Should bloggers be rewarded? Payment isn’t the only way… free schwag? Review units to keep? What do you consider ethical and what do you not?
Do famous bloggers deserve star treatment, and star rewards? People argue that objectivity is lost with payment, but should companies leave the option open for bloggers who wish to go down that path?
If you pay a blogger to do an advertorial blog post, does anyone read advertorials anymore? Do they think its a waste of time, a sign of selling out and a turn off?
I’m going to speak generally and say that most people who took part in the conversation are concerned about objectivity being an issue when money comes into play, and rightfully so. Cullen puts it very well:
For me, I think the bottom line is when money starts to trump honesty then the money’s influence is unacceptable.
My personal point of view is that compensating bloggers is fine. I don’t necessarily like the idea of money changing hands, but I think freebies or trial copies with the option to purchase at a discounted price are okay. After all, bloggers are spending their precious time and effort (not to mention valuable blog real estate) to talk about you. There is opportunity cost involved!
I also feel the problem is the “expectation” that reviews should be good. No one has come out straight to say it, but inherently, if you get a review, it shouldn’t be saying bad things. That’s why ad-pull became an issue with magazines. Company X would pay for a couple of pages of ads, but the writers of the magazine might criticise them over something in another section of the magazine, and next month Company X takes their advertising elsewhere.
I think this has a mindset that has to be fixed, especially when it comes to bloggers. When you get involved with them (regardless of whether anything changes hands), it is a partnership. One where you (the company) takes the good and the bad. And if partnering with a blogger means getting feedback on what’s not fantastic with your product, it’s an opportunity to improve it, rather than an excuse to switch to another blogger who only says good things about you.
The discussion is far from over, there’s much more that can be said about compensating bloggers, it might be a great time for you to head over to the forum and chime in!
In the meantime, thanks Farinelli, Daniel, Brian, Hillary, Cullen, Claudia, Relax and Nicholas for really bringing some momentum to the topic! Looking forward to much more.
Thanks to Dorothy for live-blogging at Social Media Breakfast | Singapore, NTT and Brian for live Twittering and Plurking, and Kevin and Bryan for spreading the word on this side of the globe!
And of course, the rest of the team Claudia, Sherms,Sheylara, Derrick and Dorothy for getting SMB4 up and running. Crazy to think that seven months ago, it was just three people, no, three strangers trying to get SMB1 off the ground, and now we’re a full-fledged team who people believe in enough to volunteer their time to talk at a panel on Saturday morning. Utterly amazing, and it couldn’t be done without all of your support.
I’ve decided to take a page out of Louis Gray’s book and highlight six blogs (in no order) that have really caught my attention in April, as well as one link that I feel is a recent notable read.
The amount of new blogs I’m subscribing to monthly is decreasing (I suppose there’s only so much information I can process), but if you know any great ones, recommend them in the comments space below!
Looks like most of us got Facebook Chat today. I see people like Brian on it (and Twittering about it from @litford), Kean Hean and Estee the Geek Goddess as well.
Here’s a little screen shot of how it looks (click for larger image):
I was excited to get on Facebook chat because the number of people on Facebook means it’s a great way to stay connected and get to know some people who’re your “Facebook friends” a little better.
One thing sorely missing is the ability to add multiple people into a conversation. I feel it’s a shame that I can see everyone who’s online right now on the right hand side, but can’t add two or more people into the same chat room so we can catch up together.
If that function gets rolled out soon, I can definitely see my time on Facebook increasing dramatically.
If you want to find me on Facebook, search for Daryl Tay. I’m the one from SMU (obviously!)
Haven’t had time to really get online after the IDC Conference, because of a night out with my two closest friends Rubin and Reuben with some grown up talk (jobs and marriage). But I really wanted to squeeze out a real quick post on today’s IDC Panel discussion and give you a sense of what I’ll be talking about over the next couple of days.
First, a big thank you to @litford, @byzantin3 and @ridz84 for watching the live webcast and sending me nice messages on Twitter. I’m sorry I didn’t reply because I switched off Twitter on my phone for the day. Didn’t want to be distracted while on stage. Again, thank you for taking 45 minutes off your busy lives to hear what I had to say!
Second, an even bigger thank you to Geek Goddess Estee for coming down in person to support me there and for passing me a book on New Media. Can’t wait to read it!
I’m going to mention @litford twice because he has a recap of the topics and questions and answers on his blog as well as posting the live feed. If you missed it, check out the discussion over there.
Next, I have 5 points that I’m going to blog about in detail over the next few days, but I want to throw them out here first.
1) Advertising and blogging.
Again, Brian has talked about this in his thoughts from the panel. I was listening to a podcast on the way home and coincidentally it serves as a great case study for how to do advertising/sponsorship in the blogosphere. It’s a North American example, but I think it applies pretty well.
2) On Gen Y not reading the newspapers.
MediaSlut as always has started a very good conversation about how this may be worrying. I was told from Debbie that @ridz84 agreed on the live chat with me that most of us don’t read the papers, and before I respond to MediaSlut, I’d like to take a straw poll just to give an indication if I am guilty of a gross generalisation, or if there’s some truth to it.
3) Trust.
I think this came up as a common underlying thread between all the panelists. How important is trust between you and a blogger? Does it even matter? Or is it just another one of the many, many fragmented voices online and there’s no differentiation?
4) Relationships.
I had the great fortune of meeting two brilliant people from HP who I could share myhugeenthusiasmfor Snapfish with as well as talk about the HP Mini-Note a little bit. Very smart people who definitely realise the value of engaging in this space and meeting them in person convinced me that they’re not just doing it because someone at corporate or their PR company said to do so. From talking to them I could tell that they truly believed it was a worthwhile endeavor and that’s the reason why they are doing it.
At the same time I had a couple of crappy experiences today too which I’m not sure I want to talk about in detail, but at the very least I will mention vaguely.
5) Corporate Interest.
I am genuinely, genuinely curious about whether companies are interested in social media/new media/web2.0/whatever as an option right now, (which is already too late). Or if they think this is going to be another fad that will pass through in a year. The reason why I ask this is because I think one big issue, corporate blogging, was brought up today, but it didn’t seem to generate much discussion after the panel. The other thing which is a smaller issue, was that we ended the panel on a note about microblogging, specifically Twitter. I’m sure companies in the audience could benefit from such a quick-action response mechanism, but again I’m not sure that was a conversation that was going on after the panel.
I just want to say I don’t mention #5 because I think they should be talking to me about these issues. I don’t claim to be the best person for them to talk to because after all, I’m still a student observing all of this from the comfort of the university. But is this conversation happening at all?
All in all, today was really great for me. I would’ve liked to have heard some questions from the floor and hear some of the real questions and concerns that companies have when thinking about engaging in this new space that is changing so rapidly, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time. Was probably good that they timed us though because I think we could’ve gone on till tomorrow with no problem at all.
Well those are my quick thoughts on today’s discussion. If you have any please feel free to chime at the comments below, or if you like, drop me an email at uniquefrequency[AT]gmail[DOT]com.
