Ian On The Red Dot

I have never used any of the blog advertising networks so this score is given not based on how well they help advertisers using blogs or how they help bloggers make money. It is about this campaign first started on DK’s blog and which I have noticed on BLOG2u’s main site.

To me, it is one thing to say you are contributing to the community by hosting events for bloggers, it is a way different level when you spend valuable online real estate to promote a worthy cause. One is to keep the people making money for you happy, the other is totally not about yourself or your company.

Some cynics might say this is a cheap publicity stunt. I call bullshit on that.

I don’t know about you, but when I look at the different advertising companies’ main websites, a lot is said.

BLOG2u 1, the rest 0.

Sidenote: I expect the ever self-effacing Paddy not to think too much of his company’s effort but it is something.

DK has just created a simple banner you can put on your blog to raise awareness how you can help with the earthquake in China. You can see it on the left of this post. I think it is a great and sincere idea.

I wonder why the blog advertising networks didn’t do this. Think about it. Nuffnang has a placeholder image on all blogs that currently don’t have any adverts to display. It wouldn’t have been that hard for them to have switched those images and link to the Red Cross page. It would have generated a lot of goodwill and also proved their worth. I mean, if you are a blog advertising network, won’t you actually be in the best position to galvanize the blogosphere for a worthwhile cause? Unless of course your ads and ad space inventory doesn’t work.

But let’s not go there. For now.

You can grab the code over at DK’s blog. In case you are having trouble inserting the code, note that you might not be able to just copy and paste what he has on his blog. You need to change the quotes as well as remove the blank spaces.

Beware: This is a long long post. Longer than usual. I think.

So, I was invited to The Open Room event hosted by Ogilvy. Daryl Tay from Unique-Frequency shared about his interactions or rather lack of interactions with the people from the companies. By his standard of using namecards, I think I was slightly luckier than him.

I think it might help going for such events alone. Why? For brief moments of the evening, without the support group of friends, I did feel slightly isolated. Damn that room. There was nowhere to hide! Thankfully for me, Brian and his colleague Mel really are the consummate PR professionals. They introduced me to a bunch of really interesting people.

One of them was Keith from Nokia and he demonstrated Nokia’s sharing platform Ovi.com. Seemed easy enough to use. Sadly, my phone doesn’t come preloaded with the software. I really should explore my phone more besides just using it for phonecalls, messaging and taking photos.

I lamented to Keith how each new variation of Snakes on the Nokia phones just disappointed me and I really preferred the original 2d Snakes on the Nokia phones. Keith was helpful enough to suggest a site I might get that version. I realized while I am perfectly comfortable tinkering with the hardware of my desktop and installing new software on my MacBook just to test test play play, I really haven’t gotten into the mindset that my phone can be ‘messed’ around with. Hmmm…

Anyway, Keith also showed me the pictures of his kids. I think his oldest was like 9 years old. And he didn’t look old enough to be a father of such a big kid. Apparently the products of NiuSkin really work.

Ok. The one thing I really took away from that night was the Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics shared by John Bell.

Ogilvy PR’s Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics

* We reach out to bloggers because we respect your influence and feel that we might have something that is “remarkable” which could be of interest to you and/or your audience.

* We will only propose blogger outreach as a tactic if it complements our overall strategy. We will not recommend it as a panacea for every social media campaign.

* We will always be transparent and clearly disclose who we are and who we work for in our outreach email.

* Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.

* If you tell us there is a specific way you want to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.

* We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.

* In our email we will convey why we think you, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product, issue, event or message.

* We won’t leave you hanging. If your contact at Ogilvy PR is going out of town or will be unreachable, we will provide you with an alternate point of contact.

* We encourage you to disclose our relationship with you to your readers, and will never ask you to do otherwise.

* You are entitled to blog on information or products we give you in any way you see fit. (Yes, you can even say you hate it.)

* If you don’t want to hear from us again, we will place you on our Do Not Contact list – which we will share with the rest of the Ogilvy PR agency.

