Riding every single wave
Published by Esteban Glas on December 17th, 2008 | This post lacks all category except for: Blogs, Business, Social Media, Web Marketing
Remember the times when we filled our mouths with the “Social Media Marketing is about Authenticity, Transparency, Straight Talk”? It would seem those days are over, if they were not an illusion in the first place.
David made some criticism over his blog regarding the bloggers (erm, “writers”) that will take money from companies to talk ang generate buzz about them. I won’t spend too long going through his point, but I’ll say that I agree overall.
That post had a trackback from Jeremiah’s own blog, where he writes in support of the izea model:
Recent research shows that corporate blogs are not trusted, but we know that consumers trust their peers, so savvy brands will want to benefit from word of mouth.
So, I’ll try to use logic to digest as much as I can of this.
People trust peers more than corporate blogs. So, let’s pay bloggers to write nice things about companies. Yet, people have higher trust on emails from people they know. What are companies to do? a. pay every single person that has a friend to recommend your brand on an email or b. spoof addresses to make people think their friends are recommending our brand.
Of course someone will eventually find out and users will no longer trust “emails from people they know”.
(need I clarify I tried to make a point through absurd?)
Using my crystal ball I can foresee: Programs like this will slaughter blog’s credibility the same way miss-use of corporate blogs demised how much people trust them.
It is a program that is bound to fail in the long run. Once people start to be suspicious about if what they read on a blog is being “sponsored by Huge Inc.” there’s no turning back, since bloggers do not have the leverage mass media has to revert such negative perception.
In a couple of years we’ll be gazing at a similar report, looking at blogs standing at the bottom of the trust pit, scratching our heads and wondering what went wrong.
But there are two major issues with this type of study.
- They tend to generalize
- They are impossible to compare against other facts and figures.
I agree that 80% of corporate blogs are rubbish. Nothing more than an ill-applied, poorly executed and sad shadow of what a blog should be. I wouldn’t trust them myself, and I’m both a blogger (corporate and individual) and a blog-reader.
But there are some awesome examples of decent (and influential) corporate blogging as well. I wonder if that 16% of the people the study showed trusted corporate blogs read the decent ones.To be honest, forrester’s report (available for free w/ registration) gives some advice into how to save corporate blogging.
Now, back to the title of the post: “riding every single wave”; that is exactly what (us) marketers are doing wrong. On a couple of speeches I gave this year I underlined that corporate blogging was not suited for every single company (“don’t do it because its hot”) and that before engaging into it those in charge should be fully aware of how it needs to be done.
(As a general rule of thumb: if your corporate blog pisses some “old school” people within your company, you’re doing it just fine).
So, now that the new trend is pay-per-post we’ll find tons of companies jumping into that without really knowing who they are paying. Recently I was talking to a local a-list blogger (most probably Argentina’s top blogger), a very controversial figure for some, but stainless in terms of ethics. He said “a company that advertises with me should understand that I might criticize them nonetheless”. If I managed Argentina’s Marketing budget he’d have a Lenovo ad over his site.
Once marketers understand the new game they should realize that some things that look bad on the surface can have a longer lasting possitive effect.
But advertising is different than pay-per-post. Advertising is clear and direct. Pay-per-post is misleading. It doesn’t matter if authors disclose, there is still some degree of deceit happening. If a user goes to bigcompany-dot-com he expects that the copy is going to be biased towards what bigcompany sells. If the same user goes to averagejoeopinion-dot-com he expects to read what Joe has to say, not what bigcompany told Joe to say.
The move of advertising pay-per-post can (and will) backfire in the nastiest of ways. Because it is fundamentally flawed as a concept within that other type of marketing that “social media analysts” (I am one) are advocating. One based on openness and honesty. It is not easy to do things the right way, and often it takes a long time to pay off.
Sure, in times of crisis people do welcome some extra cash, but not everyone should become a prostitute for that reason.
To conclude and since Jeremiah spent his time commenting on my previous post on the subject, I’ll take the time to reply.
I respect Analyst’s work. Half of my time I (should) spend looking at facts and figures, understanding what is happening, what the trends are and how to improve programs.
The main issue I see with analysts is that they see half the picture. The half the people within companies don’t see. The main difference is that we know we’re missing stuff, we need that information and are willing to pay big bucks in order to get it. On the other hands many analysts tend to think they own an absolute truth.
Another problem I usually have is that some conclusions they draw seem to be a tad short-sighted and shallow. It is only when such type of research goes public and digested by bloggers, marketers and others that the real deal surfaces. Yet, those other people who re-read and re-analyze, share their opinions and expertise don’t make a dime out of it. Shouldn’t Forrester pay all of them as well? After all, they are making significant contributions to the final studies (sometimes before the study is finished, other times afterwards).
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Esteban
You raise solid points amid this very important topic, also, since you’re on the buyer side, what you say greatly matters as you’re on the demand side.
Your example of an email form a friend becoming the latest word of mouth marketing effort is certainly likely to happen. (example: see the plugin sharethis.com)
I agree, advertising is clear cut, but the reason why Sears and Kmart have opted for Izea is the click through rates are significantly better (as told to me by the CEO of Izea).
Marketers want to be part of the social space, and it appears these two brands have gone for the largest impact and viral spread (blogs and twitter).
