What’s impressed mum’s marketing brain about blogging is how interactive it is. Talk in the marketing world over the last few years has included a focus on 2 way communication. No longer is it a case that a brand just talks to a potential buyer in a one way conversation. If you really had something to say about a brand, at best you could phone a 1800 number or wow you could even write and post a letter. Dangerously for brands most people tended to just tell others that they know or meet (you know those chats down the dog park while we are chasing each other around… Great if they like something but not good for the brand if the person hasn’t had a good experience). The digital world has transformed this and consumers or potential consumers now have much easier access to their brands and expect answers! It is like barking in the middle of a quiet night and knowing there will quickly be a response.
What mum and I were contemplating though is sponsored blog posts and the role of the blogger when issues arise or the reader has a question?
Sponsored posts or most other interaction between your average brand manager and their customers tends to be pro-active good news. The client has a new product (oohhh maybe new puppy treats), something interesting say or maybe just wants to build positive associations between their brand and the bloggers audience. These are the standard types of stories. Yet if you go to the client’s owned social media outlets quite often there are equally as many questions and complaints as there are nice news story from the brand manager. These sites are usually closely managed either internally by the client or by a well briefed agency under the client’s management.
So if you are a blogger who accepts sponsored posts does the client provide you with a list of dos and don’ts to say or an issues management plan. Proactively having this means you can both protect the client’s reputation and also give your blog readers accurate and timely responses.
If you are a client do you treat bloggers differently than how you would treat your internal Corporate Comms or Customer Service who would be briefed on a project. Are bloggers different because it is in their voice and paid media vs owned media?
Hmmm a deep one for a Marketing Monday and one that we are interested to hear what people from both the Client / Marketing side and the Blogging side think so if you have an experience with this or thoughts on how you would manage please drop us a comment.
Ok and now our Dog Blog. After all that serious Marketing Talk this is a dog blog that is just a nice stories, rambling and the journey of a handler and her dogs (one retired and the other still quite young). Lifeofluman provides some nice informative posts on agility as well as the personal journey and we spent plenty of time reading through and leaving our paw prints with comments.
1st World Dog 