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Of the 36.2 million women who are active in the blogosphere each week, 15.1 million of them publish posts of their own, and 21.1 million read and comment, according to new research from BlogHer. As evidence of their passion for blogging, 55% of the women surveyed reported that they would give up alcohol in order to keep their blogs, 50% said they would give up their PDA, 42% said they'd give up their iPod, 43% would give up reading newspapers or magazines -- but only 20% said they'd part ways with chocolate.
A blog-based anti-counterfeit campaign created by a PR class at Hunter College in New York used a fake blog and a fictional student to spread its message. The blog was seeded via "missing" posters, which led students to a blog supposedly created by a fellow student who had lost her Coach bag. According to the fictitious story line, the bag had been a gift from her boyfriend -- now stationed in Iraq. The campaign, which is sponsored by a grant from Coach, is catching a lot of heat for its lack of disclosure and transparency -- offenses which fly in the face of ethical marketing.
To brush up on your word of mouth marketing ethics, visit:
http://www.womma.org/ethics/
This case study provides an in-depth look at how one company was able to garner the attention of its targeted bloggers. The company mailed its select group of bloggers love letters -- yes, actual snail-mail love letters -- which led them to a personalized landing page. Overall, the effort generated more than four times as many page views as letters sent and was considered a success by its creators.
Putting in the time investment to spruce up your corporate blog can make all the difference when it comes to having good customer relations. Customer love can make all the difference between being the best in the business and being driven out of business. Using a blog as a way to convey to customers and potential customers that you are the authoritative voice on what you sell, make, or do can have a resounding impact, according to this WebProNews article.
Trendpedia, new blog search tool that is currently launched in beta, is a free way to track and compare how your brand, your name, or your competitor stack up in the blogosphere. It's a great way to find out your trend line over time, as well as to see who, when, where, and how often your search term is being blogged about.
Getting a good grip on a platform as seemingly limited as the 140-character microbloging site, Twitter, can be a challenge for the uninitiated -- which is why how-tos are so helpful. This article from MarketingVOX offers some tips on how to use Twitter right -- especially as a way to build your brand. It includes insights into how to build your contacts lists (follow everyone), as well as how to interact (be personal and responsive).
Instead of ceding the online encyclopedia battle to Wikipedia entirely, Encyclopedia Britannica has begun to embrace a slew of Web 2.0 tools -- from its branded widgets and Twitter feed to its newly launched "WebShare," which is offering free access to its content (typically a $69.95 price tag) to bloggers and editors. The free content offered to bloggers has the potential to spread across the blogosphere as bloggers use -- and cite -- the content found on the Britannica site.
Johnson & Johnson invited more than fifty influential moms to a three-day conference called Camp Baby, where the company refrained from plugging its brand while it hosted its handful of all-expenses-paid moms. The moms were wined and dined and attended breakout sessions, including panels on how to get babies to sleep, nutritional tips for raising healthy families, and more. The goal of the event was to form experience-based relationships with these socially connected moms -- in the hopes that they'd take their learnings -- and their new-found brand love -- back to their social networks.
As with any new venue, Twitter users have established a code of conduct that frequent users adhere to. If you crash onto the scene and break the rules, not only will you step on the toes of current users, you'll mark yourself as a newbie and won't be taken seriously. This article from Get to the Point highlights some of the top rules of etiquette for navigating microblogging site Twitter.
Dallas Mavericks owner and blogger Mark Cuban has opened his locker room doors to all bloggers -- after having a ban on bloggers revoked by the NBA, which insisted that he couldn't ban bloggers from credentialed news organizations. The new influx of bloggers has put pressure on a growing issue in sports media, namely: Who owns the rights to sports media coverage?
Twenty-six percent of adults say that they blog regularly, according to a study from BIGresearch. This slice of the online world tends to skew younger than the average population, and bloggers are more likely to be African American or Hispanic -- and a Democrat. More than half (53.7%) of all bloggers are male and nearly half (44.7%) are married. This article contains a slew of other stats about bloggers, as well as other insights and take-aways from this Bigresearch study.
On the Digital Influence Mapping Project blog, WOMMA Board member John Bell discusses the corporate blogs of Lenovo, Wells Fargo, and Starbucks, including the purpose of the blog, who's writing it, how they measure success, and how well connected they are. The post takes a close look at how these three companies are using blogs and social media capabilities to meet their own specific needs, as well as commentary on what more they could be doing to connect with their customers.
