It is amazing the untapped power of blogs. If I was a marketer right now or a website designer I would be working out how I could best leverage blogs to help me in my quest to shape the way consumers feel about my product. I wonder if at some point in the future, significant amounts of money might begin to change hands, and the nature of blogging may change, at least for the most prominent of blogs.
It is almost inevitable that blogs will become a real force in the advertising world. My blog has had 38,500 unique visitors this quarter, and many blogs have had many more than that. Certainly the readership of some specialist blogs looks set to overtake that of specialist magazines in that field- this may even be the case already for some. Advertisers will at some point want to fall over themselves to get access to their dream- demographically targeted advertising. With the right approach, advertisers should be able to target the appropriate segments simply by placing adverts on certain sorts of blogs.
It seems inevitable that with the potential a blogstorm has to shape marketplaces, companies are going to start to spend a lot of money on getting their message across on blogs in one way or another.
How much will the bloggers be directed by those with the most money to induce them? For me, my recent brief foray into google adverts put me off anything that doesn’t give me total control of what appears on my blog. I am however sure that if I was approached to run a specific advert that I thought my readers would be interested in and the price was right I would be tempted.
I suspect, however, that traditional online advertising may be just the beginning. It seems to me that the following are all potential growth areas for bloggers, if they aren’t happening on a widespread basis already.
1. Text adverts
An organization may decide to sponsor a blogger to place a text link to a specific site either in a post or in a list of links. This can of course be simply to gather traffic, or if done wisely may help to boost the site you have linked to in its google rankings for certain keywords.
2. Sponsored reviews
Blog critics are definitely the rage at the moment, and I for one have already got to the point where I cannot review as many books as I am asked to. I am delighted to get the majority of my reading habit supported out of free review books.
By all accounts, blog reviewers are a scarce resource, however. Will competition in the market for blog reviews by prominent bloggers lead to publishing houses paying certain bloggers money to review their books?
3. Sponsored PR work
Blogs are the new magazines. I predict that in some fields their popularity and readership may lead to organizations being keen that press releases are covered. A single blog entry can often lead to many more, especially if the item is newsworthy. A blog storm can definitely influence google results so that people get to hear about your new product or whatever.
I wonder if companies may in the future be willing to pay bloggers so that they would write a post about their press release, quoting it and linking to it . Provided editorial freedom remained with the blogger, I suspect many would be only too happy with such an arrangement.
4. Bloggers as consultants
Prominent bloggers are riding the crest of a wave. Many of them know exactly how to drive links, traffic and search engine rankings their way. Bloggers understand the new media and the benefits and pitfalls it presents to organizations. Hiring a blogger as a consultant to assist in a publicity campaign or even start a company blog may become quite popular.
Many bloggers and website designers wonder when companies and other organizations will get serious about things like google-optimization of their websites. There are so many simple tweaks that are familiar to some of the well-known bloggers that can sometimes dramatically increase the traffic achieved from search engines. There are plenty of companies out there who will take your money, but who better to advise you than a blogger who’s own site demonstrates that they know how to succeed in the “google wars”?
5. Bloggers as market-shapers
Some bloggers may even find themselves courted as almost a virtual salesforce. Sponsored by one or more companies certain blogs may be used to spread the company view of a product or service. If a blogger is genuinely enthusiastic about a particular product or service already, being sponsored to say what they believe with a view to persuading others in the blogosphere may seem attractive.
Of course the good news for companies is, that if their product is any good they are likely to have a small army of word-of-blog evangelists for it who will not need to be paid. Bloggers may well advise compaines on how to shape this volunteer army, however.
Some of these ideas may seem somehow inherently “unfair” or ethically inappropriate. I am sure some bloggers will ruin perfectly good reputations by making foolish business choices. I am also sure that some bloggers will be able to navigate the stormy seas of sponsorship in a way that is beneficial to all, including their readers.
I doubt that many successful bloggers will ever allow their opinions to be on sale to the highest bidder. Somehow I suspect that other bloggers would quickly smell a rat in any case, and that traffic will flow to genuinely independent thinkers- even if they do happen to receive some form of sponsorship from time to time.
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