* If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.

* Our initial outreach email will always include a link to Ogilvy PR’s Blog Outreach Code of Ethics.

I think this is a brilliantly conceptualized Code of Ethics. Why? Because they are applying the principle of “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”. Secondly, they show the understanding that blogs have their place in a marketing campaign, just another tool to use, but isn’t the end all be all of online marketing. One of the problems with people peddling ad spaces on blogs is that they hype up the effectiveness of blogs in online marketing. We don’t get it from these guys. Nice.

Pause.

What exactly is a blog? Is is a word that describes a tool or a form?

Take TechCrunch for example. Is it a blog? Well, it uses a blog as the publishing tool. But the form? By the way, what is the form of a blog post? Can it even be defined?

Is the form of a blog post distinguished by its relative informal style of writing as compared to that of an article on a newspaper or other more old-school, mainstream media properties like nytimes.com. Or is just the bad English, limited vocab and grammar like this blog.

Ok. Where am I going with this. It would probably be superfluous to note that there are many types of blogs. One of the types which I suspect constitutes a high number in Nuffnang’s community of bloggers is exemplified by blogs like Xiaxue, Estee and Dawn (list compiled in increasingly level of hotness).

Firstly, Nuffnang is used as an example because they are the highest profile local blog advertising network (at least in my view of this world).

Nuffnang has this pitch for bloggers:

Firstly, there are the monetary gains! We’ll do all the groundwork looking for advertisers and link you in with them. Once an ad is served on your blog, you start making income!

It is our sincere belief that Blogs should be credible and rich sources of information. Correspondingly, we will do our utmost best to ensure the ads served on your Blog match your content and readership as closely as possible. What this means is that your readers will be up to speed with the best deals in the market place!

How people using Nuffnang can try to monetize their blog:

1. Cost Per Unique Visitor Ads
2. CPC Ads
3. Advertorials

What Nuffnang is doing for the bloggers:

1. Blogger Partners
2. Blogger Outings
3. Affiliate Programme
4. Networking Sessions
5. Sponsorship for Blogger Related Events

The stuff Nuffnang is trying to do for the blogging community isn’t new. It resembles a lot what a manager running a Rewards / Loyalty Club Scheme might do. The monetization strategy for blogs is the same as any form of media advertising. Get something which pulls in lots of traffic / eyeballs and stick ads. Of course, we can make the ads more relevant. Really? Are these ads any more relevant then the sort I see when I watch soccer on ESPN. The conceit of people plying the online advertising space is that contextual advertising and demographic targeting is way better than say what we get on radio, print and tv. Really?

Seriously. Really? Think about your experience with Google ads on blogs.

If you need a reminder, see this post - Christian blog against gay lifestyle has Google Ad promoting the gay lifestyle.

Even if it is better, what ad networks like Nuffnang is doing is basically just turning blogs into ad spaces that do not take advantage of the uniqueness of blogs as a form and tool. Sure, blogs give more people a voice. Opinions of most of these bloggers wouldn’t have had a chance to be heard before blogs and these opinions do matter. But, what this just means is that you got more people producing content at more places, and more places to stick ads.

Nothing done so far seems to be born out of the uniqueness of blogs as a medium and form. What do I mean? What am I actually looking for?

Blog based marketing shouldn’t just be about bloggers talking about your products in advertorials or reviews or posts after an event.

Blog based monetization shouldn’t be about ads or about writing advertorials, reviews and post-event news.

Then what should it be about? The key was this line - We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t.

See, if you read my blog, you will know I am interested in Christianity. If you really read my blog, you will know more about this interest - that I’m not a hardcore Christian who will faithfully go for Festival of Praise nor am I a person who wants nothing to do with Christianity. My feelings and thoughts about Christianity is somewhere in between and if you read my blog to understand, you will know where exactly in between.

My point? Contextual advertising probably can understand the content for individual posts. Maybe even understand what the whole blog is about. But as of now, it cannot understand me as a person. The algorithm does not have the ability to meet me in person over a cup of coffee at Starbucks below your office to talk shop (hint to someone mentioned above).

