Sponsored Conversations On Blogs, Righteous?

Before we begin, let’s take a look at the difference between Public Relations, Advertising and Sponsored conversation. Here is a table kindly put together by Forrester Research.

I’m sure everyone has heard what public relations and advertising means but what is sponsored conversation? Imagine a cocktail party where I supply the wines; assuming that I sell wines for a living, and said “oh, just keep talking about whatever interests you.”

First and foremost, blogger are not journalists. Bloggers are people who use blogging software to churn out articles. There are journalists who blogs but most bloggers aspire to reach journalists standard someday.

What Brands Want

I can safely assume that all brands want bloggers to talk positively about them. They want this to happen because they know that readers of that particular blog will read what the blogger wrote and eventually be influenced into potential customers. Word of mouth is probably the most trusted source of information amongst decision makers across all categories in the world.

Sponsored Conversations

Word of mouth cannot be purchased. In order to have a positive buzz on your brand, you need to earn the attention of your media and publics.

However, you can buy media. Here are 4 ways you can use to advocate bloggers to talk about your brand:

1. Incent them to participate by offering them a product or service experience

2. Offer some ‘social capital’ like first information, interesting multimedia reserved for them

3. Give them a way to engage their readers via a giveaway of something (e.g. a blogger may encourage readers to send in comments over the week on vacuuming stories and the blogger gives away cleaning product to the best story)

4. Invite a collection of bloggers to the corporate campus to have a behind the scenes experience with the brand while the brand pays for modest travel expenses.

Conclusion

Bloggers are quickly replacing the mainstream media. I believe the blogging community as a whole has a certain degree of obligation to inform the public at large about those topics that they are covering. Be it a sponsored or advertised blog posts, bloggers should clearly state that in their posts.

As for Online Media Gazette, I will always be clear about where I’m coming from so that my readers know the relation of the post to me. What is your take on sponsored conversations? Do share with us through the comment section.