Inducements for Bloggers

Bhanu at the Indian Social Media blog posts about the practice:

Prizes, Money and expensive gifts do spoil people’s mind and their skills. But one has to understand and make their own decision, whether to support these acts or discourage these acts. Believe me, being in a controlled messaging world, I feel social media is a place where one can express his or her views openly without any hassles.

I recently came across few blogger communities who are equally supporting these acts. Please guys.. why can’t we keep these communities clean and not handover ourselves to these selfish motives.

Certainly, there are other marketers who understand the value of Blogs and other Social Media Platforms, who see that they don’t loose out the essence of this platform. I would term Social Media as People’s Media.

So let people decide what is wrong and what is right and not try to influence them with Gifts & Prizes. Of course, there can be gratifications, but there should not be any motive behind it.

What do you think? 

I think the following are OK:

1. Marketers contacting bloggers to try out a product/service without any obligation for a ‘positive review’ – Heck, just getting exposure on a big blog and participating in conversations about the product and features is a big deal, IMHO.
2. Bloggers making it public that the product was given to try out and they are reviewing it as a goodwill gesture. This has to fit in with the overall voice of the blog. 
3. If the product is being given as a gift – then the blogger has to make that clear too – as that would impact the overall perception of the post. 

Overall the blogger has to ensure that his/her integrity is not called to question – if that happens the whiplash from the reader and blogger community can be vicious and have tonnes of negative fallout for both the brand as well as the blogger. 

Losing an audience means no more such inducements in the future. As the old adage goes – it’s tough to build up reputation but quite easy to lose it.

And check this example out:

Coca-Cola Co. decided to let its users dominate discussion about the soft drink on Facebook.

The popular Coke fan page on the social networking site wasn’t created by the company, but rather by Los Angeles actor Dusty Sorg and writer Michael Jedrzejewski. It had more than a million fans when Facebook called Coca-Cola to alert them that the page violated the social network’s terms of service because it wasn’t operated by the trademark owner. Take over the site, Facebook told Coke, or we’ll take it down.

Instead, the beverage maker flew the pair to its Atlanta headquarters in January, took them to a hockey game, gave them a VIP tour of the Coke museum and let them play Eric Clapton’s guitar, then proposed that they officially run the page for the company. The two agreed. It now has more than 3 million users.

“Our social media marketing approach is that we want to be everywhere our consumers are,” said Michael Donnelly, Coke’s director of global interactive marketing. “There’s significant risk in being perceived the wrong way.”

Update: A blogger shared recently that a firm he applied to asked him to review their product on his blog. When he asked if it was part of the application process, they said it wasn’t. He didn’t get round to doing it – as he was unsure what kind of blog post they were expecting out of him.

The organization also hasn’t got back to him on his application process.

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