A Wider Net

Robert Scoble observed that Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk regularly (and publicly) posts his personal photos on his competitor’s website, Flickr. The question is - is it better to acknowledge that you like and use your competitors products, or to stay loyal to your own products, at least in view of the public?

I remember when Saturn launched - they were forced to drive their competitors cars, but I don’t think they had a forum available to them where they could say that they actually liked them. But the fact that they were openly trying out the competition instead of having to drive their own vehicles was refreshing and made us believe that they may actually learn how to beat the foreign car makers. When Saturn initially launched, they featured the most progressive American car design in years.
These days our patience for corporate dishonesty and forced product loyalty is pretty much worn out. I certainly appreciate an executive who can openly recognize the strengths of their competitor, even to the point of using their products.

But one comment on Robert’s post brought up an interesting point - if the product isn’t meeting the executive’s needs, why doesn’t he improve his product? And does that send a message that their product is inferior? I used to know a guy who worked at Burger King who refused to eat there, dragging me to other joints - and for years that made me wary of eating at Burger King. Reverse brand loyalty is obviously a bad thing, too.
The thing I like about this Zooomr story is that Thomas uses both products personally, and by admitting it we learn he is personally engaged in the industry, aware of his competition and his own products strengths and weaknesses, and big enough to say so.

From this nice list of (possibly) underappreciated blogs, you might want to take note of a few in particular (ripped right from the list):

23. Ypulse You can count the number of people making a living by blogging on a couple of hands, but be sure to add a digit for Anastasia. If you think you know what teenagers are talking about today, you may reconsider after reading this blog, which tracks everything that the kids (Generation Y) are into.

25. We Make Money Not Art
There’s an easy way to get me to fall in love with your blog — just link to a meat chess board, and I’m all yours. The international talent on this blog covers topics in the digital arts: social media, electronic design, wearable computing, etc.

8. Subtraction
An editor from The Atlantic who was doing a story on buzz-building recently contacted me about finding the source of a meme he saw on Fimoculous. He asked where I got it, and I said Subtraction, to which he replied, “that’s what everyone else said too.” A blogger’s blogger, Khoi Vinh is the new design director at the NYTimes.com, which might sound high-brow, but his personal site has the quality you most desire from a blogger: curiosity.

I’m not sure if the reports of myspace’s demise are greatly exaggerated or not, but the possible collapse of the top-five web juggernaut is mighty interesting. The conversations around this have raised some very interesting questions and reminded us of some valuable lessons about putting all your marketing eggs in one basket.

Myspace feels vulnerable for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it’s ugly and clunky. It just screams “give us something better so we can jump ship and quickly end the pain”. The banner ads are obnoxious and the ability to cosmetically tailor the page is limited to those willing to suffer through hours of inconceivably non-intuitive trial and error. It also feels uncomfortably “out-growable”. As Rupert Murdoch tries to leverage the 130 million users he recently purchased, his attempts to restrict music and other file sharing that made the site so appealing may cause a mass correction in the user base.

Puddlegum published a thought-provoking piece about myspace, claiming that myspace is about to collapse as its teenage user base moves on to the next big thing. With 3 million bands using myspace to promote their music, the article points out that many or most of these bands have put too much emphasis on promotion via myspace, and too little effort on their own websites and blogs. There’s also a great comment about the Puddlegum article on Blog Business Summit.
The Puddlegum piece implies that myspace should be prescribed as part of a marketing regimen, but not the whole thing, and not at the expense of ones own website and blog. I agree on all counts - myspace has valuable reach and viral potential. It’s also only one “community” among many. Guerilla and viral marketing in online communities should cover a wide variety of these communities.

Bands may want to check out purevolume, and companies should have a look at secondlife, gather, facebook, and squidoo (at least). All of these allow you to add a free to inexpensive presence that, ideally, directs traffic back to your own site. You will, of course, have to take the time to learn what people are looking for on these sites. Once created and in use, the benefits to search engine optimization are also significant - the links and traffic back to your site make you more appealing to search engines. If you’re interested in the heavy details, consider this paper from eMarketer.com, that indicates that ad spending on social networking, currently at $280 million, will balloon to $1.8 billion by 2010.
Spreading your marketing efforts among multiple communities while focusing on your own information hub should sound a lot like a sound financial investing principle. Keep a balanced portfolio, stay alert to trends, and build a solid foundation.

One thing is for sure - there are a lot of people hoping myspace fails and gets replaced with something better. I, for one, will be watching - popcorn in hand.

If you’re new to blogging, you should know there’s a dark side. Bloggers leverage the trust they have built with their audience to peddle goods for money. Purists are repelled at the notion, stating that the blogosphere is built around trust and “naked” conversations. This blog, for example, is supported by Cramer. I work for Cramer - they pay the bills and keep the hosting lights on. But we receive no money for the posts. We do this to organize our search for interesting new marketing tactics and technologies, and share the results with everyone. We will hopefully learn even more from you in return.

The blogs that receive money for posts, even occassionally, and don’t acknowledge it, are under constant fire from other bloggers. Recently, companies and associations are trying to pave the way for a “truth in advertising”-like code of ethics. One of them, PayPerPost, offers bloggers a way to make money with the blogs, but has recently launched a disclosure policy website and engine to promote transparency. They mention specific recent blog trust violations with WalMart/Edelman and the YouTube/lonelygirl15 scandal.

Another site trying to affect this trend is WOMMA, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. They have a disclosure document posted that is open for comment. This feels a little more above-board than PayPerPost, whose disclosure policy website reaks of the same “if you label it then it’s ok” nonsense of tobacco cartel’s “Surgeon General Warning” labels.

This is an interesting conversation taking place in various blogs like this one. On the one hand, blogging is ideally meant to be an open and honest form of communication. On the other hand, it’s natural to expect that bloggers can earn money by writing about things. Where it gets ugly is when the readers suspect that the blogger’s opinions have been bought. Many of us love the blogosphere because, unlike broadcast and print news, there isn’t a ton of corporate and government control over content. For example - the Times recently printed an article about how Microsoft is releasing their iPod-like “Zune” and what the thought process was behind it’s development as a social media variation on the ubiquitous MP3 player. But apparently, only a week prior, they wrote a review panning the device. So they wrote about it anyway, giving Microsoft a bunch of free press, even though they hate the thing. Why? To sell papers. That’s not the motivation of your typical blog.

If you’re considering blogging as a communication conduit for you or your company - maybe to replace those awful over-polished turds known as “press releases” and make a real connection with your customers - you might want to follow this conversation.