We still don't have all the answers about how to best use, best leverage, or best manage microblogging site Twitter, but we've come a long way in building history and knowledge since the site launched. According to this ClickZ article, Twitter has raised the standard of accountability with its instantaneous -- and often off the cuff -- flurry of commentary, so what's a company to do? This article offers some tips for how to navigate the Twitter pond.
On his blog, Shel Holtz points out that having a standing corporate blog to communicate with customers and build trust during good times will elevate the positive effects of communication during damage control situations. That said, sometimes a crisis-launched blog is better than no blog at all. In the face of mass cancellations and extreme consumer backlash, American Airlines, which has remained a non-participant in the social media space, created a simple Blogger.com blog, AAConversation, which it says is a forum created for listening to its customers -- a critical and positive step at a time when its customers probably have a lot to say.
Here are some great tips for anyone who has ever struggled with how to manage their RSS reader -- whether your problem is what to subscribe to or how best to wade through the constant influx of information. For brushing up on blog reading, keeping abreast of industry news, or keeping tabs on community forums, RSS readers are an easy way to aggregate lots of information -- especially when paired with helpful tips like these.
As content from blogs is spread over a variety of sites -- from aggregation sites such as FriendFeed to social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon -- there is growing concern that it makes comments (and thereby conversation) more difficult. But at the same time, the added exposure generally means more people have the opportunity to see your content. So do the benefits outweigh the potentially-lost-conversation costs?
According to a new research study from Canadian firm Pollara, which is covered on the Macalua blog, the opinions of even the most widely read bloggers still don't garner the same trust as opinions from family and friends. The study found that while 80% of respondents said they were very or somewhat more likely to consider making purchases based on the recommendations of real-world friends and family, only 23% reported being very or somewhat likely to consider a purchase recommended by "well-known bloggers."
To generate some conversation around the release of his new book, "Personality Not Included," Rohit Bhargava invited his fellow bloggers to send him five questions -- and got more than 55 responses from bloggers eager to jump on the opportunity for an exclusive interview. The questions covered a range of topics -- from asking for his elevator pitch to asking him which American Idol judge he most identified with -- and achieved the goal of getting the word out.
This article from The New York Times takes a look at the high-stress, 24/7 world that most professional bloggers live in. According to The New York Times, because bloggers have to work long hours to stay on top of the subjects they cover for the instantaneous-deadline-driven internet, they are at risk for a variety of stress-related illness. While "death by blogging" might not be at epidemic status, there is little arguing that the blogosphere is changing both the way information is created and consumed -- as well as impacting the demands placed upon people in the information creation business.
As people spend more time on a variety of social networking platforms, they are spending less time blogging, and it's having an effect on the blogosphere. Social networks, according to this blog post from Robert Scoble, are replacing a lot of the functions that blogs used to perform -- and are doing them faster, better, and in a way that's more targeted.
Still haven't figured out the right way to put Twitter to work for you or your company? Here are ten tips from the geekpreneur blog for ways that you can make the most out of the microblogging site.
In February, traffic to The Huffington Post blog beat out The Drudge Report with 3.7 million unique views, according to research from Nielsen Online, and Technorati ranks the site as the second-most-linked-to blog behind only TechCrunch. This New York Times article investigates the secrets behind The Huffington Post's rising status, including its "internet newspaper" aspirations, which might lead to sections focused on local content and a broader range of subject matter.
Successful technology blog builders Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch fame, and Rafat Ali, PaidContent founder, sparred off in a recent New York Times article, each coming out with their views on what blogging is, as well as what the future of blogging looks like for their respective companies. Arrington's blog style is personalized and emotional, and he came out swinging on the side of organic growth in blogging business. Ali, alternatively, has a more reserved, journalistic blogging style, and sees blogs taking shape more like traditional media, covering news and a wide range of content categories.
McDonald's has launched an internal blog, called Station M, and is encouraging its 15,000+ eligible employees to post and discuss McDonald's-related issues on the site. The site was created in response to an evaluation process, which found blogs to be the best two-way communication platform available to the company.
