Mainstream Marketers Figure out Blogging –Community Marketing at Work

Washington Post resports that Marketing and Advertising folks are figuring out how to harness the blogosphere. We know these are often influencers, passionate writers, and respected experts –or sometimes not. Kim Hart from the post reports that:

“Companies are increasingly partnering with hobby bloggers to harness the burgeoning influence of online buzz. Through the digital grapevine, companies reap the marketing rewards of free publicity, higher rankings on search engines and immediate access to conversations with consumers.”

It doesn’t stop there, as many traditional news sites are starting to obtain stories from blogs, quote bloggers –I know as it’s happening to me.

Although I’m the guy at my company who’s responsble for social media, (such as business blogging) we’ve got to ask the following questions:

• What’s the Cost?
• What’s the Benefit?
• How much time do you need to spend to identify the right bloggers in your industry?
• How do you do it right?
• How can it be done wrong?
• How do you define success?
• How do demonstrate this success to management?

Anyone got answers? I know what works for me –however I’m listening, how do these companies do this?

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 5th, 2006 at 10:24 am and is filed under Community Marketing, Web Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.