A few days ago, I attended the Cybher event in London. For those of you that don’t know about this event, Cybher is the first all-inclusive female blogger conference of its kind in the UK. Although the founder of Cybher was also the founder of last year’s Cybermummy, this reimagining of the female blogger conference was a much more inclusive and diverse experience with sessions to cater for a variety of interests.
While the conference endeavoured to move away from discussions of montetising and working with brands, it was still very much on the lips of everyone that attended. The issue of blogging vs blagging is one that all bloggers are very aware of and, across the spectrum, they are very vocal in how they see this issue. Bloggers generally fall on two sides: those that see blogging as a means to earn money and make it their career, and those who are in it for the writing and community.
This gulf is likely to widen and, with it, the gulf between brands and their activities with bloggers. There are agencies offering a ‘quick fix’ – “we’ll get your press release on as many blogs as you want,” promise the unscrupulous PR agencies. They have targets to meet and it’s all a numbers game – how that matches the objectives of the blogger doesn’t really matter. Because obviously it is more valuable to have your product/press release on as many blogs as possible rather than just a couple.
Or is it?
What happened to the notion of conversation? Over the last couple of years, social media has taken an interesting turn. While the early birds in this space understood that social media is all about the social and not the media (i.e. making your brand, product or service conversational), more recently it has become a broadcast platform for many brands; just another place to push out messages. And, really, most of us should know better.
What are people saying, how can you participate in the conversation and how can you inspire their conversation? These are the questions brands should be asking themselves when it comes to their role in social media. And that is exactly what needs to be thought about when considering blogger and community relationships.
Bloggers by their own admission dislike reading blogs with too many reviews or sponsored posts themselves. They’re boring. They have little to no real reach. They’re either glossed over or ignored. As a brand, how can you be confident that your message is being read in a sea of reviews and sponsored posts? Why is a reader going to notice your brand among all the others?
Over the years, brands have started to understand that 1 million unengaged Facebook fans is worth less than 50,000 highly engaged Facebook fans. Although fan acquisition remains a priority, engagement rates have become the currency of the social media world. Quality over quantity is important and the same principle must be applied to working with bloggers. Finding the right blogger for the right brand and campaign is vitaly important. It’s not just about the basics (e.g. pairing a beauty blog with a beauty brand), it’s about understanding the blogger and their ideas, their loves and passions to create a deep and long lasting relationship that far outstrips the immediate gratification of a review on a blog. Take the blogger and their community on a journey with your brand, inspire them and respect them, and in return you will find your brand can become a part of the fabric of the community you seek to impress.
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