Thalasar Ventures

I was watching episode 20 of Rockstar Startup which featured Jody, the new West Coast director of sales. She met with a few agencies on the West Coast (Gen X was one, which handles Acura). That meeting was interesting because it occurred at my favorite sushi restaurant on the West side (recognized the decor) and it raised some important issues questions that advertisers have about Pay Per Post.

One of the issues raised in the meeting was the important one of the blogger’s credibility. Does a pay per post posting impact/reduce a blogger’s credibility? If it’s one thing that a blogger is aware of, it’s their credibility. As I have mentioned before I have used Pay per Post both as an advertiser and as a blogger so I have a little insight into both sides.

1. I’ll respect your brand, please respect mine. A blogger’s only brand is his voice. Branding for a blogger is a time consuming process since it’s entirely building around that blogger’s voice. A blogger can quickly ruin their brand, so they are highly protective of it. The agency raised the concern that the blogger was being paid to post. If that’s your concern, request a neutral review. Those are win/win’s for both the blogger and the advertiser. You can count on bloggers being honest in their appraisal. Remember a blogger’s only brand is his voice. He doesn’t have a budget for repairing damage to his brand and he painstakingly built that brand. He’s gonna protect it. For example my site is a Page Rank 7 – higher than many corporate home pages. I will defend that brand fiercely.
2. Give more information, not less. When posting an opportunity, give the blogger more information to work with and more information about the campaign. When a blogger is looking for a post on which he might get paid, he is looking for opportunities that match his audience. I often use Pay per post for finding ideas to post about. Sometimes I even post about opportunities when I am not getting paid because it matches my audience. I have noticed that opportunities that have more detail about the goals of the campaign catch my interest and give me more material as a blogger to work with. I never take opportunities that say “Blog about X”.
3. Read the posts in the campaign. Pay Per Post allows you to give feedback to bloggers about their post during your campaign. Bloggers thrive on feedback. That’s why we have trackbacks and comments sections. Giving your Posties feedback on your posts is critical. Additionally be open to new ideas. When I ran my Earlymiser campaign on Pay Per Post, looking at the resulting post gave me three or four solid ideas on other campaigns. That’s the power of crowds.
4. Segment your offer using Pay Per Post tools and USING the offer language. If Pay Per Post has a weak area, it currently is in the ability it micro select blogs and types of blogs. I wish they had that ability when I was first posting my opportunities. That said Pay Per Post offers far better tool than some of their competitors. Pay Per Post also offers you the ability to segment the offer even more through the opportunity description. Use the opportunity description to have additional requirements about the post such as audience type or blog content. Bloggers thrive on information. Use the opportunity description to do further content segmentation on the types of blogs you would like to see posting on the issue. For example a kitchen supply store should ask that specific home making blogs and cooking related blogs should post on the opportunity.
5. Be realistic in your expectations. I have seen some of the higher dollar value opportunities go unfulfilled for a while because the opportunity simply isn’t realistic. For example there is an opportunity that has the following requirements; Minimum Google Page Rank: 7, Maximum Alexa Score: 2,499, Maximum Technorati Rank: 999. Let’s put these requirements in perspectative. CBSNews.com has an Alexa ranking of 2018. An Alexa ranking of 2499 is in a major online media category. The opportunity remains unfilled because of several reasons. The blogs that meet it’s requirements (and it’s only a handful on the planet) don’t cover that particular market so the offer and the content is useless to them. Furthermore would you expect coverage by a major media outlet (ABC, CBS NBC) for a few hundred dollars? You know the answer to that is no. So be realistic in your offer. There probably some great blogs that will match well with this offer but not with these expectations. A lower dollar amount and a better job segmenting this offer in the opportunity description will get better results.
6. Worried about results, track then. Many people are using Pay Per Post to help with the SEO work or to get at eyeballs organically. In the first meeting one person asked about the CPM of Pay Per Post. This is a pretty odd metric to use, considering your CPM is going to vary with the offer and the type of blogs that will gravitate to the offer. Just offering more money for a post may not improve the results of the campaign. You need to segment and use the opportunity description to really improve results. Let’s say for example you represent Oxo (Fine, fine products kitchen products BTW). If you are doing a campaign for a new product release you need to really use the opportunity description to segment out the cooking/kitchen blogs. You can then use both the image tracking and specific url tracking to measure the short term results.
7. These posts stay around a long time. You cannot just look at the short term results of the campaign. You need remember that these posts are going to be around a long time. In fact it’s more akin to buying a permanent billboard than a short term PPC buy. The Pay Per Post posts will be around long after your other campaigns stop. People googling your product or brand will find them long after the campaign has stopped. Here’s the results from earlymiser.com on google. See those blogs? That’s huge ROI over the lifetime of the brand. In that regard Pay Per Post is a tremendous value when compared with traditional PPC advertising.