Apparently 48% of bloggers think that’s a good idea. That’s according to the bloggers who agreed with the statement directed to PR execs “It is okay to compensate bloggers for writing about my clients, but it is not of to me to tell them to disclose the payment” as interviewed by APCO Worldwide and the Council of PR Firms. The forty-wight percent may ot be a majority, but it is a plurality. Sixteen percent had either a neutral or no opinion on the matter. That means 36% percent had problems with the idea of bloggers getting pay for play.
PR people were against he idea of paying bloggers by a whopping 96% - 4%. That’s the camp I fall into.
The Pay Per Post model is controversial, but it’s transparent. I’m not much for paying bloggers period, but transparency is of full importance. What we have here is potentially a serious stumbling block. We view bloggers to be, in part, journalists who cover certain issue areas and are therefore the ones we’re going to target. Yet they see their blogs as their personal domain, one that they had never expected to get pitched about - but perhaps secretly wanted to earn money from.
Many bloggers have little idea of what constitutes journalistic integrity, but nevertheless maintain a sense of pride in what they produce. This can translate into them not wanting to be a shrill or a marketing piece for a product or service without some form of payment. To PR people, that seems wholly counterintuitive.
The problem is that there are no established groundrules between the PR industry and bloggers. The PR industry as a whole has its own standard while each blogger has his or her own standards. And generally we have to follow the bloggers lead - or move onto the next blogger.
6 Comments » Posted on March 25th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn
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