Getting Granular: The DigitalGrit Blog

Buzz Marketing: Keep or Toss?

After Tom Hespos basically dismissed Buzz Marketing as a "recipe for disaster" in yesterday's Online Spin, a torrent of comments were unleashed in response.

A snippet from the article:

If there's something more to this notion of "buzz marketing" that what I've already heard, someone needs to spell it out for me. It sounds to me like a recipe for disaster.

The pitch, as far as I know, is that people sign up to be paid to push products and services to others, in effect becoming agents for a marketer. Umm, excuse me, but I thought the industry was moving toward more transparency and not less.

According to guidelines established by the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association, agents are supposed to disclose their relationship with the companies whose products they push. Can someone explain that one to me? I understand the importance of disclosure, but doesn't this represent a huge catch-22?

The 55+ comments in response to the article are mostly in support of Hespos' assertion. But there are some notable exceptions. (The list of commentors, btw, reads like a "who's who" of online marketing.)

Joseph Chernov of BzzAgent uses an illustrative example. "Acme"  co. gives a guy a free hammer as part of a focus group. They apparently know they've got a good product, and they're looking for both feedback and buzz. "Gus" tells a friend that he got the free hammer from Acme, and shares his likes and dislikes about the new product:

This is how word of mouth occurs in the real world.  It’s woven into the fabric of everyday conversation.  It’s not compromised by disclosure, but rather augmented by it.  In this hypothetical, Gus’ acknowledgement that he received a free hammer did not diminish Guy’s interest in the product.  Nor did it create an appearance of Gus being “paid off” by Acme.  This is how friends speak; this is how people relate.  Natural and honest.

Acme learns that the lightweight head is a priority for a real consumer; Gus completes an overdue renovation project; and Guy gets to check out a useful product during a commercial he wouldn’t have watched anyway.

What are your thoughts about Buzz marketing? Useful tool or impending liability?  Read the article, read the comments, and let us know!

Heard about this, by the way, from AdRants, whose editor has a pretty eloquent response to the debate.

Buzz Marketing: Keep or Toss?

After Tom Hespos basically dismissed Buzz Marketing as a "recipe for disaster" in yesterday's Online Spin, a torrent of comments were unleashed in response.

A snippet from the article:

If there's something more to this notion of "buzz marketing" that what I've already heard, someone needs to spell it out for me. It sounds to me like a recipe for disaster.

The pitch, as far as I know, is that people sign up to be paid to push products and services to others, in effect becoming agents for a marketer. Umm, excuse me, but I thought the industry was moving toward more transparency and not less.

According to guidelines established by the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association, agents are supposed to disclose their relationship with the companies whose products they push. Can someone explain that one to me? I understand the importance of disclosure, but doesn't this represent a huge catch-22?

The 55+ comments in response to the article are mostly in support of Hespos' assertion. But there are some notable exceptions. (The list of commentors, btw, reads like a "who's who" of online marketing.)

Joseph Chernov of BzzAgent uses an illustrative example. "Acme"  co. gives a guy a free hammer as part of a focus group. They apparently know they've got a good product, and they're looking for both feedback and buzz. "Gus" tells a friend that he got the free hammer from Acme, and shares his likes and dislikes about the new product:

This is how word of mouth occurs in the real world.  It’s woven into the fabric of everyday conversation.  It’s not compromised by disclosure, but rather augmented by it.  In this hypothetical, Gus’ acknowledgement that he received a free hammer did not diminish Guy’s interest in the product.  Nor did it create an appearance of Gus being “paid off” by Acme.  This is how friends speak; this is how people relate.  Natural and honest.

Acme learns that the lightweight head is a priority for a real consumer; Gus completes an overdue renovation project; and Guy gets to check out a useful product during a commercial he wouldn’t have watched anyway.

What are your thoughts about Buzz marketing? Useful tool or impending liability?  Read the article, read the comments, and let us know!

Heard about this, by the way, from AdRants, whose editor has a pretty eloquent response to the debate.

A week later - The ad:tech Photos

2005 11-07 DigitalGrit @ adtech 002,
originally uploaded by digitalgritphotos.

It shouldn't have taken me a week to upload photos then figure out how to link the flickr account to the blog...and yet it did.

ad:tech New York was a great show for us, and there are some fun pictures of our booth, our sister company relevantNOISE's booth, and a few from our invitation-only happy hour as well.

So, enjoy the fruits of my labor!

**Special thanks to resident photographer Nicole D. for the great pics!

A week later - The ad:tech Photos

2005 11-07 DigitalGrit @ adtech 002,
originally uploaded by digitalgritphotos.

It shouldn't have taken me a week to upload photos then figure out how to link the flickr account to the blog...and yet it did.

ad:tech New York was a great show for us, and there are some fun pictures of our booth, our sister company relevantNOISE's booth, and a few from our invitation-only happy hour as well.

So, enjoy the fruits of my labor!

**Special thanks to resident photographer Nicole D. for the great pics!

Google's Next Frontier: Newspaper???

According to Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineWatch:

...Google is apparently to put its text ads (just like you see in search results) into a Chicago newspaper. Hmm, where? The classifieds section, maybe? If so, perhaps there's hope for newspaper classifieds yet.

Google confirmed the rumour, telling Sullivan "they are evaluating a potential print ads test in Chicago newspapers," and that the print ad test they've been running "has had favorable reaction from advertisers and publishers."

