Filed under: Activating Bloggers, Ad Sales, Blog Messaging, Blog Strategy, Blog Training, Blog of Personality, Blogger Code of Conduct, Blogger Effect, Blogger Ethics

I can’t find the specific report, but I recently read that the number of B-to-B corporate blogs started by companies fell by nearly 50% from 2006 to 2007. The reasons given were that many B-t0-B blogs were promo fluff and slightly changed press releases. Basically absolute nonsensical feel good crap that no one wants to read. Marketing diarrhea.

For about a week, I worked on one. What a waste of time.

The company, which I won’t name, was in the promotional products industry. The VP of Marketing was a pompous ass. The type of guy that announces that he’s very hands on and that he’s knowledgeable about blogging. Basically a clueless dipshit with an ego.

Yes, it feels good to write this.

To him, a blog entry was an opportunity to blatantly market his company’s product lines an special deals. Push, push, push. People aren’t interested in reading digital sales pitches. They want to learn and to share and while they may accept some promotional aspects, they are there to be hit on.

He had no or very little respect for his customers. He seemed to think they were simpletons who could barely run their own businesses. That doesn’t surprise me because he figured that they’d be interested in reading “Hey folks, have you considered company branded placemats?”

I lasted a week doing it. Every single one of his subsequent posts were a violation of the spirit of corporate blogging. He brought in someone else, a guy who started out writing crisp, insightful posts. After a few months, he was writing crap. Then he left.

The blog lasted a total of four months. Now it just sits there.

That’s why B-to-B blogs are stalling. Pompous asses at the wheel of social media.

No Comments » Posted on July 17th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Advertisements, Advertising, Online Ads, Online Advertising

I just witnessed the most disgusting ad presentation I’ve ever seen on the internet.  The ad itself wasn’t intentionally meant to offend, but it’s format did something that was inexcusable.

Being a native New Englander, I often  got to  Boston.com to check out sports stories.  That’s what I just did a few minutes ago.  Right there, in front of me, was a story “Northboro Native Killed in Washington DC Accident”.  A photo of her shows a pretty, young fresh faced young woman, with a beaming smile.  Now that I live in the DC area, I was especially intrigued by this.  I was once 22 and lived in DC.  Young.  Idealistic.

So I went to click through to read the story.  In the corner of my eye, I began to notice  a ‘growing’ ad coming across the page.  One of those ads that form images across a web page.  In this case they were images of the walking footprints of what looked to be that of a hiker.  The footprints continued across the woman’s face and would not let me click through to read the story.  That’s because just as I pressed down on my mouse, the ad crossed over the exact spot where it was pointing to.  Suddenly, I was transported to another site, the landing page of the ad.  Tourism in New Brunswick.

When I finally got back to the site I wanted to be at and clicked through the story I wanted, I began reading:

A Northborough woman and Amherst College graduate beginning her career in Washington, D.C., was killed in the nation’s capital yesterday morning when she was run over by a garbage truck while riding her bicycle to work.

…beginning her career…killed in the nation’s capital…run over by a garbage truck”…riding her bicycle to work”…

Her young life snuffed out just like that.  Full of promise, full of life, now gone.

But we want to show you this ad first - the ad is more important.

This is definitely not the way to do things, folks.  These ad formats, while enticing, should not be used by news outlets.  At least on their front pages.  News outlets cover news and news is more often bad, or in some cases, tragic.  It isn’t worth the ad dollars.

Advertisers shouldn’t necessarily shy away from using these formats, but they should be very judicious in where they buy them.  They should look for sites that viewers come to be entertained.  I don’t care how effective they are.  Use another formats on front pages of news sites.

No Comments » Posted on July 9th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Online Advertising, Online Media, Traditional Marketing, Traditional Media

A slowing economy usually means that companies cut back on their advertising dollars.  The wisdom of this is debatable, but the inevitability of it is almost assured.

But times are changing somewhat.  In a survey conducted by Advertising Perceptions, we find that the long term traditional advertising outlets are the ones that ad execs - be they in house decision makers or agency professionals - see as being the ones that are likely to experience a decrease in ad spending over the next six months.  Meanwhile, online and mobile are not likely to take any substantial hits.

This is pleasant news for those of us in the online arena.

The survey asked 1811 marketers - 40% from the marketing side, 60% from the agency side - if the share of spend per advertising would increase, stay the same, or decrease.  National newspapaers and local newspapers took the biggest hit by far, with 44% and 40% of responders saying that they expected a decrease in spend, respectively.  Only 10% and 14% expected an increase for those categories.

This somewhat surprises me.  I would have thought the upcoming elections would mean more news media usage, regardless of the medium.  And while, yes, most of the growth in usage would be online, local coverage, in print, will still matter.

Guess not.  Newspapers are worse off than I thought.

The same can be said for broadcast 30% expecting a drop-off while only 14% expecting an increase; and radio, which is doing even worse.  Thirty three per cent expect less spend with seventeen per cent expecting an increase.

The real story here are the increases in online.  Seventy-two percent of those interviewed said they felt that online would see an increase in the next six months.  Only 4% saw a decrease.  That an 18 to 1 ratio.

In many industry verticals, online is not yet the automatic buy.  But it’s becoming the best buy.  The following numbers prove it.

No Comments » Posted on July 8th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Advertisements, Advertising, Blogvertising

From Drew B’s Take on Tech PR via Nixon McInnes & Chris Abraham:

“Only 18% of TV ad campaigns generate positive ROI”

“The average person is exposed to 3000 advertising messages a day”

“36% of people think more positively of companies who have blogs”

No Comments » Posted on July 6th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Advertisements, Advertising, Advertising Networks, Blog Marketing Journal, Paid Advertising, Paid Bookmarking, Paid Media, Paid Placement, Paid Stumbling, StumbleLove, StumbleUpon

I quickly realized that StumbleUpon is the coolest and hottest social bookmarking service nobody has heard of.  I love it but I don’t nearly use it enough: either as a stumbler or as a marketer. I found this on Blog Marketing Journal and thought I would open it up to you:

In case you are not familiar with the concept, StumbleUpon allows you to pay for visitors to your pages, five cents per visitor or click. The question is, do you consider this to be a simple form of paid advertising, or paid social bookmarking.

I have done some experiments with paid Stumbling and what BMJ says is true:

If you set a limit of $20 per day, you will get 400 visitors. They may stay on your page or they may spend five seconds and disappear. Where the situations changes is when they thumbs up your page. That’s a stumble and can lead to more than just the 400 visitors.

So, in this case, content is key, and good content will result in conversions and interest.  If you just throw money at it without thinking your content or strategy through, you will be disappointed with the results, especially since there’s nobody on the planet more savvy than the gang from StumbleUpon — these are earl-adopters and are just the people you want to love you but these are the worse people to piss off. Just because you’re paying to have your content promoted doesn’t mean that people are prevented from digging the content down (thumbs-down) or writing scathing comments.

Read more…

No Comments » Posted on July 6th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

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