Marketing
Web 2.0 Empty Marketing Term?
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)
From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.
What does Web 2.0 mean to you?
Buzz Marketing or Spam? Ask the Beholder
I’ve been blogging on my personal blog about being on the the OTHER side of buzz marketing—being the person that is being contacted by a marketing comany trying to generate positive word of mouth for their product.
In this case, the product is a new Nokia phone, and the word of mouth, well, it isn’t all positive. Here’s what I wrote:
Boris and Darren both took the time today to whack matchstick.ca (those phone givers I just blogged about) with the “unsavvy” stick. Boris went so far as to say he’d “reconsider doing ANY business with Nokia in the future” because of gross infractions that led to them slapping a “spammer” label on Matchstick’s business practices. What horrid infraction Matchstick commit? Offer them a free phone with no strings attached. I say: Relax a bit, fellas!
A company that does “buzz marketing”, Matchstick.ca, had three separate people contact me via email. All of those emails were sent en-masse—I consider it to be spam. And I happen to know at least two other people (David Crow, Roland Tanglao) that got the same email.
[I received] four emails from Matchstick from four different staff members all asking the same thing. And two of those messages came after I clearly expressed my disinterest in their offer. Matchstick might want to invest in some CRM software, and learn how to use it. I think they’ve qualified themselves as spammers, don’t you?
I don’t think there’s any spam here, but that’s not the point. The point is: The phone hasn’t even arrived and already the conversation is going on. The only mistake here by Matchstick, if any, is that these micro marketing campaigns, person to person, are not easier than big campaigns. In many ways, they’re more tricky. A small mistake (sending emails more than once) can escalate quickly. They feel easy because they’re things people do every day: send email, talk, listen.
On the other hand, a genuine and personal response like what Darren reported he received, can go a long way towards fixing a problem. Boris tells them to start their own blog; if they don’t, they should at least jump in and let themselves be heard on the existing blogs. Left to fester, and you’ll end up with something like Boing Boing’s recent dispute about World Cup webcasts. Nobody wants that.
CandyBlog Gets Some Sweet Press
Friend (and Hop Studios client) Cybele May has set herself in the candy review blog space and spends hours tasting and reviewing candies for your edification. Cybele has been writing Candy Blog for some time, and has gotten some nice press. I thought I’d point you to a piece that ran in Canada’s National Post on Monday: ”Sweet Success.” As you can see from this thumbnail, in print the article was huge.
Cybele is a great example who has taken advantage of blog software to turn her hobby into a creative niche she can use to promote herself and, quite literally, feed her hobby.
Congrats, Cybele!
Answering Angry Bloggers
The Dallas International Association of Business Communicators is running a poll right now asking the questions “Who should respond to angry external bloggers—media relations or customer service?”
There are only 8 voters so far (media relations is winning), so head over and cast your vote!
Results are here.
Bad Buzz for GoDaddy
For an example of why businesses need to pay attention to the blogosphere even when they don’t start a blog, check out this post on Wired’s Monkey Bites blog today:
As the user GoatMonkey2112 (no relation) points out, he performed a little test of his own design at GoDaddy.com. He went to the domain registrar’s site, found an available domain name, added it to his cart, and then cancelled his shopping cart. He returned the next day to find the domain name parked, and thus available only by paying an inflated fee. ... If GoatMonkey2112’s story is true, then GoDaddy is yet another company to put on your “sneaky business practices” list.
Commenters on the post speculate about just which business might be responsible for the purchase, which most folks regard as underhanded. Ryan left this comment:
I have experienced this more than once with GoDaddy: I actually warn people that if they are fairly certain of their purchase, they should not hesitate to “invest” the nine dollars in buying an avaiable domain.
My thoughts were always that the same people who buy expired domains had some insider information from godaddy on recent searches/shopping cart leavings, not that godaddy themselves were the vultures. Still, this would suggest the existence of some official (or cloak and dagger) way to scrape this data.
I suppose it could also be old-fashioned packet sniffing, though, so who’s to say GoDaddy is playing Big Brother?
This is actually a great opportunity for GoDaddy—assuming they aren’t actually engaging in the suspect behavior—to make it clear what kind of business they are and clear up the rumor. For kicks, I sent the link to the post in via GoDaddy’s customer support email system. I’ll be keeping an eye on this post to see whether a GoDaddy rep shows up.
