blog till you drop!
A cocktail of advertising, social media, and technology
Are bloggers turning into puppets controlled by marketers?
Social Media Marketing / WOM Marketing / Digital PR – an increasing number of brands are trying to engage with consumers using social media these days.
Social Media is impacting on the decision making process, and marketers have jumped at the opportunity to use bloggers’ influence to get reviews about their products. It’s cheaper than traditional marketing and it seems to work (for now anyway…)
As a blogger and WOM Marketing specialist, I know how things work both from a blogger’s perspective as well as behind the scenes, crafting campaigns and deciding which bloggers we should engage with. [NB: 'engaging' as opposed to targeting']
One of my Twitter contacts recently told me about Social Media Library, a website that specialises in ‘providing PR and marketing professionals with up-to-date information on the most influential social media sites in the UK.’ Funnily enough, the folks at Social Media Library called me at work this morning… needless to say, they had a bit of a shock when I told them I was both a blogger and a WOM specialist!
Social Media Library is essentially a database of blogs sold to marketers, and the scary thing is that they pretty much know everything about you – your age, which city you live in, what you blog about, your interests, how influential you are, quite literally everything! How scary is that?!
I am passionate about WOM Marketing (that’s what I do for a living after all!) provided campaigns are exciting for bloggers, and social media engagement ethical.
Such a database shows, in my opinion, a lack of respect towards bloggers. We are not writing puppets! If you want to get bloggers involved in a campaign , get to know them, read their blogs, engage with them, and avoid buying a database!
I’d like to ask fellow bloggers and PR / WOM / Social Media specialists what they think…
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07/11/2008 - 12:43 pm
This is an interesting point – and I find myself slightly torn.
On the one hand I completely agree and that such database is disrepectful. But (and it’s a big but) it’s also an incredibly positive sign that blogging is being taken seriously by the traditional marketing fraternity. Databases are their age old tools. And just as a media buyer is able to access a world of information regarding readership and demographic for traditional press, it seems to me that it was only a matter of time before the same was offered for new media counterparts.
My concern on their behalf is more of a ‘head shake’ and ‘eye roll’. I don’t believe their old methods will work in this new world. Bloggers take their audiences and publications far more personally than traditional publishers. For a start it isn’t just a commercial exercise and that in itself changes things drastically. So for me, as a marketer and blogger I don’t so much question it’s ethics as its effectiveness.
08/11/2008 - 8:55 pm
very interesting… are they just ranking your blog and it’s influence or are they looking at your entire sphere of influence – like your footprint on twitter, youtube a la friendfeed etc… ?
10/11/2008 - 1:22 pm
Lea, I also feel torn. On the one hand, I think it’s a great thing for brands to engage with bloggers, but on the other hand I think too many digital PR agencies don’t get it, which is why I am a little concerned about this list being made available to hundreds of PR agencies. I have seen too many bad / boring / non-conversational pitches around which is the reason why I am a little sceptical.
Phil, I think they look at both your influence (technorati authotrity, page rank) as well as your various online presences. Big Brother is watching you…
11/11/2008 - 7:10 am
I think as with all cottage industry, the boom in self-appointed social networking or social media gurus will swamp the field and make it hard for late adopting companies to tap social networks. We as consumers will learn quickly to distinguish between a campaign that’s run by a corporation and a consultant to pitch to me and a genuine groundswell of interest in a great product.
11/11/2008 - 9:40 am
Hi Lolly,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts – really interesting to see discussion and debate forming around Social Media Library.
I very much appreciate your concerns. One of the main reasons for launching Social Media Library was to help marketers better understand social media. There is currently a lot of misunderstanding about how you find blogs and how best to engage with them.
We hope that by categorising social media sites for marketers in an easily understandable way, we can help bridge this gap. In addition to a directory of contacts, we also provide marketers with guidelines on how to best integrate social media into marketing and PR campaigns. Our guidelines for blog relations, for example, cover off a lot of the points you rightfully point out in your PR Policy. i.e. make sure your communications are relevant and human. I’m happy to send these over to you, if this is of interest?
Please feel free to let us know any questions you may have – really interested to hear your thoughts!!
Also, if you’d like, I’m happy to take you through Social Media Library in more detail to show how it works.
Kind regards
Michael
Social Media Library has been in development for the past 18 months
11/11/2008 - 12:38 pm
This is a really interesting debate. As with so much in PR, it’s not about the tools, it’s how you use them.
We do huge amounts of research for our clients into which blogs are relevant to them – i.e. who out there online is either talking about them or about the topics that are relevant to them.
A resource like the Social Media Library would serve to cut down some of the initial research time – it wouldn’t fundamentally alter the way we approach contact with bloggers.
So whether we’ve spent the tiem working out spheres of influence etc or whether someone has done it on our behalf, that work will take place regardless.
It’s what you then DO that counts – i.e. once you’ve identified interesting and relevant bloggers in a particular area, it’s about reading, following, getting to know and then (if it’s appropriate) contacting bloggers with something that might be of interest.
PR agencies will sometimes get it right and sometimes get it wrong – but that’s completely regardless of whether or not they buy in to a database to help them get some basic research done. I agree with Lea’s point – this isn’t about ethics so much as effectiveness.
13/11/2008 - 11:30 am
Michael – thanks for the comment. And I am glad you spotted my post. I don’t mean to criticise what you guys do in any way, I am just a little concerned that some PR agencies won’t really know how to use these lists. I see too much bad stuff around…
Carole – whilst I totally understand that such service can cut down research time, I am concerned that not many PR agencies know how to deal with blogger engagement, and will not bother forging relationships with bloggers…
16/11/2008 - 9:40 pm
Being in a similar position to you (both blogger & social media consultant), I find watching services like Social Media Library evolve fascinating. Seemingly Michael has good intentions as to the purpose of SML, so we’ll see where it leads.
I suspect we’ll go through the typical awkward teenager growth phase, complete with mood swings and zits, but at some point PR agencies will learn how to interact with bloggers and bloggers will develop their own code of ethics, in the same way journalism (sort of) has done over the past century as advertising evolved.
We may just need to help them along the way
18/11/2008 - 4:59 pm
Lolly – I do completely understand you concerns – social media is very much a different way of thinking from traditional PR. Please do let me know if I can help with any questions you have or if you’d like us to take you through Social Media Library in more detail…