So, here is why I think the future of blog (and here, I’m referring to a very specific form) monetization (and I believe there are many ways a blog can benefit you monetarily without exactly putting dollars, and in Nuffnang case it seems, cents into your bank account) and blog based marketing isn’t more algorithms for contextual advertising or more ad networks just to treat blogs as ad space and bloggers as anonymous content producers that draw traffic but PR companies like Ogilvy who bring their offline skills in understanding people and connecting people in the online world.

Now, Nuffnang lovers, I do recognize Nuffnang is trying to connect people. Maybe even understand people. But let’s take a look at some numbers - they have thousands of blogs in their network. If you tell me they have a relationship with everyone of those bloggers and understand them as individuals, either you are lying or you are on some narcotic (hint. I might like some cos whatever it is, it seems to put you in a happy happy place).

Nuffnang business model is about numbers.

Ogilvy is talking about people actually reading the blogs. Obviously there are limitations. It might not scale so well. Now. The key then is to build the (or just tweak existing) tools for PR people to do their job easier and better.

Now, here is something I want to add. When I get to know a person better, I stop caring so much about their interests. I do of course. But more importantly, I care about how their life can be better. The last line is a hint where I think the new companies focusing on blog based marketing and blog monetization should focus on.

Two interesting posts today related to social media ( whatever that means ).

Jerry Springer For Programmers: Only A Matter Of Time

Giles Bowkett has this to say:

Advertizing-supported media gains much more from your attention than it does from your edification.

and the below paragraph is the one that ‘inspired’ the header of my post:

Blog ads encourage a fundamentally trashy form of “journalism.” Keep this in mind the next time somebody suggests building a business on ad revenue. To the extent that it functions as an economic incentive to useless, divisive gossip, ad revenue is fundamentally erosive to the communities which generate it. That makes it parasitic, and nothing to be proud of.

Are we building Universities or Amphitheaters? by Reg Braithwaite neatly separates the two extreme types of social media aggregators that can be built.

Such things quickly drive out all useful information, but they bring slavering crowds into the amphitheater to watch the Christians battle the Lions.

Universities of old: places of learning where people shared and debated ideas for the purpose of advancing knowledge.

So, do companies like Nuffnang, Advertlets and others providing blog advertising products and services destroy the social media aggregators like Ping.sg.

I make no reservations when I say that I hope Ping.sg will become more like a university than an amphitheater. So, when I use the word ‘destroy’, I actually mean ‘decrease its chance of becoming an university’.

Hmmm…I was thinking about the posts mentioned above. There is only one way to get attention - provide content that people want. Sadly, a good number of us enjoy lowest common denominator sensationalistic content - this is the reason why Britney Spears must die.

It is easier to provide trashy content than insightful, helpful and intelligent content.

I would like to believe that if you do not like trashy content, then after the first time of being ‘tricked’, the site will no longer have your business. It is the ones providing content that edifies you that will get your business. In this way, it is perfectly alright for individual sites to want to provide trashy content - let them attract their kindred spirits, those who are different can go elsewhere.

The problem is when there is a confluence of these 3 factors:

1. Many such individual sites sprout out because of the ease in providing lowest common denominator content.
2. The marketing of blog advertising companies that make you believe that it is desirable if not profitable to stick ads on your site.
3. Aggregaters like Ping.sg become popular and a community develops around it.

The openness of Ping.sg works against it in this case to becoming an university.

Which brings me to a message I posted on Twitter. The problem with a lot of social media filtering services is that for the service to be useful to one person, many people need to use it - think Digg. AideRSS works to solve this problem by using other metrics (like the number of comments left on a post) not dependent on its own users. The problem is that these metrics depend on other humans which to me seems like a rather big flaw.

Is there a way for social media filtering without relying on human signals. Without explicit human signals?

