Red Door's Kelly Abbott explains what motivates bloggers, and how to reach them to further your marketing objectives.
A couple of timely announcements made at the end of last week warrant a bit of analysis. The first is the news that AOL has gobbled up a tiny publisher called Weblogs Inc. Network. The second is a survey published by Edelman claiming insight into the minds of bloggers. Both have blogging in common. Moreover, both point toward the value that bloggers add to the media world at large. Let's break it down.
It's a matter of faith that blogging has been mainstream for over a year now. Ever since Google gobbled up blogger.com, mainstream media has had a firm grasp of how blogging should be valued as a medium alongside its old-world, print, and new-world, online magazine, predecessors. This week we no longer have to posit that blogging and the bloggers that blog are worthy of special attention in media.
In case you live under a rock and have not heard of blogging, it is a personal journal, or web log. It publishes easily and reaches out to others with similar interests. If you have a basket-weavers' blog, other basket-weavers will gravitate naturally to you. Blogs also act as a virtual sticky note, to simply record thoughts for posterity. Occasionally the blogger uses a blog to vent, opine or shamelessly promote. All told, bloggers occupy niches and cultivate many small online communities. And like the tiny pads on a gecko's feet, the culmination of these small forces allow for a greater strength and stickiness. Hence AOL's $25M bet in acquiring Weblogs Inc. Network.
The Edeleman study presents an interesting profile of bloggers as it and public relations firms begin to target them. In relating with bloggers, PR people know that they can, in turn, connect by proxy with the blogger's fans, which are also their client's customers.
So we're starting to understand that the notion of "public," when it comes to public relations and public companies, is starting to change. The companies responsible for that change, such as Weblogs Inc. Network, are claiming to have mined some actual value from the blogsphere. What is the best way to reach these individuals?
I, Blogger
To best reach the blogger, one must understand that he or she is motivated by something deeper than mere words on a virtual page. The Edelman study points out that over half of bloggers blog as a means to record a thought (31.54 percent) or connect with others (20.34 percent). Furthermore, bloggers tend to blog at a pace greater than once a week -- that is, once a day (25.7 percent) or once every few days (37.88 percent). Last, about half blog for reasons other than talking about what companies are doing, and often -- take it from a self-admitted blogger -- it is for personal reasons. This evidence is supported by a recent eMarketer study which claims that 50 percent of bloggers blog for their own therapy.
Bloggers blog for the same reason guitarists rock: they have an urge to be heard and the medium allows them to express themselves like no other. It's somehow therapeutic to get one's words out in cyberspace. Anyone that has published an article or photo -- online or offline, myself included -- will admit that being heard helps the author find his or her place in the world. Chalk it up to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as a means of self-actualization. Or chalk it up to simple art therapy. When writing, the adage goes, all writers think they're Shakespeare. When posting, all bloggers are rock stars. They can't help but express themselves in the great show that is the internet.
Mind the Blogger
As I mentioned, I'm a blogger. I'm not the world's best blogger. I'm not the world's worst. But I do it to record a thought. If I'm working on an article idea, I might post a link to a study and make a brief comment. Sometimes, I blog simply to recognize the good work being done online. That is, I want other bloggers and writers to know that I heard them and agree. It's a virtual nod, as it were.
We bloggers don't stand on soapboxes. We blog for fun. It's nice if someone recognizes, every once in a while, the work we're doing, but we're not panderers for PR. And the majority of us don't bustle for micro-payments or ad word kick-backs. Instead we're motivated by making connections with each other. And if that means making connections with AOL and Edelman, it's only because they've been there listening and responding with little nods once in a while. If nothing else, this simple call-and-response effect is all the proof that we need that our efforts are rewarding. It's proof of self-actualization.
Go With the Blogsphere
Having said all that, I'm wary of the shotgun approach to cultivating a blogsphere. The bloggers at Weblogs Inc. Network are a specialized niche of business bloggers. There are only a few personal bloggers there. The rest are business blogs devoted to reporting industry news such as Endgaget (technology) and Joystiq (gaming). The revenue model is to aggregate these niche markets for marketers to advertise too, providing a new place for a $1M media buy to be distributed amongst many well-targeted audiences.
A traditional media-buying approach cannot possibly hope to work with the bulk of bloggers, however. PR houses and media buyers instead might do better to turn to networks like Bloglines and Technorati to better find and cultivate actual one-to-one relationships with bloggers and their readers. An exhaustive search of interested readers for any given material -- be it diapers, colas or politics -- one must first find relevant bloggers hidden in the blogsphere. Such a search is a lot more time-consuming, but, like the gecko's many-padded feet, the ability to surmount improbable heights comes from the combination of many small forces.
Bloggers trust bloggers, for one. For two, so do search engines. One way to see your traffic spike is to get blogged about -- not just by the big guys, but all the small guys too. While getting Slash-dotted or BoingBoing'd is an online PR dream, you can't build a good base without the support of the small, non-network blogs nodding along with them. Call it street cred.
Finally, if you want to get blogged, start blogging. Learn the terrain. Know the players. Speak the lingo. Take notes. And nod a lot. Only then, if you call, will they respond in kind.
Kelly Abbott is director of information strategy at Red Door Interactive, helping organizations in diverse industries to implement Internet technology systems tying together disparate networks. He is the co-founder of the San Diego Telecom Council's e-Business and Wi-Fi Special Interest Groups. He divides his volunteer efforts between Mama's Kitchen -- which feeds people living with AIDS -- and Airshare.org -- an education and community building site for Wireless LANs.
Advertisement