This Guardian article (via Jeff Nolan, and Jeff does some of his own word-of-mouth around Amazon) caught my eye and underscores the efficacy of bloggers for amplified word-of-mouth:
Hart, however, points out that the real power of the blog does not lie in the net giving a voice to people whose opinions would never have spread so rapidly before. Their importance is rooted in people trusting one another's views more than those published on official company websites."The PR firm Edelman does this great 'Trust Barometer', which measures the trust we place in certain types of people," Hart explains. "After a doctor, the person we would most trust is the average person who's 'just like us' - a company CEO is eighth on that list. It's the same for news sources about companies. After specialist business magazines, we trust family and friends and colleagues; journalists are sixth.
"So it's a pretty shocking piece of research that shows we trust people who we feel are like ourselves and are not out to promote something. That is why blogs have such power. We trust them, and if we disagree with an opinion, we normally have the option of adding our say."
Read that again...average Joe or Jane we trust foremost. Company CEO is eighth (although perhaps CEO bloggers gain credibility through their unfiltered authentic voice and could skew these scores) on our list and a journalist is sixth. (BTW, I'm working on a post on credibility.)
Sheds more light onto why bloggers influence and why influencing bloggers matters.
I still am giving thought to how to "pitch" bloggers - spurred by conversations with PR agencies new to blogs.
The fact is that bloggers can write about anything we damn well please - and usually nothing else - no one is paying me to do this - so I don't have to worry about displeasing advertisers, I don't have to weave the content to a publication themes (driven around "what sells ads"), and I don't have to worry about filling X number of pages to get the issue out (if I don't feel like writing today, well then, I just don't).
Why bloggers blog is not the same answer than why Technojournal Magazine's writer writes. Often there are different objectives and different motivations.
It's like asking painters why they paint paintings -- I don't know many who answer, "Just for the money." - Halley's Comment
As Jay Rosen (via Halley's Comment ) points out:
The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most (not all) of today's journalism comes out of the market economy.
One of the questions asked of participants during Global PR Blog Week was "Why Do You Blog?". My answer in part:
The reason has evolved, but I've come to the point where I blog to blog - for it's own sake. Much like a painter paints to paint. Or a writer writes to write.
I'm still musing on this 'pitch' concept - I know it revolves around "make it interesting" and "remarkable, buzz-worthy" ala Robert Scoble and Seth Godin. Interesting, remarkable is in the eye of the beholder - so know your blogger. I know Steve Rubel has already given it some thought. OK, so I can't track down the reference and in searching for the interview with Steve on pitching bloggers, I run across this Online Journalism Review piece, and they tag it the "un-pitch."
Again, no one would care about pitching bloggers if they didn't exert some influence in the marketplace.
Another interesting tidbit and this plays into my Myth of a Quiet Launch piece:
Olympus, for example, has devised a new marketing strategy to embrace the medium. Whenever a new camera is approaching its launch, details are passed on to prominent blogs, a spokesman reveals, because the sites are crucial to getting interest ahead of the launch as well as getting early feedback on what the public thinks of the new model.
As well as this:
Kathy Rittweger, CEO of Blinkx, was on what she thought was just a normal trip to the offices of Business 2.0 magazine to show the editor her new search software. Om Malik, one of the journalists in the meeting, was so impressed that he immediately wrote about it on his blog."He called me to say he'd done a 'blog' on us and I have to confess I was disappointed as it didn't sound as good as an article," Rittweger reflects. "Within a couple of hours we were being mentioned on thousands of sites and I had venture capitalists calling me left, right and centre. The blog made us so popular that we had to bring forward our launch from autumn to June.
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