Blogger for sale?

I know I’m not alone in picking up on the recent K-Mart Gate scandal but I thought it warranted further discussion. By the way I hate how the benchmark of  scandalous is Watergate. I’m sure there has been some pretty scandalous stuff both before and after… like Guantanamo Bay as one example.  Anyway, I’m referring to Chris Brogan’s recent post on Dadomatic (a community about fatherhood) where he openly did a paid-for-post courtesy of K-Mart to promote their store gift vouchers for Christmas. The post was about what he bought with a  $500 gift card given to him by K-Mart. He was totally open about doing so. The community were then invited to enter a competition to win a similar gift-card. To do so they either had to post a comment listing the product code of what they wanted or by simply by tweeting the below with a link to the blog.

” RT @chrisbrogan is giving away a $500 Kmart Gift Card on his blog – simply tweet or comment to enter http://urlbrief.com/27bb3f”

I discovered this post by a negative chat thread in Twitter about how he had sold out. Their words not mine. I will be honest I was at first surprised Chris a demi-god in the world of social media was that cheap! The fact that he had this post in itself didn’t particularly offend me. It wasn’t the most creative of initiatives but it was all open and transparent. However it has faced a back-lash across the blogosphere that led to some folk in a p2pr community I admin to ask is this OK or bad bad bad?  

Before I responded I wanted to see the full picture and so went through almost every comment on the blog post. 99% were folk who did post were active members of Dad-O-Matic community and were very positive and engaged. Dads seemed to love the idea apart from a few who had moral objections to the brand but not the post specifically. Chris obviously knows his community well and made the judgement that it would be of value. Seasonal discussion about wish-lists and dad type products was relevant to fatherhood. But as you look to the later comments things weren’t so positive.

Scott Hnderson charts the timeline related to the storm of negative comments and gives some good insights into what were the driving factors behind it. However my opinion is this:

If you look at the negative response it started on Twitter and was led by Jeremy Owyang (between Chris & Jeremy they have just under 50,000 Twitter followers) and then spread like wild fire throughout the blogosphere. Now the followers of both of these esteemed social media rock stars are social media geeks and pros like myself. They went back to the posting and started hurling dirt. I might point out that they probably have never read his work on Dad-o-matic and probably aren’t in a position to pass judgement on its value to its community. But they had every right to react negatively because of the floor in the approach was effectively getting people to spam their mates in Twitter. Remember one way to enter was literally to copy and paste the copy and link. This meant;

-a whole load of people who wouldn’t be interested in the competition or Kmart’s gift card got spammed about it

-they got spammed by their friends

-their friends were instructed to do so by a guardian of social media

-they got interrupted in a very personal channel (following friends updates)

If this hadn’t been an element of the campaign I’m confident that this wouldn’t have happened because nobody who didn’t need to know wouldn’t have. The Dad-O-Matic crowd were nothing but positive other than a handful. This is controversial space so some folk were always going to be negative but it wouldn’t have been to this level. Perhaps if Chris had asked the community first whether they would have objected or had feedback on how the competition should be structured he could have tested the water.

What do the communities want from brands?

I wanted to hear what YOU, the ‘power user’ (a more than casual user / someone who is very influencial within their preferred network), felt about how brands are acting in YOUR communities. The purpose being that as a representative of numerous brands who charge me with their social media marketing strategy I don’t want to get in your way, interrupt you, spam you or offend you.

I want to find ways to get brands that are relevant to you;

a) to give you things that you are interested in

b) that you think some of your mates will also be interested in

c) so you will want to share it with them

I also want to stop companies just getting in touch with you once then never contacting you again. It’s a bit like a one night stand without the phone call. Nobody likes to feel used! 

All in all I want companies to start treating you like people (not just part of their sales targets) and with some respect.  

If I don’t do this I have failed in my role.

Gapingvoid.com

The problem is most social networks are actually stopping me from doing this. I won’t bore you with the detail but basically they would rather I just spent lots of money with them putting up adverts, that you are probably not interested in, than for me to to be creative and think of how the brands I represent can really do something that you will think is cool and create an ongoing relationship. 

In most cases they simply make it far too expensive for 99% of companies to do anything at all other than show you an advert and certainly too expensive for them to start a long term relationship with you. Or they simply restrict what they allow companies to do. If you are interested in finding a little more about these restrictions click the link below:

CLICK HERE

Ultimately they make money from your content, you lose out on the benefits of brands willing to offer cool things to have a relationship with you, and brands stay the same old pain in the ass advertiser.

