When we started Attentio, I was researching blogs and what companies were doing in the segment and saw that Nokia had selected a group of bloggers to give them phones that had a new digital camera function. This was seen as a great success as some of the bloggers wrote about the phones and explained how they worked. They didn’t tell the bloggers to post anything but predictably some did. “This spring, Bridget Ahr and her team masterminded an eclectic mix of online and offline tactics to get the word out about Nokia’s new 3650 phone. The campaign included banners on cool sites such as Bolt.com and GameSpy, ads on desktop apps like RealPlayer, and even buzz-marketing street teams who roamed major cities” Source: Marketingsherpa.com 

That was when blog seeding was in its infancy (2003/2004), but as social media expands and as we know more marketing spend will go into consumer communities, it will happen more often. Blog seeding is not without controversy but I take a pretty pragmatic view when it comes to giving bloggers free products. So long as disclosure is a pre-condition and the company can take negative and positive feedback, it can make sense for both sides. OK, so companies have limited resources (budget) and bloggers too (time). So how can companies get the best fit, so chances of losing time and money are reduced. Find below our take on 7 factors in determining who best to work with when you want bloggers to try a new widget. Disclosure: We offer services to clients that include identifying bloggers who have strong influence in a particular area…

Authority: Does the blogger have significant knowledge or passion around the product or service area? This can be investigated by reading recent blog entries or identifying if the blog is structured around the topic area, “Mobile phone blog”, and “Golf lover blog”

Prolificness: Does the blogger post frequently? The blogger may have strong feelings around the area but if they are not posting to their blog more than once a month there is a strong possibility that they may not talk about a good or bad experiences in the blog. This can be offset by people with strong offline network but it is hard to know this!

Blogger’s Community: This is defined by some of the following metrics

a. Links: How many other bloggers reference this blog in their own blog either through “link love” (Blogger is saying “this is a blog I read and I link to it so other users can see what is written”) or reference to the blog in a post.

b. Comments: Many blogs that have good readership do not have many comments; however as a metric for community participation there are no stronger guidelines available. Web users have a strong propensity not to comment, so if a blog attracts commentary they have strong messages or more than average active community.

c. Feed statistics: How many web users take the feed of the blog as been seen through Feedburner

Localisation: If possible select bloggers from multiple regions. This offers not only additional geographical coverage it can also identify issues that may have a local flavour such as compatibility with other devices or unclear language instructions.

Spread across interests: If plan is to seed 100 mobile phones then only targeting mobile phone bloggers might lead to an overly homogenous response. It could be interesting to target bloggers that better identify with the emotional appeal of the phone, is it a sporting product (resilient, waterproof etc.) then place with a blogger that writes about biking or water sports, the audience will be different the feedback may also be richer in new insights. It can also be common sense to give to bloggers you know personally who would realistically benefit from the offer.

Demographics (Age, Gender): These should match with target focus of brand and campaign. It is frequently possible to see the age range of the blogger so seeding should be able to match with this. Blog seeding programs may decide to take a broader approach, if target is insights from all age groups.

Well targeted: The Wall Street Journal is a popular newspaper and predictably companies want coverage there. It is hard to get onto their radar. In the Blogosphere there are also blogging giants who are similarly hard to get in touch with or have many requests for their time. It is advisable in our opinion to work with bloggers who are a particular authority or are a good fit with the seeding strategy. Focus on getting into Techcrunch or Engadget is interesting but is not crucial to get great feedback.

As a reminder to those who think poor products (snakes on a plane anyone?) can be saved by buzz, the cartoon below serves as a reminder of the best way to get people to talk about a product…

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