If you’ve got a service or a product that you want exposed to the world, one of the best things you can do is pay a blogger to write a post about it. A blogger might charge R500, R1000, R2000 and upwards, but don’t look at this as a short term investment, because it’s not and I’ll show you why!
Let me give you a case study to show you what I mean:
A few months ago, I was approached by an agency that manages MWEB’s online advertising. This agency wanted me to blog about MWEB’s new uncapped ADSL offerings – To be more specific, they wanted me to do one blog post per week for 8 weeks. Now if you do the math, that’s quite an expensive venture, but is it worth it? You’ll find out shortly..
Here’s the kicker: Their money did not only cover 8 weeks worth of clicks, it covers the life time of the posts being on my blog. So although we’re months past the 8 week agreement, they still reap the benefits, take a look at this graph, where the red outlines the 8 week period (paid for) and the green outlines all the days after the campaign was complete (free):
As you can see, despite the campaign finishing towards the end of May, it’s still clocked up hundreds of clicks through to their website, and will continue to do so for as long as iMod is around.
I hate to say it, but that’s not all.
As this information (the posts) moves around the Internet, it gains trust and momentum from/with various search engines and social networks. For example, the information has been liked on Facebook 35 times and shared on Facebook 203 times – imagine how many more clicks are going through to their website, and imagine the brand impact.
It doesn’t take rocket science to see how investing some decent money upfront will give you an eternity of clicks through to your website.
Each day that goes by will reduce your Cost per acquisition (CPA) or Conversion Rate (CR) :)
Interested in a similiar campaign? Click here for my rate card.
And yet there’s a big fat WebAfrica banner on the side of your blog ;)
Ah, but they’re also doing the post thing mate :)
Longevity and visual brand awareness is what they wanted..
@Ross: nothing wrong with a bit of competition.
@Chris: It’s amazing how big the industry for paid blogging is in America. Have you signed up maybe for sites like reviewme.com? Not sure how big the market would be for SA… but worth a try.
Out of curiosity, what if someone pays you to blog about something, and you find out you dont like it (after having been paid)?
Do you lie, and say its cool, even though it isnt, thus ruining your reliability as an objective user; or do you tell the truth, and have some pissed off marketing manager whose just forked out R2000 for you to advertise that his company sucks?
Julie- that is why a blogger must always support the product they advertise. A bloggers first loyalty is to their readers. If they promote a bad product then it will reflect badly on the blog and readership will decrease.
That is why many bloggers would test the product or service extensively before even talking money. You will however get the greedy blogger that will say yes to everybody and therefore content and advertising is of low quality.
I feel that if you are being paid to write a review of a product or service then it must be stated in your article. Chances are slim you wont write a bad review if you are being paid for it, I mean a company wont really ask you to write another review if you dissed them or their service in the first one.
So its important for me as a reader and even a blogger to state state a post is a paid review if the writer are being paid to write it.
And when the product becomes outdated?
@Julie – I don’t blog about something unless I have look at it and decided that it’s something that will work on iMod. I always tell the truth, punting a service that sucks results in a ton of people never coming back again, which defeats the point! I always give advertisers a heads up before doing anything, it’s an open process with no hidden things.
@Craig – Great question. The company would need to have someone who follows their social marketing and come back to me to chat.
Great Post. What advice would you give to someone starting out and do to push them in the right direction.
Hi @Monique – The best advice I can offer anyone is not to worry about advertising or making money for the first few months at least. The most important thing is to grow your audience and concentrate on writing great unique content.
You got a really useful blog I have been here reading for about an hour.
@Lionel – Thank you very much :)
My first time here in a while. Thanks to a link from webaddict
@Dries – That’s a great shame, I liked having you here and participating in the comments. Why the change?
Nice read Chris
With a little bit of street smarts, SME’s can use bloggers very tactically for decent marketing campaigns.
Ta
Thanks Marc. I wrote it in hopes that other bloggers could use it to building relationships with agencies, create awareness and hopefully make a little extra income :)