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Advertising & PR, Bloggers & Integrity Making money, while being honest by Colin Charles http://bytebot.net / Saturday, 4 April 2009

Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity Making Money While Being Honest

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Page 1: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Advertising & PR, Bloggers & Integrity

Making money, while being honest

by Colin Charleshttp://bytebot.net/

Saturday, 4 April 2009

Page 2: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

define: blogger

• a person who keeps and updates a blog

• a contributor to a blog or online journal

• a journal or diary that is posted on the Internet

• (writer for) a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in reverse chronological order

Saturday, 4 April 2009

Page 3: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Types of blogs

• Personal blogs

• Corporate blogs

• Media blogs (videoblog, photoblog)

• Device blogs (moblogs)

• Genre (politics, travel, daily life, etc.)

Saturday, 4 April 2009

Page 4: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Is a blogger a journalist?

• define: journalist

• reporters and columnists

• abide by a code of ethics

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Page 5: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

So... is a blogger a journalist?

• Want invites to media junkets

• Love press passes

• Tend to photograph, write about events, new products, etc.

• Likes the freebiesAll to drive more traffic to a blog!

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Page 6: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Malaysian bloggers aren’t journalists

• By and large, lack journalistic integrity

• No editors to report to

• Try to steer clear of slander/libel/defamation

• Unless they’re a political blogger

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Page 7: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

A blogger therefore, blogs for herself

• Write... about life... let there be some photos accompanying...

• Build a community of readers

• Build a significant number of readers, and you’re now elite

• Promote the elite lifestyle

• Parties, meetups, food together, etc.

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Page 8: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

However, there’s an audience

• Elite bloggers will carry some form of ads

• Some will even carry some form of sponsored posts

• Google AdWords is popular, but there exist Text Link Ads, Chitika, Amazon Store, IZEA

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Page 9: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Why do bloggers run ads?

• To become a pro-blogger

• To make (easy) money fast

• To supplement income

• To pay for hosting

• To donate to charity

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Page 10: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

The birth of “blog advertising communities”

• Act as a bridge between bloggers and advertisers

• Network marketing/MLM-styled

• Nuffnang, Advertlets

• How does Nuffnang work?

• What is your reward?

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Page 11: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

So, is a blog-vertising community viable?

• the idea of earning your first pay cheque after 6-8 months, entices many (RM50)

• All the elite that you look up to, are on the same network

• Free parties! Free movie tickets! Free! Free!

• RM50 is quicker to earn than USD$100

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Page 12: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Why do advertisers use blog-vertising communities?• Media buyers don’t understand social media

dynamics or the Internet

• Media buyers have no idea how to engage bloggers

• Advertising communities exist to make life easier

• Trade money for time (or understanding)

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Page 13: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

A unique selling point

“Your ad gets displayed in over 85,000 blogs for X ringgit”

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Page 14: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Media buyers and social media

• Social media is about conversations

• A good product speaks for itself

• PR companies exist to ensure conversation takes place everywhere

• More “buzz” ensures a good PR job

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Page 15: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Exploiting the trust

• Once an elite has created a community, know that the community trusts the author

• Creating conversations equate to brand recognition

"discuss on the deal: with your requirements, we will suggest a package of blogs that we think will suit your needs"

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Page 16: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Media buyers going direct to market

• Approach bloggers directly

• Elite don’t write about products that they aren’t paid to anymore

• Canon Singapore’s recent (April 1 2009) success shows this can still be done, without blog advertising communities

Saturday, 4 April 2009

Page 17: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

So, bloggers, what about integrity?

• If you’re not a journalist, and you’re writing for yourself, is integrity required?

• If you have a community, who trust in you, integrity plays a big role

• Disclosure is important

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Page 18: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Integrity

“This above all:

to thine own self be true,

And it must follow,

as the night the day,

Thou canst not them be false

to any man” -- William Shakespeare

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Page 19: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

What should advertisers look for?

• Blogs that have a disclosure policy

• Blogs that clearly state that they have been paid to review a product

• Blogs that have a useful PageRank

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Page 20: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

What should bloggers do?

• Create great content

• Your community is created on it

• Your PageRank is calculated about how often you’re in the “conversation”

• Use nofollow in sponsored links

• Always keep your integrity

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Page 21: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Do I lose value by disclosing?

• No!

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Page 22: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

So how do bloggers make money, anyway?

• Sponsorships (podcasts)

• RSS news feed sponsorship (Daring Fireball)

• Services that pay you when you reach a certain number of page views

Works because of great content!

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Page 23: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

How can bloggers make money honestly

• Clearly identify genuine content and advertorials

• Publish a rate card

• Tell advertisers and PR firms what kind of content you’ll be happy writing about

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Page 24: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Sponsored posts working overseas?

• Chris Brogan and the K-Mart gift voucher

• IZEA - the beginning of sponsored conversations (PayPerPost). Create buzz, drive traffic

• Chris Pirillo (lockergn0me fame)

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Page 25: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Bloggers that do the right thing

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Page 26: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Recent media brouhaha

• Blogger: Gareth says PR agencies are just hacks, and need to get a clue

• “if you want us to go to some event and write about it you better pay!”

• “if you want to treat my blog as a means of advertising then I am the media owner”

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Page 27: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Case study: Maxis and the iPhone 3G

• Make sure you use a “virgin” browser

• Google: “maxis iphone”

• Danny Foo, LiewCF, Byte’s photo, @limyh, and the 9th link smells like a sponsored post

• Google: “iphone maxis”, “maxis iphone 3g”

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Page 28: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Case Study: Maxis Broadband

• Is there even a modicum of information there, with regards to the sponsored “Girls Day Out” campaign last year alongside Dell and their Mini 9?

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Page 29: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Case study: mitigating brand damage

• Service plans on increasing its price

• PR firm starts commenting on blogs

• Blogs flare up, PR firm has some “cred” and doesn’t seem like a troll

• All seems well

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Page 30: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Horror stories from the trenches

• Elite members in a community shouldn’t be writing reviews of anything unless they get paid to do so

• Holidays, plus generous spending money, in exchange for 3 blog posts, no disclosure

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Page 31: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Take away

• Does PageRank matter?

• Is sponsored posting acceptable?

• Without disclosure?

• Social media is two way - companies are realising consumers are getting blind towards advertorials

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Page 32: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Thanks

• David Lian (@davidlian)

• Carolyn Chan (@thechannelc)

• Ben Israel (@ben_israel)

• Mike Foong (@mikefoong)

• Paul Tan (@paultantk)

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Page 33: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Resources

• Groundswell

• #smfail and the Web 2.0 panel

• The Wisdom of Crowds

• The Long Tail

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Page 34: Advertising And PR, Bloggers And Integrity   Making Money While Being Honest

Comments?

Colin Charles

http://bytebot.net/

[email protected]

@bytebot on Twitter

Saturday, 4 April 2009