Please revisit my post and see the risks that I outlined, it’s not one-sided in favor of Izea. It’s pretty obvious Izea will have challenges meeting the two requirements I spelled out in my tweets: Authenticity and Sustainability.
The jist of my post is that most marketers are not going to have the same high standards as Lenovo has, and will go the cheap route, whether that is right or wrong. It’s cheaper for them, they get a lot of traffic, word of mouth spread, and if anyone loses credibility it’s likely to be the bloggers more than the brands.
Regarding the analyst comments, first of all, thanks for respecting our work. Let’s e clear, whoever told you analyst know ‘everything’ is lying. You’re right, analysts don’t see the full picture as they’re not in the ‘trenches’, although most come from practice, and many return to practice.
Regarding folks who reanalyze reports insights, there’s actually folks making money off our products:
1) I see our research data, slides, and methodologies (like the POST process) appear in slides from consultants, they’re certainly benefiting from it when we make it public.
2) We always strive to credit our sources and examples (vendors, clients, bloggers, consultants), and in many cases, that results in leads for them –and should generate revenues.
3) My primary goal as an analyst is to help decision makers at corporations. My reports are written in a way to help the interactive marketer –they should profit.
I never really understood the analyst role till I got into it 14 months ago and I used to have the same criticisms. We work very hard to get answers for our clients, our research, customer surveys, analysis, costs money, and our reports are products. If you want to know more, I’m happy to talk to you on the phone about the role.
Lastly, your comments about being a ‘guru’ stuck with me, I’m starting to detest it, while I give away a lot of information on my blog for free, a great deal of my hard work will never be seen there. A few months ago, David called me out in a blog post some time ago for ‘baby talk’ but he has to remember I can only give so much away in public –I do what I can.
Thanks again Esteban, good insights, thanks for continuing the discussion with me, I’m listening.
Jeremiah,
First things first: thanks for the two lengthy replies. A couple of unordered thoughts:
a. Marketers seem to have the touch of Midas, we turn everything into gold and that can be a course. I wonder how long will click through rates stay as high on pay-per-post. This things seem to have a fairly short half-life. In my mind some of this bloggers have turned into splogs.
b. how hard would it be for you to do your job if you didn’t have the community’s leverage?
c. As I mentioned I think Analysts have a crucial role to help companies understand what is out of sight for them. Yet, in my experience, many times Analysts are more eager on selling how “cool” their data is than they are to give an extra notch on analysis and thought. This is not always the case, but it happens far more often than I would like to see.
d. remember that whenever we are at any given role, we tend to think we’re the center of the universe. Simple human behaviour. It is a good exercise to put yourself in the other party’s shoes. For example, when people go from production to strategic thinking they forget the same things that annoyed them when they were NOT on the client side. Remember your time in the trenches.
e. I applaud you on detesting your “guru” status. Honest. And I understand you’re not able to disclose as much as you want. The same happens to me.
f. If brands won’t suffer from pay-per-post it is just because their brand perception is already beaten up. Such activities go fairly much against new standards such as Net Promoter Score. I think they are buying food for today, hunger for tomorrow.
[...] Esteban Glas: Riding Every Single Wave [...]
Esteban
You drive a good conversation, we’d be in a coffee shop for hours I tell ya.
I’d love to respond to your unordered thoughts:
a. Agreed whole heartedly, we’ll always see the community shift mediums/locations/preferences and brands follow. (savvy brands lead of course)
b. I’ve detailed this in a blog post, I only use the community a portion of my research. In fact, not as much as you may think. The thing is, you only see what I do in public, not what I do in the office. For example, I have good ol fashioned data surveys in the field and am doing interview calls today with people like you (web marketing managers).
For what it’s worth, my CEO encourages fellow analyst to model my social research model as an addition (not replacement) to our methodology.
There are benefits and downsides to social research, please read this:
http://snipurl.com/8p82y
c. Agreed, analysts have a lot to learn and improve on. You should give specific feedback when you can. I ask my clients as often as I can remember to give me raw and honest feedback. Sometimes it really really hurts but I can try to improve.
d. Good reminder, I’ll keep that perspective.
e. It’s really amazing Esteban, when one gets passionate about something and puts their WHOLE life into (and achieves something) when they reach it –they get dinged for it. It used to be hard to take, but now I realize it’s part of the game.
f. Good point, Kmart and Sears are brands that don’t have prestige status. I’m doing research right now and talking to Wal-Mart and the 11 mommy bloggers who are NOT paid but achieving similar results.
I hope you took the time to read my post, I was trying to show the benefits and risks, not endorse the model fully (as it likely can’t overcome the risks I laid out)
You may not realize it, but I’m actually writing for you. Yeah you Esteban, the web strategy blog (and my mission) is to help web decision makers at corporations.
You may not like some of the things I do, so keep on giving me feedback and challenging me, I’m listening and responding.
[...] one change is that I’ve now been given the stigma of ‘guru’ which I really dislike. Why? I want to be known for what I can do, not just thought leadership. I product research reports [...]
[...] Mi oposición al contenido pago no es nueva. Tampoco es contra los bloggers argentinos. La prueba de ello está en un post que escribí hace casi un año en The Challenge. [...]