Recently, someone posed as a representative of Nuffnang and posted a bunch of comments on a blog. The(new)mediaslut wrote a blog post giving advice on how to deal with the issue of an imposter. That post highlighted steps that can be taken after the fact of impersonation.

So the question I asked myself was how to prevent anyone from posing as a representative of a company in this new online media landscape with blogs and comments.

Specifically, how does a representative of a company establish his or her identity?

There are two ways which I am aware of.

1. Leave your name, email and site’s URL.

Presumably, the email you leave will be a secret which is used to identify yourself to the blog’s administrators. However, emails are easily harvested and it is actually a trivial thing to find out the email used by the representative of a company.

2. Install a blog commenting system to handle the identity of commentators.

Four examples of such systems:

a. http://www.sezwho.com/
b. http://disqus.com/
c. http://www.cocomment.com/
d. http://www.intensedebate.com/

There are a few problems with such systems:

1. The system has to be integrated with a blog.

2. Unless the services all use OpenID, people who like to comment regularly would need to have an account for each system.

3. Even if all the systems implemented OpenID, data regarding the comments made by a user would be stored in separate data silos with no aggregation of data across services.

So, I would like to propose a possible solution.

There will be a company, let’s call it COTRD, which establishes itself as an identity verification service for companies. COTRD is responsible for authenticating a user’s identity - the user is verified to represent the company or a company can setup accounts to be used by their representatives. The commentator, representing a site or company, who would like to establish his identity on a blog, first logs into COTRD to post the comment. Once the comment has been posted on COTRD, the user then posts the same comment on the other site with a link back to the comment on COTRD.

The idea behind this solution is to make use of the third field in the form when leaving a comment - the ‘Website’ field. Most people would just enter a URL for a domain (i.e. ian.onthereddot.com). What if, instead of just leaving the domain name of the website, the URL left is a permanent address to a comment hosted on COTRD?

Since, only the authenticated representative of the company could have left the comment on COTRD, if the comment on COTRD matches the comment on the blog, then that comment must have been made by the representative.

An analogy would be this. Only two people have the key to a house. Let’s call them Boy A and Girl B. Girl B receives a note from a stranger who claims the note is from Boy A. The note contains the words - ‘I Love You’. Now, Girl B goes back to the house, and sees the words ‘I Love You’ on the wall. Since only Boy A could have left those words because he was the only other person with a key to the house, then the note, or at least the words on the note, must have been from Boy A.

Of course, an astute observer might ask why can’t a company just post the comment on their own blog as a post. They could. But blog posts and comments are two different beasts and a company might not want to muddle up the content of their blog with every comment they had to post on other blogs.

A company could of course set up a separate blog where only comments are posted on it, so COTRD would have to provide other services to companies using its service.

Below is a comment highlighting the use of a service like COTRD.

I enjoy reading the about pages of companies and sites that I like or find really interesting. Nuffnang is one of those companies with a story that resonates with me. Reading the blog of one of the founders makes the story even more compelling. In any case, I’ve decided to start collecting these stories from the about pages of various sites and companies.

From: http://www.nuffnang.com.my/about-us

A Tiny Seed is planted.

In late may of 2006, 2 university students, Timothy Tiah and Cheo Ming Shen sat having a bento box lunch in London.

Exams were looming, but as with all the conversations between these two greenhorns, the topic was enterprise.

Having both experienced entrepeneurship during their student years, they were like over eager bunnies, ready to unleash their ideas on their home markets of Malaysia and Singapore.

It was in this cosy restaurant that the seeds of Nuffnang.com were planted.
What tree?

The decision was made to start a business, but what business?

Timothy then, had a deep rooted passion in the recent phenomenon of blogging. Having gathered an admirable following of readers with a blog he started with a friend, he lamented over how there was a dearth of relevant and lucrative advertising dollars.

Asia would soon have it’s very own blog advertising community.
Nurturing growth

Months of planning went into Nuffnang.com

And on the business plan, a modest target of 300 bloggers within 3 months had been set.

