Marketing
Which Blog Advertising Networks do you use?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/26/2009 - 08:50As a new batch of bloggers prepare to leave EntreCard, I'd like to build up a spreadsheet of who is using which networks. I'll be using this to determine my own advertising decisions and will share information from that I gather from the spreadsheet.
If you use, or have used EntreCard, Adgitize, CMF Ads, Project Wonderland, or other blog advertising networks in the past or currently, please fill out the form below:
EntreCard Updates
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/25/2009 - 10:09Bloggers seeking traffic for their blogs need two things. The first is good content, and the second is to be findable. The first is just a matter of good writing. The second is more challenging. There are Search Engine Optimizations experts out there that will tell you all kinds of methods of getting incoming links, building your mailing list, getting people to subscribe to your RSS feed and so on. The bottom line is that you need to promote your site, and ideally do it where you are likely to find potential regular readers.
This is often done through link exchanges, traffic or click exchanges, and what I like to call blogger advertising networks. Many of these exchanges or networks have features from several categories and people will argue about whether a site is a link exchange, a click exchange, or an advertising network various levels of praise or derision.
One of the most notorious such networks is EntreCard. A large community has built up around EntreCard and it is amazing to see how they manage to continue in spite of repeated management snafus. One of the biggest was the way they mishandled the introduction of paid advertising. Many people complained, many people left, but still they muddled along. Then, they changed the payout for clicking on advertising sites. This resulted in more complaining, as well as more people leaving or cutting back their activities on EntreCard.
Now, they have announce that they are bringing back paid advertising in a different form and more sites are leaving. What is unfortunate is that the sites leaving tend to be the ones with the best content, such as Kitchen Retro, The Virtual Dime Museum, Symphony of Love and Politicus. This comes back to the key issue of any blogging: good content. Some of the sites producing the best content are leaving EntreCard, which makes EntreCard much less desirable a place to advertise or surf.
Follow Friday
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 09/18/2009 - 11:39@digiday @scottyhendo @shivsingh @StephanieSAM @ckieff @JasonDPG @annemai @KenRobbins @sofadude @LizaPost @DragonSearch @fromedome @mmathias @HartHooton @Alirana @tanyachadha @chrisfield
Every Friday many people in Social Media, especially on Twitter, but also on blogs and other sites, share lists of people that they enjoy following on social media sites. On my blog, Orient Lodge, I regularly participate in this. However, after the Digiday conferences in New York on Thursday, I thought it would be an interesting post for Digiday:Daily. I use TwitterFeed to post the title and lede of my blog post, along with a link to Twitter, and I use the Twitter App on Facebook to pull the Tweet and use it as my status on Facebook. With that, let me discuss some of the people from the Digiday events on Thursday that are well worth following.
@scottyhendo presented “The Future of Cause Marketing: Pledge to End Hunger Case Study”. He mentioned that the head of Tyson said a brand engaging in cause marketing should be like the moon, reflecting the light of the cause, in this case hunger. To illustrate his point, he provided a graph of the number of followers that he, Tyson Foods and the Pledge to End Hunger drive had during the campaign. The campaigns followers skyrocketed while his followers and the Tyson food followers remained on a standard trajectory.
I’ve often wondered how appearing at a conference like Digiday:Mobile or Digiday:Social affects the number of followers a speaker has. @shivsingh provided the keynote for Digiday:Social, “The Social MediaInfluencers: How Brands Become Connectors on the Social Web” which was very well received and I expect he may have picked up quite a few followers as a result.
@StephanieSAM led a panel on making sense of social media data, “Data Here, Data There, Data Everywhere! Making Sense of Social Data“. At one point in the discussion someone brought up a request from a brand about making a viral video. This led to a good discussion on Twitter about how a request to make a viral video is sort of like a request to make a hit TV show. Good content goes viral, but if you set out to make something go viral, it is probably less likely to have good content and go viral.
One person to join in this discussion was @ckieff. I’ve met Chris at many events and he let me know that he is now working on his own at 1 Good Reason. His card describes himself as a ‘Social Marketing Evangalist’. Normally, that would be enough for me to throw the card in the trash. Everyone and their brother on Twitter is a social marketing evangelist. However, Chris really does understand digital marketing strategy, and I encourage people to follow him on Twitter.
After the event, I had a chance to speak to many interesting people. Two that I speak with at many such events are @JasonDPG and @annemai. They are both well worth the follow. I also had a very interesting discussion with @KenRobbins. Ken is the President of Response Mine Interactive, one of the Sammy award winners.