Damn, those guys are innovative.While competitors are still to catch up to Google in new media, Google's gone full circle and is re-invigorating the old stuff. Heck, AM radio may have life in it yet, if Google's got anything to say about it.

Google's Next Frontier: Newspaper???

According to Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineWatch:

...Google is apparently to put its text ads (just like you see in search results) into a Chicago newspaper. Hmm, where? The classifieds section, maybe? If so, perhaps there's hope for newspaper classifieds yet.

Google confirmed the rumour, telling Sullivan "they are evaluating a potential print ads test in Chicago newspapers," and that the print ad test they've been running "has had favorable reaction from advertisers and publishers."

Damn, those guys are innovative.While competitors are still to catch up to Google in new media, Google's gone full circle and is re-invigorating the old stuff. Heck, AM radio may have life in it yet, if Google's got anything to say about it.

DigitalGrit's Business Blog Service has Officially Launched!

Yes, it's true. We've launched our results-oriented, ROI-focused biz blog service. Don't expect to see any Raging Cows, Lincoln Fries, or Captain's Blogs here.

DigitalGrit Launches Business Blog Service
Web Marketing Firm Introduces Results-Oriented Web Log Offering

November 7, 2005 (Boonton, NJ): Web marketing and technology firm DigitalGrit introduced its Business Blog Service today. The new service offers large and medium sized companies a turnkey solution for creating, maintaining, marketing and measuring the success of a company web log, or blog....

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Thanks to Blog Herald (one of my fave feeds, in fact) and BusinessBlogWire for the mentions!

DigitalGrit's Business Blog Service has Officially Launched!

Yes, it's true. We've launched our results-oriented, ROI-focused biz blog service. Don't expect to see any Raging Cows, Lincoln Fries, or Captain's Blogs here.

DigitalGrit Launches Business Blog Service
Web Marketing Firm Introduces Results-Oriented Web Log Offering

November 7, 2005 (Boonton, NJ): Web marketing and technology firm DigitalGrit introduced its Business Blog Service today. The new service offers large and medium sized companies a turnkey solution for creating, maintaining, marketing and measuring the success of a company web log, or blog....

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Thanks to Blog Herald (one of my fave feeds, in fact) and BusinessBlogWire for the mentions!

Calcanis on the Open Weblog Advertising Network

Calcanis has a plan to facilitate blog advertising. Right now it just involves the big guys, Weblogs Inc., Gawker, Battelle, et. al.  Here's his take:

Why do we need this?

Right now it's very hard for advertisers to understand the blogosphere. i.e. There is no way to know what the 25 biggest TV or gadget blogs are. You can go to Technorati and see results based on their unfinished directory, but that is ranked by inbound links which everyone knows is easy to game...

What do you mean by critical mass? I heard you said if you don't have 100,000 pages a month don't bother.

In my experience advertisers are just not going to bother with a blog with under 100,000 page views a month. It not because they don't like you, it's because it's inefficient. However, Google Adsense, Tribal Fusion, and AdBrite have solved this problem already--they will work with growing sites. I still think it would be a good idea to put your blog in the directory if you are looking to build it into a real business because at least you'll start getting brand exposure even if advertisers won't buy till you hit their minimum benchmark (which might be 250,000 or 1M pages a month!). 

Hmmm. So this won't really effect anyone but those huge blog networks...who would probably find advertisers pretty easily anyway. (I could just be really tired right now, but that's how it looks to me.) I mean, does Steve Rubel even get stats like that? I guess the only hope for the rest of us bloggers (with our non-business blogs, anyway) is to stick with much-abused networks like Blogger/Google AdWords -- or start vertical networks of our own, in hopes of hitting critical mass.

Makes sense. Calcanis is right. Larger advertisers really won't bother unless you have that volume of traffic -- unless you're very, very niche.

Here are his posts on the topic. (Post one) (Post two)

Calcanis on the Open Weblog Advertising Network

Calcanis has a plan to facilitate blog advertising. Right now it just involves the big guys, Weblogs Inc., Gawker, Battelle, et. al.  Here's his take:

Why do we need this?

Right now it's very hard for advertisers to understand the blogosphere. i.e. There is no way to know what the 25 biggest TV or gadget blogs are. You can go to Technorati and see results based on their unfinished directory, but that is ranked by inbound links which everyone knows is easy to game...

What do you mean by critical mass? I heard you said if you don't have 100,000 pages a month don't bother.

In my experience advertisers are just not going to bother with a blog with under 100,000 page views a month. It not because they don't like you, it's because it's inefficient. However, Google Adsense, Tribal Fusion, and AdBrite have solved this problem already--they will work with growing sites. I still think it would be a good idea to put your blog in the directory if you are looking to build it into a real business because at least you'll start getting brand exposure even if advertisers won't buy till you hit their minimum benchmark (which might be 250,000 or 1M pages a month!). 

Hmmm. So this won't really effect anyone but those huge blog networks...who would probably find advertisers pretty easily anyway. (I could just be really tired right now, but that's how it looks to me.) I mean, does Steve Rubel even get stats like that? I guess the only hope for the rest of us bloggers (with our non-business blogs, anyway) is to stick with much-abused networks like Blogger/Google AdWords -- or start vertical networks of our own, in hopes of hitting critical mass.

Makes sense. Calcanis is right. Larger advertisers really won't bother unless you have that volume of traffic -- unless you're very, very niche.

Here are his posts on the topic. (Post one) (Post two)