Name your poison
In December, Chris Brogan, a social media consultant who also blogs at Dad-o-Matic, tested a new paid posting service from Izea. Izea's SocialSpark network lets advertisers "identify and empower brand advocates." In this case, Brogan and five other bloggers were to spend $500 at K-Mart and write about the shopping experience and products they found. Each also got another $500 K-Mart gift card to give away to one of their readers.
Brogan began the article with, "This post is a sponsored post on behalf of K-Mart via Izea. The opinions are mine." He ended the post with another mention that it was sponsored, with a link to K-Mart's gift card page. The bottom line was, Brogan received $500 worth of items of his choice in return for creating an honest post. (In fact, much of what he bought was to donate to Toys for Tots.)
There's no universal ethic about bloggers accepting money or products from advertisers. Some bloggers maintain the traditional wall, displaying ads on the site but not writing about advertisers. On other sites, it's acknowledged that the writers will cover companies that advertise, but they'll do it impartially. Still, other bloggers cheerfully solicit products and other freebies, including international trips in some cases.
Brogan was quickly savaged on -- where else? -- Twitter, where getting up a political correctness posse is as easy as hitting "update." The reaction may have been intensified because Izea is the company formerly known as PayPerPost; the earlier incarnation played right into people's fears about the erosion of journalism as we knew it.
Brogan countered that he's both a writer and publisher, and in the latter role, he has to figure out how to pay the bills. Also, as a social media consultant, this gave him a chance to try out Izea's platform, which gives a social media spin to blog advertising by enabling bloggers and advertisers to communicate directly in order to hash out promotions.