The "Sony Foam City" campaign put Sony's Handycam and Cybershot digital video recorders in the hands of more than 200 bloggers, letting them record the filming of an ad shoot in which Sony blanketed the city of Miami in foam. Sony is hoping that the bloggers -- who witnessed and videoed the production in action as it employed the world's largest foam machine to blanket Miami in two million liters of foam every minute -- will create an online buzz about the ad, as well as about the cameras, by leaking information and video about the shoot onto their blogs.
Leveraging your Twitter "follower" base and their opt-in interest in what you have to say (er ... "tweet") is a great way to get the word out about blog posts you've written, comment conversations that are happening on your blog, and other pieces of information your Twitter crowd might find useful. After all, what's the point of having multiple social media platforms to work in if you can't use them cyclically to bolster each other's reach and performance?
Here are some tips from The New York Times for how to get your blog on the public radar. It includes some suggestions for what to do -- as well as some important "do not do" warnings. Learning the subtle art of self-promotion and engaging yourself in the online blogging community at large are just two examples of simple things you can do to get the word out about your blog.
This article from Advertising Age answers some of marketers' questions about social media, including where opportunities exist, why they need to get on the blogging wagon, what they should do to prevent/respond to negative social media, and more.
The South by Southwest Interactive Conference enjoyed a flurry of real time multimedia coverage, as its audience -- comprised of many bloggers -- posted tons of information about the conference. According to the Los Angeles Times, a huge percentage of the audience was live blogging, you couldn't navigate hallways without passing a video blogger, and more than 900 of the meeting's attendees identified themselves as "press."
The honesty of posts that appear on Wal-Mart's "Check Out" blog, which has been live since just before the holiday season, caught the attention of the New York Times, which noted in a recent article that posts are often critical even of products that Wal-Mart carries. The blog posts, which are written by buyers -- the company's "tastemakers" -- instead of executives, are largely unedited, and have the potential to step on the toes of both merchants and customers. But that's a risk that Wal-Mart is taking, to the credit of its authentic approach to blogging.
If you build it they will come -- unless they don't know that you built it and don't really understand how it works in the first place. This is the lesson with RSS feeds. If you want readers to subscribe to your blog's RSS, you can't forget to promote that you have one and make it as easy as possible for your fans to subscribe. Here are ten quick tips for how to best promote your RSS feed on your site.
This podcast from "The Podcast Sisters" covers how the microblogging platform Twitter can be used to meet a variety of business objectives. The accompanying write-up also includes some informative articles that highlight the value of Twitter and resources that can compliment, measure, and increase the value of your Twitter endeavors.
To promote some of the social agendas that have inspired the fashion designer, Kenneth Cole Productions has launched the Awareness Blog, which has multiple authors and is covering and weighing in on a variety of social issues. Overall, the site is a unique mix of fashion, social media, and social causes.
In a move that has caught the attention of the blogosphere, CNN fired "American Morning" producer Chez Pazienza, stating that his personal blog "violated its standards for journalists." Pazienza started his blog, Deus Ex Malcontent, in May 2006 while he was recovering from an operation to remove a brain tumor, and he speculates that it was his invitation to start blogging on The Huffington Post that elicited the attention that cost him his job.
To promote its Coke Zero brand, Coca-Cola is launching its "Ultimate Dream Job" contest and putting its brand at the center of a live-blogging event. Contestants can apply at cokezerodreamjob.com by submitting a photo and essay that shows their love of basketball. The four selected winners will go to San Antonio on Mar. 16 and live inside Coke's "CokeZeroVille" instillation, where they will watch and live-blog about all of the 2008 NCAA Division 1 Men's Basketball Championship games, which will be fed into CokeZeroVille via computers and television.
In this MarketingVOX article, Chris Baggott details ten ways to make blogging work in your company -- including shopping for bloggers within your organization to find a variety of voices and topics for the blog and "localizing" your corporate blog.
The International Olympic Committee has issued blogging guidelines for the Beijing Olympics. This marks the first time competitors and officials have been given the green light to blog -- albeit with some restrictions. According to the IOC, the Olympic bloggers' posts are sanctioned only as a "legitimate form of personal expression" and "not a form of journalism." If the IOC should choose to leverage it, giving fans easy access to athletes' blogs would be a great way to pump up pre-Olympic enthusiasm around the world.
On ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick compares several of the techniques you can use to identify top bloggers in any niche. Some of the methods -- such as using Technorati and social bookmarking sites -- are fairly intuitive, while others -- such as using AideRSS -- might not be on your radar yet. Kirkpatrick weighs the pros and cons of each platform, which will make it easier for you to find the one that best suits your needs.
