Yikes! How To Write A Pay-Per-Post Blog!?!

While I was doing some research online yesterday I came across a "How To" website (eHow.com) about how to write a Pay Per Post blog post.

As background, Pay Per Post's business model is to match bloggers and advertisers together: advertisers who want people to write about their products on their blog with bloggers who want to make money doing so. The blogger's deliverable is the post with a brand mention that conforms to any guidelines that the advertiser sets up.

This has been quite a controversial practice since its inception, as it represents a form of shilling. Further, Pay Per Post's initial policy was not to require, or even encourage, disclosure that the person was getting paid to write about the product. Pay Per Post's policy has since changed, coincidentally timed, it seems, with discussions by the FTC and disclosure.

Anyhow, the author sets up the article by saying "This article will help you learn how to rise above the competition and produce higher quality paid posts that your sponsors and readers will love."

Point #1 is to think long term and write a quality post since the advertiser will rate the quality of the post behind-the-scenes: "So while it may be easy to write a quick post for $5, it's better to invest a bit of extra time to understand what your advertiser wants out of the deal." This is concerning because then your endorsement is more for the advertiser than for the other people you are talking with (though the author suggests that you can still write a post your readers will enjoy).

Point #2 is to "Be Honest" about your opinion with the product ("If you lie, they are paying for a false testimonial. This can hurt their company, ruin your reputation as a writer and can get you banned."). OK, fine, honesty of opinion (which is WOMMA's second point in their Honesty ROI guidelines). But nothing about honesty being the ethical thing to do. The author adds the point about being relevant: "Instead, think about reasons why you might use their service or product. How would it help you? How can it help your visitors?"

But then the really strange part is point #3. The blogger says that writing a Pay Per Post blog is "secret" and that "If you want future work, don't tell your readers that you are writing paid posts. This includes filtering the posts into a "paid post" category, or tagging them as such. You are basically telling your sponsor that you are embarrassed to write about them."

I was shocked to read this. I'm not sure if my surprise has more to do with the logical inconsistency between point #2 (be honest) and #3 (don't tell people you are getting paid), or because just point #3 on its own being unethical.

I thought maybe this post was written a few years ago because people don't still think that hiding their identity is the way to go. But no, the post date is January 14, 2008.

Anyhow, folks if you are thinking about participating in the Pay Per Post or similar programs please check out the WOMMA Ethics Code as part of your decision to participate. And if writing a post about how to do it, please consider this.

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Tags: Pay Per Post shilling Stealth Marketing

Live from Athens! (Georgia, that is)

In Athens at the University of Georgia for the Connect Public Relations and Social Media Conference.

The conference kicked off last night with Kevin Dugan talking about the new world of social media and the opportunities, and potential dark side, it presents for PR professionals. His talk was titled "We>Me" and did a nice job to set up some of the core issues with social media: transparency, human connection, having clear goals for working with social media technologies rather than just the "shiny tools" themselves. He also asked us to consider "what is content?" -- PR traditionally considers just "text" as content but he feels it's much broader including audio, video, links, comments, etc.

I speak at 10:30 am on "Organizing for Conversation: What Research Needs to Tell Us". I will discuss my four phase model of conversational engagement which focuses on how organizations come to understand what it means to "join in the conversation".

Here are the official social media venues: conference blog, Flickr pics, and Twitter feeds.

Should be fun!

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication UGA Connect 2007 Conference

Blogging Success Study Released!

It's been a long time in the works, but finally released!

John Cass (Backbone Media) and I conducted a research study with my class in Advanced Organzational Communication (Spring 2006) on what makes for a successful blog. We identified a number of best practices and also five themes that cut across all the interviews:

• Culture: If a company has particular cultural traits worth revealing or a bad reputation it wants to repudiate, blogging can be an attractive option.
• Transparency: Critical to establishing credibility and trust with an audience. People want to see an honest portrayal of a company and know that there are not ulterior motives behind the blog. Blog audiences respect a willingness to disclose all points of view on a subject.
• Time: It takes a lot of time to set up, research and write a quality blog. Companies need to identify a person who has the time or whose schedule is freed up to make the time, or need to engage a group of people to share the responsibility.
• Dialogue: A company’s ability and willingness to engage in a dialogue with their customer base about topics that the customer base is interested in is critical to its blogging success.
• Entertaining writing style and personalization: A blogger’s writing style and how much they are willing to reveal about their life, experience and opinions brings human interest to a blog, helps build a personal connection with readers and will keep people reading.

You can download the study as a PDF (name/e-mail registration required) or read it online. The online report takes the form of a blog so that people can comment on individual sections and is hosted on the Scout blogging server.

Be sure to check out the summaries of the interviews with each blogger to learn more detail about each blogger's experience.

Thanks so much to all the bloggers who agreed to participate in the study, the students in my class who did the interviews, and the folks from Backbone Media (John Cass, Stephen Turcotte, Megan Dickinson, Kristine Munroe and Dave Alpert).

Northeastern University Press Release

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Tags: blogs blog study Northeastern University Backbone Media

Nokia: Lifeblog" and the Moblogging Phenomenon

Ni Jian from Nokia is talking about the moblogging (mobile blogging) phenomenon and their Lifeblog.

He quoted some feedback from another blogger who asked her mom why she doesn't blog or actively maintain a blog:

1) Feels like she has nothing to say.
2) Doesn't want the world to see what she writes.
3) She doesn't have time to keep up with blogs.

Ni Jian argues that Lifeblog helps people to create content because it is like a multimedia diary. Pictures can also be taken very easy, with or without comments, and then posted very quickly and easily.

He feels that mobile blogging is an important channel for WOM marketing.

Sandy Pentland from the MIT Media Lab comments on how mobile blogging can be used also to monitor health issues (for example, in the context of caring for older parents or patients). But other technology that the MIT Media Lab is working on allows a picture to be taken as well as an audio-recording to be made as soon as two people shake hands.