Savvy marketers benefiting by experimenting with blogs

An article in The Washington Post provides some great examples of companies that have experienced some early success after partnering with bloggers to promote their products. “Movie studios are giving bloggers a sneak peak at deleted scenes and Hollywood gossip to promote a movie or DVD release. Start-up technology companies in Silicon Valley are hiring public relations firms to grab mentions on the hottest tech blogs. Even pet-care companies and publishers of religious books are trying to get nods on blogs, even if they have only a few readers.” Growing recognition of the power of such tactics has even led to blogger relations experts joining marketing and advertising teams (any experts like this on any record labels?). As an example of such partnering efforts within the music and entertainment industries, the article cites PerkettPR – a public relations firm in San Francisco – who gave bloggers clips of new music videos when Gotuit Media Corp. recently launched a start-up video portal. According to the firm, more than 65 percent of the company's coverage came from blogs. Readers of this blog also know that Universal Studios recently contacted Chris at Movie Marketing Madness to provide him with information regarding the marketing of the movie Miami Vice to be included in his blog review. Mack at The Viral Garden has also written about On Target Media Group’s recent use of the blogging community in promoting Les Claypool’s new CD, and has provided an alternative suggestion of his own for promoting music with blogs via his “100 CDs for 100 Bloggers” idea. There are several key advantages to partnering with bloggers in marketing (points which parallel the reasons I have previously discussed as to why artists and labels need to start blogging themselves) : 1) The more blogs on which your product/music are mentioned, the more it will show up in a search engines, thus the more people can discover it; 2) Blogs are interactive and reciprocal in nature which has the potential to generate buzz and word of mouth by sparking reader comments and discussion, as well as viral promotion via linking between blogs; 3) Even blogs with a small number of readers are worthwhile because they may provide unique access to niche audiences and because, if enough of these blogs are targeted, they can add up to a sizeable promotional value. That said, there are a few do’s and don’ts for marketers looking to partner with bloggers: DO target bloggers with material they naturally gravitate toward so that they will be drawn to the product rather than feeling as though it is being pushed upon them. DO engage in a conversation with bloggers, provide relevant comments, and develop a relationship with the community DO NOT recruit representatives of your company to spam bloggers’ comment boards with links to your product as this will only anger the bloggers and readers DO NOT try to control the message. Even a negative CD or product review can spark a lot of discussion and provide an opportunity for a company or artist to enter into a conversation. Technorati Tags: music,entertainment,blogs,blogger,marketing,interactive