Greetings Incubloggers! We know it has been quite some time since our last meeting. The next one will be held:
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
6-8pm
Vizad Marketing
898 South State Street Suite 31
Orem, UT 84097
We know that many of you have been hard at work on your blogs, and are experiencing some success. We also know that many of you have questions about your sites. If there are any particular issues you would like us to address, please send these requests to brooke.ibanez@gmail.com.
We are excited to get going again on the Incublogger project! We hope to see you there.
Recently Microsoft ran a “conversation marketing” campaign where they had several large bloggers weigh in on when they knew “they were people ready” (a new Microsoft ad campaign).
This particular blogger started a conversation on his site about it - it wouldn’t have been a big deal but he had previously blasted bloggers for questionable blog marketing tactics such as Pay-Per-Post and ReviewMe, two programs that allow advertisers to pay bloggers to review their products.
Now we don’t take a formal stance on this issue - we think it is every individual blogger’s responsibility to figure out what type of advertising opportunities they would like to employ on their site. We do, however, advise bloggers on the opportunities and risks available.
When this particular blogger flamed fellow bloggers for accepting payment he was sending the message that he personally believed this form of advertising was wrong. When he accepted payment for essentially doing the same thing several of his readers predictably determined he was a “sell-out.” The only explanation we can think of for this blogger engaging in such activities is that the pricetag was high enough - hence a sell-out.
Our advice: decide upfront how you feel comfortable making money on your site and what you feel is inappropriate and stick with this - otherwise you may upset several readers and lose subscribers in the long run.
So you’re thinking of starting a blog but having a hard time picking a domain name?
The first question to ask yourself if where your traffic will come from - will people type it in or will most traffic come from the search engines? If it’s the search engines you probably don’t have to worry about spelling/length/etc. (at least not as much). If you are going to grow from word-of-mouth you better find something short, easy to spell and memorable.
The next question is whether the name is available - be flexible and willing to spend some time searching for the right name - see Godaddy, a great resource to search for and find a new domain name.