballs" companies have been using fuzzy math all these years) which are probably as effective as online ads are, what do you teach? How to make ads better or how to reach more people creatively?
My contention is that most folks don't look at ads. Sure, the coupon-clippers do, but I swear to you I was working at an ad agency at age 33 before I ever stopped on a print ad in a magazine. Just part of my experience to block them out. I don't think I'm a rarity.
So how to you approach the advertising professionals of tomorrow and make them good, whole, etc., when society is migrating more and more away from their efforts and the Internet has brought about better metrics proving that advertising has perhaps been less effective than we always thought?
(Keep in mind I work at an ad agency. I don't believe in the doomsday scenario, but I know something isn't working well and needs to be fixed.)
Thanks for the input. I look forward to more discussion.
All of this sounds weird coming from a guy who grew up, literally, in my parents' direct response advertising agency. The first two decades of my life were financed by advertising that got its report card every day: people either returned a card via business reply mail or called a toll-free number, or the ad failed. (And in truth Ogilvy gave a lot of props to direct response).
So I've been intellectually puzzled by interactive advertising. I've stood at the edge of the stream and thought and thought.
We were at first, I think, mesmerized by the fact that we could so easily count each click. It seemed like a panacea in the world of TV, where we have to hope upon shaky Nielsen data knowing all the while that we go to the bathroom during commercials.
And you are absolutely right that the banner ad is not the be all, end all.
And you are right that the future will be a lot more like the recent effort by P&G to lure Mommy Bloggers to Cincinnati to talk about diapers. And this is, I must admit, mostly a public relations function.
I just hate to give away buzz marketing, guerrilla marketing, and pretty much anything cool to the PR folks. It feels as if everyone thinks we ad guys are stuck in an episode of Mad Men. Take away big media buys, and are we really inept?
So what do I teach? Mostly I try to teach critical thinking skills and socialize students to the general problem. If I get to teach them Ad Principles as a sophomore, it will be two years before they graduate. And the world changes so quickly. So I have to teach them how to solve problems rather than to solve a specific problem.
At Texas Tech, we're greatly expanding our advertising curriculum in an attempt to deal with this changing environment. Because we cannot begin to give it proper treatment in our current 39 credit hours.
And I'm hoping that trying to teach this fast-moving landscape is going to increasingly use technology such as Skype to bring experts such as yourself into the classroom.
So, to bring it back to Ogilvy, I believe in narrative and storytelling. It's a basic part of human culture, and storytelling dates to antiquity. It's easy to tell a story in a 30 second television ad. Even a magazine ad. It's not so easy online, unless you move into the branded entertainment content. But I do tell stories in my blog, and so do you.
The cognitive scientist in me knows that the background clutter makes it into the brain a lot more than you think. But that's impossible to measure, and that's pretty difficult to sell a client even during a good economy.
But what an awesome challenge, right? I feel pretty lucky that I get to go to work every day thinking about this stuff.
I'll be in touch as this is much too good to be lost in the comments of a blog.
I always appreciate your forthright commentary, for sure! We are in an exciting time as techy, innovative marketers and this platform is perfect for transparent integrity and creativity.
I've made reference to your comments on my blog directed toward social media pr for the legal marketing industry.
http://tinyurl.com/a84h4l
Happy holidays to you and your familyl
Kara
My main question around the Izea thing, from a PR perspective (setting aside my personal viewpoint on whether it's a good idea in general), relates to targeting. Who was Izea/Kmart targeting with this? The Dad O'Matic post seems reasonable, but the marketing bloggers? Is Kmart's target the marketing community? Did they want Marketing Magazine to write about their campaign? Wouldn't they be better served by targeting shopping blogs (or a niche thereof)? Any thoughts?
http://valleywag.gawker.com/tech/loren-feldman/...
Shows you how little research this company did and why it would be bad for your brand to blindly jump into paying people. Makes all parties involve look bad by tying themselves to offensive, racist people.
Long time lerker, first time commenter...I thought this was a really well written and well thought out post. Your answers to the bloggers was both fair and honest which is tough to get these days. I do think that this is just the first revolution however, I believe we are getting closer and closer to a point where virtually every product has a pre-launch.
However with that said, I think the interesting thing to watch over the next 12-18 months is how many people claim that because they have 1000's of Twitter followers they can drive traffic for you and thus should be a paid blogger. As I noted in this post (http://www.michaelgcohen.com/2008/12/followers-...) , there is a tremendous difference between simply having followers and actually having "reach" and it is the latter which is valuable.
I also have to ask out loud what the reaction would start to be if @chrisbrogan wrote a sponsored post on the Dad-O-Matic site every week would people start to tune out? If that is the case then where is the sustainability? If someone like Chris (or another respected blogger) wants to suplement his income regularly with sponsored posts, will people tune out and the sponsored opportunites run dry?
In terms of Chris's potentially serial sponsored posts, I think on Dad-O-Matic it works and the audience would support it. They understand Chris is smart enough to give them sponsor information that is relevant to them, he had a family to feed and so on. I also think they're there to learn about Dad-centric stuff and products and services come into play. Sure, it'll turn some folks off, but sites like ReadWriteWeb, Mashable and what not churn out the "Thanks to our sponsors" posts once a week or month or whatever and no one bitches about them. Without them, those sites couldn't pay the fine people who blog for them.
Sponsored posts would be harder for Chris to implement on ChrisBrogan.com, however, because he's largely talking to an audience that loathes advertising interference (social media purists) and that Chris has told before he won't pepper them with marketing messages (no ads on his site, etc., though he does experiment with ads on RSS feeds).
Like with most decisions, the sponsored post one really varies from site to site and community to community. Those that don't like it don't have to stick around and won't. Those that don't mind will. And there's plenty of audience out there on both sides of the stick.
Thanks again for continued discussion and stop lurking ... you're comments are strong.
If i do a PG Diploma in Advertising & Public Relation from KC College for 1 year it will help me in future or not please let me know .
Because i am from middle class family and nobody is there to give me guidance so Respected Sir/Madem please help me out .