One of the major challenges facing anyone venturing into the social media PR world is that of how to capture the attention of a critical mass of bloggers. To date, the most effective way to get a blogger to write about a particular product was to offer them an experience of the product by sending them free samples of software, product, music, books or just about anything else not-necessarily-in-exchange for unbiased reviews on those targeted blogs.
For the most part, bloggers strive to keep the process transparent, and usually make it a point to include a disclosure line when talking about a product that they had been given for free. It seems like a perfectly innocuous way to spread word-of-mouth, but how does this practice, regardless of its transparency, affect public perception of those bloggers, and more importantly, of bloggers in general?
Recently, Microsoft flew a handful of bloggers to Seattle for a preview of the new Zune MP3 player. Coolfer, a blog about music and the music industry maintained by Glenn Peoples,
In standard blog form, he was sure to spell out that Microsoft had paid for his trip. His review, for the most part was positive, but pointed out a number of imperfections that could be changed. Having obviously never seen the Zune before, it seemed a fair and balanced review of the product – and chances are, it probably was.
What really made me think about this was when I read one of the comments on the blog from someone named Andrew which read:
It’s a sad day when bloggers become shills in exchange for a free trip to Seattle.
It’s pretty well accepted throughout the “true believers” in the social media PR space that offers from companies should come with few strings attached in terms of the tone of the article – in other words, a free sample can’t come with the caveat that they have to write about how great it is. But for the general public, who doesn’t spend its time thinking about how social media PR works may not understand that unwritten rule, or even believe that it exists.
I can’t say I blame them, personally. Right now, trust of bloggers is high, but how long will that last for? How long before companies who are offering all-expenses paid trips to bloggers start insisting on positive coverage?
The only remedy for this is transparency. Bloggers must continue to keep these arrangements out in the open, letting their readers know when they have accepted a gift of the thing they are reviewing.
Corporations who wish to play in this space have a similar responsibility to keep word of mouth from becoming polluted. My guess would be that Microsoft placed a fairly strict NDA on the bloggers for what they could and could not talk about in terms of the agreement. To my mind, we need to make sure, as much as we can, that bloggers we want to work with to spread the word of our product are legally able to be as transparent as they need to be in order to keep the public trust that bloggers have thus far built up.
(Full disclosure: If any companies want to send me presents, I’ll gladly take them. I do loves me some swag.)