UPDATE: Wired Monkey Bites reports that GoDaddy, rather than being engaged in shady business practices, is conducting business as usual:
One of the things everyone should know is that when you submit a query for ANY domain name, it is sent out across the interenet to ALL the registrars and registries. That means everyone knows that it is a potential quality TLD. The reason they send the query out is due the amount of expired and waiting to be deleted domains. Registrars want to get you the domain that you ask for, so they query everyone to see if it is available.
The number of comments on the post has doubled, but there’s no GoDaddy representation visible.
UPDATE 4/20: Yesterday, Wired Monkey Bites wrote a new, clarifying post based on the comments and feedback received on the original. Happily, there was a long comment from GoDaddy VP Tim Ruiz:
There are many companies doing domain “tasting” on the Internet and many millions of domains being grabbed each week as a part of this process.
While we appreciate those of you who have vouched for GoDaddy.com in this thread, there is an important correction to be made.
When an availability check is done on a domain name, the information is sent to only registries, NOT registrars. When this is done, secure communication methods are always used by GoDaddy.com.
We believe our communications with the registry are secure and that it is 99.99% impossible to check our availability list through those communications.
I’m glad to see GoDaddy finally adding their voice to the discussion, even this far in. And for demonstrating my point—companies, especially those that work in the tech sphere, need to be monitoring blogs so they can be part of conversations like this, rather than a corporate monolith.
Bloggers in Amsterdam
BlogAds and Holland.com are working together to offer 25 lucky bloggers a trip to Amsterdam with their Bloggers in Amsterdam program. Here's the details:
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What I can't find on the Bloggers in Amsterdam site is anything about how they will choose the bloggers (page views? unique visitors? celebrity?)... or, come to think of it... how to apply, though there is an "email me" link on the site.
Also read: Henry Copeland's post about Bloggers in Amsterdam on the BlogAds blog.
UPDATE: Comments on the Bloggers in Amsterdam blog indicate some irritation on the part of those who have already blogged about Holland, bloggers who live in Holland who blog about Holland, and a reference to 25 bloggers having been chosen already but with no link to it.MarketingSherpa Study Shows Blogs and RSS as “Emerging Favorites”
The 2005 MarketingSherpa study of Internet marketing is worth taking a peek at. Here are a few key elements:
- Email marketing is overtaken by search, though both have increased in effectiveness
- More marketers are spending more money on online ads and marketing
- Blogs and RSS look to be increasingly mainstream and accepted ways of spending online marketing dollars
Check out the study yourself, including some handy charts.
Igniting Buzz Conference Feb. 27, 2006
If you’re thinking about viral campaigns, you might want to look into the Wall Street Transcript’s Igniting Buzz Conference being held Feb. 27, 2006, in San Francisco.
We have assembled a unique conference that will arm you with strategies for developing, executing and measuring the impact of sensational word of mouth marketing campaigns. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to learn best practices for Maximizing Returns on Viral Marketing Campaigns.
The agenda shows sessions on Best Practices for Seeding Buzz, Controlling Buzz, and Creating Buzz Through Blogs: Mastering the Art of Conversation Weaving. I’ll be sorry to miss the Legal Limits on Seeding Buzz session myself, but I’ll be in Banff talking about blogs at The Banff Centre’s Canadian Women in Communication/Corus Entertainment New Media Career Accelerator Program. (How’s that for a long seminar name?!)
Blog ad story: 0.5% of campaign budget, 29% of campaign traffic
My ex-boss, Henry Copeland, runs BlogAds, and I saw this great tidbit in a recent MediaPost story mentioning him and his service that places ads on blogs.
Panelist Brian Clark, the CEO of GMD Studios, recounted a campaign that his agency ran for Audi, titled “The Art of the Heist.” Just one-half of one percent of the media buy budget, Clark said, was spent on BlogAds--a firm run by panel moderator Henry Copeland, which sells ad space on some of the highest-trafficked blogs. Those ads, Clark said, ended up accounting for 29 percent of the traffic sent to the campaign’s landing page.
Of course, it could be that they’re really bad at buying non-blog media 
But I think it points out that blogs are now, and will remain for some time a great way to cut through the clutter of traditional marketing channels.
Taking Magic Cleaners to the Blogging Masses
Today, I got an extremely personalized pitch because of my other blog, Unvarnished. The pitch came from Hass MS&L—a PR firm that’s really on top of the whole blogging phenomenon. They wrote:
Hi, Travis (or do we call you Nep?) I’m writing to you because you blogged (favorably) about Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. This is not spam! I wanted to let you know that Mr. Clean is sponsoring a charity drive and wondered if you’d like to blog about it. How it works is that for every person that visits this site and submits an idea about how they use Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, Mr. Clean will donate $1 to the Hands On Network, a growing charity that helps volunteers keep communities clean. Some of its affiliates are working on Katrina-related projects right now.
