A couple of weeks ago we discussed when it was a good idea to include bloggers in your media outreach. I'm using this conversation to also share some important information about the way marketers still relate to customers.
Still too many continue to think in terms of impressions for their program.
It's not, not even a little. And please stop thinking about blogs as yet other media properties where you can get to eyeballs. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If online media publications are places where people get their information, and many have demonstrated they can indeed create a loyal following, blogs are most certainly not just that.
The most successful blogs do it
If you take a look at the more successful and read blogs, you will find they have something in common, no matter the topic. What do Seth Godin, Skellie, Dan Pink, Pamela Slim, Leo Barbauta, Maki, Fred Wilson, Tim O'Reilly, Gretchen Rubin, Chris Brogan, and Kathy Sierra (we miss you) have in common? Why do people subscribe to them and share their posts?
Aside from each decidedly having a most definite point of view and clearly sharing from what they know and what they're working on generously, these professionals provide unique content to their readers.
It doesn't stop there though.
The reason why more and more people add them to their daily or weekly attention list is that they help their readers become smarter, market better, be more productive, create and have better experiences, sell more, and even find happiness.
In other words they give power back to the community.
Content to connection
Does your content do that?
It's not all about the offer, you know? That's a one night stand that can get some in the door, all expectant for that rocking experience.
What's beautiful about the social Web is that there can be conversation without offer, that in more instances than I can count here, it shows how it's really about the connection made, no matter how it happens.
Search is aided by social tags and links, people who've found the content useful and want to signal it to their friends, pass it on.
What are you doing with your cognitive surplus?
You might have heard about the cognitive surplus.
Clay Shirky talks about when we used to watch TV as a pastime. Watching TV kept people occupied for hours at a time with programming and yes, ads. But if people do like to consume, which is good news for marketers, they also like to produce - and share.
There's an opportunity with that.
If you find every single way to give power back to those users, to carve out a small fraction of that massive cognitive surplus, to perhaps do something good with it... the possibilities are unimaginable.
To me the genie is out of the bottle, you cannot put the mouse back, people have found ways to express what they know, who they are, and what they want - and it may not be your program.
Those bloggers you may be trying to reach with your pitch know that. They understand about the cognitive surplus and giving power away. They know that if they help their readers become smarter, be more productive, even feel inspired, if they help lift the whole community up, everyone wins.
What can you do to get there?