During the conference and the awards ceremony, there were lots of interesting discussions on Twitter. Perhaps the most interesting comment came from @sofadude They observed that Weber Shandwick, one of the finalists for Best Twitter Branding, was a PR firm and not an ad shop. They went on to say that if social media is all about the conversation, then perhaps it is best to let public relations and communications firms handle your brand, as well as noting that this may be more cost efficient. Of course, they managed to communicate the idea in 140 characters.
There were several other people that contributed a lot to the discussion on Twitter about the conference and they deserve a shout out as well: @LizaPost @DragonSearch @fromedome @mmathias @HartHooton @Alirana @tanyachadha @chrisfield
So, whether you attend any of the Digiday events on Thursday, these are some of the people that I considered influencers and I hope you follow them. Of course, I hope you follow me on Twitter as well. I’m @ahynes1. Then, join the discussion and share your Follow Friday favorites and if you attended any of the Digiday events, what you thought the highpoints were.
(Cross posted at DigidayDaily.)
#digiday on CoveritLive
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 09/17/2009 - 08:26Digiday:Social Pregame
I am on the train heading to another Digiday conference. It has become routine by now; the long train ride, the short walk from the train station to the W hotel, the long tables with the glass water pitchers with something like strawberries and tarragon floating in them, and the same old faces.
I’m thinking about the Annie Le murder case and I’ve just written a blog post about Outbursts. In my computer bag is a copy of Shel Israel’s Twitterville. On the train is a group of five women heading in to be on some television show where they will throw pies at one another. One of them cackles “I love survivor. It’s my show. My husband and I watch it together. It is our date night”.
How does all of this relate Digiday? How can online advertisers engage in a discussion when everyone is focusing on the latest leading, bleeding headline or the results of last night’s reality television show? Will a conversation emerge at the Digiday conference, or will it be yet another conference where speakers broadcast at the audience and the audience tunes in and out like people do in the evenings at home.
I am tweeting this using the #digiday hash tag, and have set up the following CoveritLive page for the day.
Building Audience
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 09/14/2009 - 09:18This afternoon, Colin McEnroe’s show on WNPR will “look at the State of the Blog. Specifically,… where blogging and other online communication/journalism is -- especially here in CT”. In a little discussion about it going on over on Facebook Colin says, “Old media seems shakier than ever” and continues on to ask “Do you bloggers feel ready to step up and fill the vacuum?” I answered in terms of volunteer and professional journalists and referred to my blog post Covering the Local News.
Jackie Lightfield brought up a related issue, observing, “Don't forget the corollary, advertising and marketing is evolving away from old media, will old media figure it out...” The timing of this is particularly apt, because this morning the American Press Institute holding a conference, “Newsmedia Economic Action Plan Conference”. For more information on this, check out The Information Valet Project, which includes links to live blogging of the conference.
Yet even before you can think about monetizing online content, or any sort of content, you need to have an audience. Colin is fortunate. He has a long history here in Connecticut and when he started his show on WNPR, he had an immediate audience. Yet he needs to grow and maintain that audience. His use of Facebook can help in this area, and his keen focus on keeping his shows interesting is an important aspect of maintaining the audience. This is one area where local newspapers seem to fail. They take the audience for granted, and the audience is diminishing. I suspect the American Press Institute conference will delve into this a little.
This is also an area where I think many bloggers are failing. They write their blog for their family and friends, or for some special niche. Yet too often, they don’t interact with other blogs. I often write about sites like BlogExplosion, MyBlogLog, Blogcatalog, EntreCard, Adgitize and others which provide means of joining in a discussion with other bloggers, visiting their sites, getting them to visit your sites, and perhaps even exchange links.
Some sites go even further with this. Cornyman has been running a contest where bloggers win EntreCard credits for commenting on other blogs. He describes his blog as All you want to know about being financial independent... Saving, investing, earning money worldwide opportunities for your personal finances!. This is not the sort of blog that fits closely to a niche that I would be most focused on. Yet I visit that blog, and he visits me. Hopefully we both get a little bit out of our visits.
I participated in the contest and won 500 EntreCard credits from Confessions of a Fitness Diva. Anyone who knows me will recognize that this is even further from being a niche that I would regularly visit. I will use these credits to advertise on other blogs and bring in hopefully more readers.
All of this is part of reaching out and build a larger and broader audience. For those interested in monetizing traffic, a larger audience usually means more monetization opportunities. For those interested in getting their message out, it means more people reading what you are writing, often people that might not already be thinking about things you are writing about.
I hope I’ll have time to call in to Colin’s show this afternoon and chat with him and others about how bloggers can step in and fill the vacuum being left as the old media becomes shakier and shakier. Perhaps some of the discussion will even be helpful for old media folks rethinking their relationship to online media. I hope you Listen Live to Colin’s Show at 1 PM this afternoon and help grow his audience as well.