Political bloggers might not comprise a representative cross-section of the population -- they tend to be white, male, well-educated, and upper income -- but blogospheric buzz can still be a political predictor because of the influential power these bloggers yield. Politically active bloggers are almost seven times more likely than average Americans to be perceived as thought leaders among their peers, according to this article from the Oxford University Press blog.
With all of the potential good that corporate blogs can do for a company -- from boosting natural search results to creating a consumer communication channel -- it's hard to believe that many Fortune 500 companies are still reluctant to start their own blog. Here's a look -- from a BtoB perspective -- at just some of the good a corporate blog can do for your company, as well as some tips for getting one started.
Launching, managing, and contributing to a blog is only one part of the effective blog equation. Getting people to actually read your content is another story -- and getting them to read your content consistently is the holy grail of blogging. This post on the ProBlogger blog offers some insights into why people subscribe to blogs, as well as the "big secret" to driving subscriptions.
Getting internal support from a variety of key people within your organization is essential to the success of any corporate blogging effort. On the Bernaise Source blog, Dan Greenfield outlines some questions every company should ask before kicking off their blogging efforts, as well as 7-step action plan for things that should be in place before making the case to senior management.
According to the preliminary results of a study from Forrester Research, more than half of BtoB companies either don't have a corporate blog or are still figuring out their corporate blogging strategies -- in spite of the blogging benefits found by their BtoC counterparts.
There are a lot of great reasons to start a corporate blog: Blogs tend to come up high on Google searches; they're a great way to connect and communicate with consumers; and consumers tend to trust them over corporate websites. This Inc.com article outlines some reasons why you should consider starting up a corporate blog, as well as some great how-to tips.
Real estate agent and blogger Lucas Lechuga is being sued by a condo developer for a post he wrote on his personal blog warning potential buyers against dealing with the developer because of financial trouble the company had in the past. The developer claims the post was detrimental to its business and is suing Lechuga for $25 million -- a steep price tag for an opinion.
Corporate blogging can be a great way to create conversations with consumers and ultimately boost your business, but having a clearly defined focus before launching is an important part of any company's blog plans. Here are five questions an organization should address before kicking off their corporate blog.
In a recent article in WebProNews, Jason Lee Miller posits that long-form print journalism isn't dead, it just needs to be reinvented. And bloggers, he suggests, are just the folks to make it happen. The problem with print, according to Miller, is in its reluctance to adapt, and following bloggers' lead might be in print journalism's best interest.
To supplement its stable of content, the Washington Post has tapped blog aggregator Outside.in. The aggregated content is available on the WaPo site via a "Buzz Map," which tracks D.C. bloggers, as well as the areas around D.C. they are discussing.
On the Marketing Profs Daily Fix, Lewis Green discusses some of the inherent risks of blogging in the public domain -- including being the recipient of harsh criticisms and heightened emotions. According to Green, blogging honestly might land you in hot water with some, but as long as the tone is respectful, disagreement between bloggers and readers is all part of being an active participant in a conversational medium.
Online video blogger HappySlip developed a web following by posting impersonations of her Filipino family. To promote tourism to the Philippines, the country's Dept. of Tourism invited HappySlip to visit the Philippines ... and they're footing the bill. The tales of HappySlip's Philippines adventure are sure to make their way onto her vlog, where her followers can hear all about it.
This podcast, episode #87 of Six Pixels of Separation, from Twist Image, investigates ways organizations can communicate effectively with blogger communities -- both with getting messages out and listening to what bloggers have to say. The podcast covers topics such as why this channel is more important than ever, and how to prompt "lurkers" into becoming active members of the blog community.
On the Bernaise Source, Dan Greenfield takes a closer look at some of the blogs being used by major U.S. corporations. According to his investigations, which Greenfield notes weren't entirely scientific, even the organizations that do take the time and effort to create social media touch points are often less savvy at making their blogs easily accessible to their customers.
Weight Watchers has tapped a well-known video blog personality, Faint Starlite, to spread the word about the company to her online community. Starlite, which is the screen name of 24-year-old Milwaukee resident Esther Brady, has been posting video blogs on a variety of topics, from politics to weight loss, and has earned a dedicated following in the year that she's been active online.
