Posts Tagged blogs
When a blog isn’t enough: expanding customer interaction with a branded social network
SUMMARY: Social media helps marketers create more interaction with their customers. But sometimes, adding a single element — like a blog or a forum — isn’t enough.
Read how an outdoor sporting goods brand used insights from their blog to create a social network for their customers. They share their thoughts on the value of social media to consumer brands, and offer advice on designing a network and promoting it in multiple channels.
Mountain Hardwear has a core customer base of devoted outdoor enthusiasts, says Phyllis Grove, Marketing Director. Customers are die-hard hikers, climbers, and outdoor winter-sports enthusiasts, who also want to discuss the apparel and gear that Mountain Hardwear provides for their adventures.
In March, Grove’s team added a slew of social media features to the site, giving Mountain Hardwear’s fans all the tools they need to interact there. They named their social network Expedition Republic.
The new network has increased membership, the level of user engagement, and the amount of content and discussions happening among customers. Those results make Grove confident that Expedition Republic is boosting the brand’s connection with its fans. (Since the site does not sell directly, it is difficult to measure whether the new social network is lifting sales, Grove says.)
Posted by Tom Polanski in Social Media on June 11th, 2009
Why you won’t get rich off your blog
By Daniel Lyons
For two years I was obsessed with trying to turn a blog into a business. I posted 10 or 20 items a day to my site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, rarely taking a break. I blogged from cabs, using my BlackBerry. I blogged in the middle of the night, having awakened with an idea. I rationalized this insane behavior by telling myself that at the end of this rainbow I would find a huge pot of gold. But reality kept interfering with this fantasy. My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I’d kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site—by far the biggest day I’d ever had—and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81. Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job. Eventually I shut down—not for financial reasons, but because Steve Jobs appeared to be in poor health. I walked away feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started. I also came away with a sneaking suspicion that while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.
Now others seem to be riding the same downward curve, with euphoria giving way to exhaustion. Michael Arrington, whose TechCrunch blog empire attracts 6 million readers each month, has gone on a monthlong hiatus after three years of nonstop blogging. His break was prompted, he says, by burnout and by the craziness of the blogosphere (he says he’s been stalked, threatened and spat on) and not by the fact that he’s been trying to sell his company for a year and hasn’t been able to find a buyer who’ll pay his price, which is rumored to be $100 million. Gawker Media, a leading network of blogs, recently laid off all but one of its writers for Valleywag, its tech blog, which has struggled for three years. In January Pajamas Media, a collective of right-wing political bloggers, shut down its ad network, which CEO Roger Simon says “was a money loser for three years.”
Posted by Tom Polanski in Opinions on February 9th, 2009
Best Practices for Blogging (Potentially)
By Tom Polanski, EVP, eBrand Media and eBrand Interactive
I included the word “potentially” in the title because testing are critical componants of any and every marketing campaigns. Below is a case study regarding testing that Ice.com did with their blog. What you learn form this case study may or may not directly apply to your company.
SUMMARY
Are company blogs really as successful as everyone makes out? The answer is … yes, no, well, maybe.
CHALLENGE
Two years ago, Ice.com® Marketing EVP Pinny Gniwisch noticed from his site traffic logs that he was getting an unusual amount of traffic from independent blogs.
Turns out dozens of bloggers who loved fashion frequently linked to SKUs they admired in Ice.com’s jewelry selection.
Naturally Gniwisch began to wonder, what if Ice.com launched some blogs of its own? His marketing department could control the messaging and feature SKUs that way. In effect, the idea was blogs as separate promotional microsites.
Bad news — Ice.com’s CEO “was not keen on the idea.” However, Gniwisch promised the idea wouldn’t take up many company resources — he and the in-house team would write the blogs and they’d use ultra-cheap blogging software to post them online.
Posted by Tom Polanski in Marketing on August 27th, 2008