Surely Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Youtube should be asking YOU the question what do you and don’t you want from companies. It is after all YOUR community. They obviously haven’t otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this so I thought I should start. I hope to bring in the heads of each of the social networks mentioned into the discussion but I wanted to start with you. There are some networks that are more progressive than others but I will leave that judgement up to you.

A great example of the kind of stuff I want to be able get ALL my brands to do not just the big ones with huge budgets is like creating a photographic competition in Flickr (not officially allowed) for aspiring photographers to win a prize to be an official photographer at some big red carpet events. 

But they just want me to show you some adverts in different shapes around your profile. Which I don’t think you find interesting but again that’s your call.

To help you think about how to respond I have provided a couple of questions to get you going. But you don’t have to stick this if you don’t think it is relevant please feel free to say whatever you feel. If you want to ask any questions before you answer you can email on jamie247@gmail.com

I really look forward to hearing your response. I hope together we can make the relationship between you and the companies your interested in work better in social media.  

1. What was the last thing a company did to make you smile in a social network
2. Name a negative experience with a company in a social network
3. When was the last time you clicked on a advert in a social network (if so why)
4. Why did you last join a group on a social network
5. What company would you like a relationship with
6. What could the company give you that would be of interest
7. Have you / would you use a branded application (like a Facebook application) in your social media network
8. What could a company give you that would you pass on to someone else
9. Would you mind if a company contacted you through your social network profile
10. Would you mind a company being actively involved in a social network group you are a member of
11. Which brand would you promote to your mates through your preferred social network and what would you want in return (other than hard cash)

Social media operators have to change!

Social Network owners who treat anything with a commercial or brand attachment as if it is advertising are missing a trick – and treating their communities with less respect than they should.

They seem happy to spam ‘their’ communities (allowing advertisers to buy banners and buttons that at best get a CTR of 2%). Irrelevant is fine, apparently, as long as there is a dollar attached. Value for you? In a short term way, perhaps. But for your community?

A commercial rep from Flickr told me they don’t allow ‘commercial groups’ or competitions. Flickr do you know your network?

Is this commercial?

Canon Group

This?

Nikon

Possibly these?

Nokia

Ford

And quite a few competitions they dont let happen. About 530,000+ in all.

Their response was to tell me there is a minimum spend for media. This isn’t just them Youtube, Myspace are all the same. I don’t want media. I am a peer-to-peer company.

They want to charge me a flat fee of £30k to have a branded page (YouTube) or £300k for a sponsored group (Flickr) whatever the purpose or time-frame. Flat fee is just plain lazy and it’s actually restricting your revenue. It’s also contrary to the way the networked world of the long tail works.

Social media is still new to 80% of brands. Both big and small. They want to dip their toe, see value, then put some chunky budget into planning for a later date. All or nothing will mean nothing. Or they are a small business that will never be able to afford that kind of money.

Advertisers; you are currently only dealing with 3% of businesses out there. People are spending less on online media because it doesn’t work and is wasteful. Right now nobody can be wasteful. Budgets will shift to us WOM folk so you better start making friends.

If you’re going to charge, and I know you’re a business, you should be more flexible in pricing. You should look at the proposed approach and the activity time period and charge me accordingly. If it’s bringing real value to your community it should be cheaper.

Hell, in some cases, maybe you should be paying us. We’re giving ‘your community’ more interesting things to do together. A good competition on Flickr will actually bring new users, ours did, and stimulate more content that you get to monetize.

Let’s be really revolutionary. After all that’s how the founding fathers envisaged these platforms. It’s the small minded, hard-nosed, margin chasing, sales reps that have got in the way and stoppeing what could have been a beautiful partnership between brand, platform and community. Don’t forget it’s not your community it’s your tools. So why not show my latest campaign proposal to a group of super users and they can score the value to the community out of ten, probably instantly rather than a 3 day turnaround, which is then taken into account in pricing.

To sum up:

A) Stop making me be an advertiser.

B) Stop making me interrupt the community.

C) I know what they want because I am one of YOUR community members. So I know what is valuable and I account for it in my thinking and planning.

D) You should even listen to me for no other reason than to make you more money.

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THIS IS A RALLYING CALL TO ALL PEER-2-PEER FOLK OUT THERE TO INSTIGATE CHANGE.