Here's a look at some of the new platforms that not only give bloggers more ways to reap ad revenue from their blogs, but also give them more control over the appearance of the ads that appear on their sites. Giving bloggers control is a win-win for advertisers and bloggers alike.
If you build it they will come? Not necessarily when it comes to your corporate blog. Demonstrating your value to your Twitter community -- by being an active, engaging participant -- is one way to drive traffic to your dormant blog.
When tech blogger Om Mikal broke the story of his heart attack, some raised the question of whether being a professional blogger -- with the high stress, real-time deadlines, and constant pressure to defend your personal brand name -- isn't bad for your health.
How do you get the word out about your blog? One way is to kick off conversations (via comments) with bloggers that have similar interests as yours. It's a great way to start a dialog and to get people to come to your blog and see what else you have to say.
The Gawker blogging network is offering bonuses to bloggers based on how much traffic they are able to attract instead of paying them only on a per-post basis. Some, such as blogger Jason Calacanis, have voiced concern that compensation based on "ratings" will negatively impact the content on blogs, while Gawker seems convinced that it will up the content ante.
On the Get Elastic blog, they take a closer look at some of the most blogged about online retailers (according to data from Nielsen) and try to decipher how much of the chatter is related to word of mouth and how much is affected by other factors (news, scandals, etc.).
Former NBC correspondent David Hazinski is causing a ruckus in the blogosphere by asserting that blogging and other forms of citizen journalism needs to be regulated by traditional media. Hazinski stepped squarely on bloggers' toes by contending that blogging isn't really journalism at all.
The Blog Council launched last week and has hopes of developing standards for corporate bloggers. The founding members -- which include a number of WOMMA member companies -- are: AccuQuote, Cisco Systems, The Coca-Cola Company, Dell, Gemstar-TV Guide, General Motors, Kaiser Permanente, Microsoft, Nokia, SAP, and Wells Fargo.
Blogs are easy to create, and there are literally millions of them burning out there in the blogosphere. So how do you make sure that people notice yours? Here's a look at some solutions -- and some of the pitfalls of existing strategies.
Nielsen Online's October 2007 reports show that social networking sites and blogs are still expanding. Social networking giant MySpace drew 19% more unique users between October 2006 and October 2007, and Facebook grew 125% in the same period.
Omnimedia launched Martha's Circle this week, a lifestyle blog network, giving a slate of handpicked lifestyle bloggers a larger platform upon which to speak about their areas of expertise -- including food, kids, home improvement, and entertaining.
Corporate blogging isn't a one-size-fits-all venture. It's right for a lot of companies, but not right for everyone. In fact, sometimes listening to the blogosphere provides a greater benefit.
Corporate blogging is a great way to reach a wide audience of potential fans and customers -- if you do it right. Here are some tips about how to get the most out of your corporate blog.
According to predictions from Standard & Poor's Equity Research, a media rush to blogosphere goldmines is expected in the near future. Blogs, which are relatively easy to run and have the potential to reach large audiences, have business models that media companies find attractive.
Marketing and PR folks are trying to win the affections of bloggers -- especially in the race to land on Techmeme. In the race for blogger attention, how do you balance getting coverage while maintaining high ethical standards -- and stomaching honest, negative feedback?
When a death in the family stopped a Zappos customer from returning her ill-fitting shoes within the 15-day return window, not only did Zappos still accept the return, they sent her flowers. The customer blogged, and that post was picked up by tons of other bloggers and media channels, generating lots of positive word of mouth for Zappos.
For a lot of businesses, blogging just makes sense. But for others, it's not such a good fit. Use these "20 Reasons" to help evaluate if starting a blog is the right move for your company.
Companies are no longer insulated from the customers they serve -- they're in direct contact via a variety of online platforms. Is this new model a risk, an asset, or both?
Today is Blog Action Day, and so far more than 15,000 blogs have joined the cause. These bloggers have pledged to post about the environment today, with the hope that all of those bloggers' voices joined together might stir change.
Instead of facing off against one another, newspapers and bloggers are getting a little closer. From sharing content to sharing ad revenue, the relationship between newspapers and bloggers is shifting.
Restaurants around the country are hosting social networking parties -- which include free food and drinks -- as a way to get in the good graces of bloggers and review-site users. A case of ample sampling, or does this constitute paying off bloggers for positive reviews -- and where does disclosure fit in?
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