Thanks for your time.
My post had been a short post in my link blog about people with kids liking the product.
Why was this a good pitch? First of all, they get that you have to be personal when approaching bloggers. The guy took the time to see what my name really was, it wasn’t a press release. Second, they tie it into a charity thing—bloggers are for some reason extremely focused on donations and fund raising and community, witness everything from the Howard Dean’s presidential compaign to the tsunami and Katrina hurricane fund raising efforts. Third, it’s an extremely soft sell—they tell me about the event and “wonder if I’d like to blog about it.” Lastly, it’s not that expensive—time spent to contact bloggers, plus they put a $15,000 cap on the total donation (they didn’t mention that. 
) If by some chance, and you never know, this gets passed around too much, they’ve limited their financial exposure.
It doesn’t matter that they’re trying to sell cleaning supplies, for whom bloggers are hardly a key demographic. Smart moves, Hass folk.
Buzz Marketing Is..
Buzz Marketing is about creating conversations, and blogs are by their nature a conversation. Viral marketing is about getting people to help you pass your message along.
Examples of viral marketing:
Can blogs be used for buzz and viral marketing?
One example: PR firm Marqui generated a huge wave of discussion by hiring some bloggers to post about Marqui
Why are blogs good at this type of marketing?
I’m cross-posting this on three sites: Buzz Marketing with Blogs, Radiant Marketing Group, and BlogAsia. If you’d like to comment, please come to BlogAsia to do so.
Is Blogging Advertising?
There’s an election coming soon here in British Columbia, and the Elections B.C. board has an interesting take on the role of bloggers when it comes to posting election-related opinions and recommendations.
CBC British Columbia - Blogs are advertising: Elections B.C.
VANCOUVER – Elections B.C. is having a hard time keeping up with a boom of bloggers who are publishing partisan messages during the current election campaign.
They’re supposed to register themselves as advertising sponsors if they post a partisan position on a candidate, party, or referendum question.
“Under the Election Act, it will fall within the definition of election advertising, and we would ask them to register,” says Jennifer Miller, of Elections B.C.
Bloggers I know of who would fall afould of this so far:
Ian King talks makes an STV plea;
Darren Barefoot pledges his support;
Sacha Peter talks about voting;
Raymond Tomlin spends a lot of time on many election issues at VanRamblings.
So the question is: when you choose to support someone on your blog—is it advertising? Before you answer—realize that some of these people make a living, or part of a living, as bloggers. And then ask yourself, it it any different if a business is the “owner” of that blog, or a person. Hmmm. Interesting issue.
Ouch.
It’s hard not to take language like this personally:
At a time when media conferences like ”Les Blogs” in Paris two weeks ago debate the potential of the form, and when BusinessWeek declares, as it did on its May 2 cover, that “Blogs Will Change Your Business,” Mr. Denton is withering in his contempt. A blog, he says, is much better at tearing things down - people, careers, brands - than it is at building them up. As for the blog revolution, Mr. Denton put it this way: “Give me a break.”
“The hype comes from unemployed or partially employed marketing professionals and people who never made it as journalists wanting to believe,” he said. “They want to believe there’s going to be this new revolution and their lives are going to be changed.”
If I’m underemployed I wish someone would let my brain know so that I could go take a nap or something. At any rate, I can’t read Nick Denton’s comments above without thinking he’s trying to stir up trouble in order to get reactions. After all, here I am posting about him, and linking to the article in the New York Times of which he was the subject.
Any buzz is good buzz?
.jobs and .travel domains approved…is this good?
LAT Travel Ad Sticks With You
There’s a new, frustrating ad on the L.A. Times site in their travel section.
They have added a large floating banner advertisement that stays visible across the bottom of the page no matter how you scroll.
It also breaks use of the scroll wheel or the arrow keys / page up & down to scroll a document, at least on my Mac. You have to use the scrolling elevator at the side of the window to read the rest of the story. What an irritation.
I haven’t seen this advertising technique used by other major sites, nor have I heard any criticism online about it in use here—perhaps it just hasn’t been noticed yet? I can’t imagine their average reader is going to be happy with this loss of basic functionality…
About
This blog is the companion Web site for "Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies," a book for business professionals looking for advice and solutions for business blogging by Susannah Gardner. In stores now!
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