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Kenneth,
Thanks for your blogging forums. They're helpful to experienced and nonexperienced bloggers alike.
Here is a good article I received from WebPro News that I thought you might like to share with the group. It is written by Chris Richardson, who is pretty well known in SEO/SEM circles.
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With Readership Growth, Blogs Continue Marketability
Since blog readership continues to climb, blogs are steadily solidifying their position as viable advertising real estate. Not only are traditional web advertising methods effective, but because of their word-of-mouth potential, blogs can also be used to introduce new items and therefore, actually becoming the advertising medium.
Do more blog readers mean blogs are capable advertisers? Discuss at WebProWorld.
An article by CyberJournalist.net revealed that by the end of 2004, blog readership was up 58%. Because readership continues to increase, the chances of visitors responding to blog ads increases as well. Although, the article also revealed that while readership has indeed increased, the overall amount of "net citizens" who actually know what blogs are hovers around 38%.
This should not be a discouraging figure, however. If readership continues to increase, blogs will soon become a permanent fixture. As Jason Dowdell pointed out in his Monetizing Blogs article, the trust level created by dependable blogs can go a long way towards generating good buzz about an endorsed product. This also indicates trusted blogs can potentially become the actual advertiser and not a display space for third party ads.
An article referred to by Steve Rubel also gives food for these thoughts. In Electronic Business Online, a venture capitalist was quoted as saying that he would consider starting a blog if he was going to launch a product. A blog would allow him to spread the word about the product while gauging reactions from beta testers and customers. Because of the immediacy of the Internet, reactions both negative and positive will be known in close to real time, as will the ability to respond; something not as easy in a brick and mortar transaction.
Furthering the idea of blog marketing effectiveness are testimonials found in various forums scattered around the Internet. In WebProWorld, poster Ajordan shared experiences that makes blog marketing seem more viable, "I have two blogs which I try to update as often as I can and they have indeed helped bring traffic to my online store and make sales… Blogging is more like a news stand or trade show. You may get less exposure, but you'll get the right customers."
As mentioned earlier, more traditional methods are also quite feasible, and because readership continues to increase, the potential for ad clicks do as well. There are a number of mediums that advertisers can use for bloggers to display. Google allows bloggers to display AdSense ads, a service not restricted to Google-owned Blogger.com members. This also means that AdWords members can choose blog channels to display their ads in.
Due to the nature of Google's advertising service, AdWord ads are served based on the context of the blogs. Meaning, if you were advertising for PC peripherals, your ads would appear on blogs that cover the PC market. However, advertisers are not limited to contextual advertising services. Because weblogs are topic sensitive, targeting your ad is accomplished by default. If you aren't using a contextual service like AdWords or Overture, the trick is finding the right blog, topic-wise, to display ads in.
With RSS and weblogs going almost hand in hand, featuring an ad campaign that appears in an RSS feed can be quite beneficial. The CyberJournalist article reveals, "5% of Internet users say they use RSS aggregators or XML readers to get the news and other information delivered from blogs and content-rich Web sites as it is posted online." Not only do RSS feeds help ensure a blogs popularity, they also provide even more real estate for advertisers to show their ads.
Since blog content will determine visitors, as readership continues to increase blogs should become increasingly effective marketing tools. This is not limited to advertisers either. Bloggers themselves can transform their actual blogs into an advertising medium, provided they have a trustworthy relationship with their audience.
An interesting article in MediaDailyNews.com took a different approach to the improving readership numbers. While readers have indeed increased, some are wary that blogs may not be a viable advertising market for a couple of reasons. The first being that high-end advertisers aren't sure readership will continue to increase. Another concern is the sometimes-controversial nature of blogs. This makes traditional advertisers somewhat cautious.
However, search advertising was treated with much the same disdain by major advertisers. That is until that ad market took off. These same worries may begin to subside when more successful ad ventures are reported on. In Jason's article, the people who run MarketingVOX indicated that, "the ads on MarketingVOX are bringing in some incredibly high conversion rates for his advertisers. More importantly, the ads on his site are reaching the point where they are becoming content." Give it time.
Chris Richardson
www.webpronews.com
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