Even with those targets, there were skeptics, not least the two initiators.

Nuffnang.com.my was launched on 27th Feb 2007 and within the first 3 days, had signed up 300 bloggers. Nuffnang.com.sg was to follow suit 2 months later on the 30th of April.

Today, there are 13,000 bloggers in both countries, and Nuffnang has received publicity from all corners, having been featured on mainstream newspapers like The Star Malaysia, and The Straits Times Singapore.

Thousands of bloggers have been served ads by numerous bluechip companies, such as Nike, Citibank, Nokia, F&N, Walls, AirAsia, Honda, and many more.

More importantly, the community in Nuffnang has flourished, and it has truly become a focal point for bloggers in Malaysia and Singapore. Our bloggers call themselves Nuffnangers, an organic development that we are proudest of.

The best is yet to be.

This advice is an extension of what my mom shared with me a long time ago about finding the right girl to be my wife. The advice was to observe how the girl treated people she did not profess to love. So for example, at a restaurant, see how your date treats the waitress. A similar logic could be applied to gals. For a girl, to gauge the character of a guy, see how he treats other people who usually don’t get a lot of attention in a group. In other words, see how he treats the shy and ugly girls.

If you have been to enough orientation camps, you will notice that one group of people generally stop coming for group activities after the main orientation camp is over. Those people who slowly fall at the wayside are typically the shy and ugly girls. If you are shy and pretty, don’t worry, the group won’t forget you, especially the guys. If you are ugly but not shy, your personality will not allow you to fall away, especially if you are damn gungho.

I know, I know. Generalizations. Sure. But take a look. A real good look and you might admit that there is some grain of truth in what I’m saying. If you look at what happens during orientation, you will notice that guys would gravitate to the prettier gals. Of course the pretty gals won’t spare their time for all guys, so those that don’t get any attention will move on to the next tier of girls and then so on and so on.

Now, girls, if you want to see the character of a guy, see if he gravitates towards only the more outgoing or prettier girls. See if he makes an effort to include the shy ones (be it a guy or girl) into the conversations and group activities. See if he makes an effort with the ones considered ‘ugly’ by our harsh society.

So how do you be the nicest and hottest guy at a party?

Talk to the wallflowers. I know, I know, some of you snobs out there are going to say there are just some people who shouldn’t self-invite themselves to parties. Or even if they were invited, they should realized they were asked just out of courtesy and should know their place by rejecting the invitation.

Ever been to a party and hear the more ‘happening’ ones ask their friends why ’so and so’ were doing there.

It isn’t a crime for someone to want to step out of their comfort zone and try something new. It isn’t wrong for the shy or the ugly to want to party. But hey, we live in a cruel cruel world where we like to shove people like prisoners into a definition and force them to stay there. Anyone trying to escape from their place in society will be shot.

So guys, if you see that girl at the corner, the one hunched over her drink, whether she is pretty, ugly, shy, weird or what, make an effort to talk to her. Don’t let yourself be pulled to the center of all the action. Girls, guys will always treat you nicely if they want something from you. I can’t tell you how irritated I get when a female friend tells me that ‘I really like him because he treats me so well’. Duh! Only an idiot will treat you badly if he wants something from you. Please. Stop and see how he treats people he wants nothing from or has no need of anything from.

Now, where am I going with this.

One more little meandering musing. When I was in JC, there was this group of guys from a particular sport. The hot girls like to hang out with them. Let’s call them the JOCKs. The hot girls and the other people who hung out with them never had a bad word about this group of guys. Individually, they weren’t assholes. In fact, individually some were really nice guys but as a group they could be quite mean to other people.

Now, the rest of the school were either neutral or disliked them. I can’t say what the breakdown is. The point is this - the JOCKs aren’t universally liked and tend to only be liked by people who are in their clique.

Sometimes, the criticisms against the JOCKs and people who liked/supported them were unfair. For example, someone might say, ‘you only like them because you are hot and they don’t do anything bad to you.’ Or someone might say, “Those guys are only nice to the hot people.’ You can’t blame people for how they want to choose their friends. The funny thing is, even though these JOCKs didn’t do anything bad to the people who criticized them, that didn’t mean a thing. The fact that mattered was that the JOCKs didn’t treat everyone with that extra special favor. Like I said, humans are a sad species - we use our own inadequacies as a basis to find fault with other people.

I had a few friends who were universally liked in the school. Rarely a bad thing was said about them. And one thing I noticed about these friends were that they had a tendency to be inclusive. No special favors were bestowed to a subset of the school population. Everyone was treated with respect.

Ok, so finally to the main point. Whatever that has happened with Nuffnang has managed to get Techcrunch’s attention. Nuffnang really should learn a little from ‘JC 101′. If your business is in making a few people feel special and that is all you need, then fine. Continue treating a few bloggers a little better and let them always be your supporters. If however, it is important for everyone to like you if not love you, then to continue doing stuff which may generate the perception that some bloggers are being treated better won’t help you.

It may be an unfair perception, but the business world isn’t fair. What ever the validity of the criticisms about the processing fee, the point is this - why aren’t you universally loved? And why is it that the words of your supporters like Estee draws so much flak.

I don’t know the answers. But I do want to propose this. This might not really be a Nuffnang versus competitors versus bloggers issue. It could possibly be an issue with how people feel about themselves and how they would like to be treated within the context of a group. Which is special where special means the same as everyone else even though by whatever measurements you use I might not deserve it.

Update:

1. In my opinion, if you have the tendency to show favoritism, it is easier to get detractors.

2. Nicest - Those who didn’t expect you to invest time and energy to converse with them will feel flattered and likely to think you are a nice guy.

3. Sexiest - Those who expect everyone to be attracted to them like moths to a flame will be wondering why the hell you are different and some female friends has shared that apparently different is sexy.

When it is an advertisement! I saw Estee’s post on ‘Why I LOVE BOYS with BALLS and … a good set of wheels‘ and I found it interesting. Parts of the post sounded a lot like ad copy. So just to test, I took the phrase ‘They amaze us with their skills, humble us with their rootedness‘ and googled it. These are the results. Check this site out.

Learning this brought up a whole mix of thoughts and feelings. I have nothing against ads on blogs. Bloggers have the right to want to monetize their blog. I have nothing against endorsements also. Celebrities do it all the time when they go onto TV and say how wonderful a particular product or service is. Bloggers should be given the right to do so too on their blog.

The thing is that when it comes to blogs, we tend to expect (and possibly unfairly) that bloggers should always speak with their own voice - endorsements or not. While Estee did inject her own voice into the post, a part of it wasn’t hers. Which begs the question - next time, when do we know if it is really Estee speaking?

Should Ad copy be separated?

To be fair, Estee did put a disclaimer in the post title with the letters ‘ADV’ in brackets. And she probably isn’t the only blogger involved in this campaign by Nike.
Another thing that I’m still not sure about is how to feel about bloggers putting ad links within a post. Looking at the link information to Nike’s site, you can tell that Nuffnang is the ad provider.

One reason why ‘Pay Per Post‘ has raised the irk of certain bloggers in the States is because the medium makes it hard to differentiate between genuine show of support versus paid endorsements. In TV, it is easy. We can tell that a segment is an advertisement. Product placements within shows are easy to spot. Advertisements occur before a movie. In magazines, it used to be easier, but now with increasing number of advertorials, it is getting harder. Blogs started out as personal diaries but its use is evolving. I think the nature of the birth of the medium is one reason why some of us feel strongly against the invasion of paid posts. It is like inviting a friend to your house or visiting a friend for a party and they only reason why they want you there is so that they can try to sell you some multi-level product which you don’t really need so that they can make money.

On a final note, I do hope Estee forgives me for using her blog post as a reference point for my thoughts on this issue. And in no way am I insinuating that Estee has been dishonest. She did put a disclaimer as I have mentioned above.