The Manolo, he does the marketing!

There's about as much buzz re 'blogger burnout' as there is about blogging. Burnout happens when blogging gets in the way of paying the bills or having a life, or the writer simply runs out of things to say. (Or some combination thereof.)

Even as new blogs come online in huge numbers, consolidation of existing bloggers continues just as rapidly. Many (if not most) blogs are ultimately abandoned. Very few of them attract more than a handful of readers. Fewer still bring in much money. A handful get bought out by, say, Slate or About.com. (About itself was subsequently bought by The New York Times.)

Just as many would-be novelists have earned their keep as ad copywriters, many bloggers will go on to become Marketing Bloggers. The term drew 1,540 results on Google today, and 34,200 for Marketing Blog. This suggests that while the idea of a Marketing Blog is well established, the concept of 'Marketing Blogger' as a job description is not.

That is gradually changing, especially at cutting-edge marketing firms. We expect this will be a growing aspect of the 'blogging phenomenon' from here out. Therefore, it's worth studying The Master to discern the ins and outs, the whys and wherefores, of the Marketing Blog.

We are referring, of course, to The Manolo, surely the God of BlogMarketing. (The term gets 176 Google results as spelled, 48,400 with a space.)

Why BlogMarket? Why not just add copy to our company's web site? What's the importance of having a seperate blog?

(1) WHY BLOGMARKET? If your company's web site hasn't been getting substantial help from your marketing department, you've probably found that site traffic and web sales are sagging or down. (The exception to this rule is a company that's in the news consistently, such as Martha Stewart.) This is doubly disturbing because, in many cases, this downtrun in web fortunes comes after a period of exponential growth. A marketing blog has PR value, but its ultimate purpose is to drive traffic to your web site. It does this by engaging the reader, and engaging the allegiance of other websites and blogs.

Companies such as Amazon and Google found methods to be of service to readers and engage other websites long before the word 'blog' was coined. (How they did this will be the subject of a future post.) Their efforts are quite different in nature from online ads, pop-ups and banners - Google and Amazon forge online parterships, a comingling of interests. Blogs can be employed to similar effect.

(2) WHY NOT JUST ADD COPY TO THE COMPANY'S WEB SITE? Look at The Manolo. Writing to subject, he engages the reader for purposes of commerce. But he must maintain credibility by keeping his distance from the selling of anything. He cannot become beholden to the subject he is covering. If that line is crossed, The Manolo loses the reader's trust, affection, and attention. In short: The Manolo's job is to engage the reader and earn his/her trust. Should the reader choose to continue on to YOUR site, it's then your site's job to make a sale.

(3) WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING FOR A BLOG AND WRITING ADS? On the surface, blog writing is more casual than ad writing. As we mentioned, this is partly because it is not the blog's job to sell anything. The blog is a middleman, it provides a service. It serves the needs of the viewer, and the needs of other, non-commercial blogs, that are interested in this same subject. In doing so, it drives traffic to sites that ARE designed to sell products. The Manolo does this so well that his series of marketer-supported blogs (we count seven at this writing) are more-or-less completely accepted as entertainment.

This works only because The Manolo is completely disengaged from shilling. In fact, this link to 'his' site contains a very anti-fashionista statement.

Beneath the surface, BlogMarketing involves building relationships with non-commercial bloggers, commercial web sites and other active online personalities who are interested in the subject or product at hand. There's a lot of 'inivisible' effort and research necessary for the successful promotion of a marketing blog. Any blog you encounter that has heavy traffic got that traffic as a result of a lot of hard work behind the scenes.

BlogMarketing is the next big thing, and it's going to change how advertising works. For the better, we think.

More: Blogmarketing stat.

(Disclosure: Mr. Snitch is a non-commercial blog at this writing. However, although we are at present unsponsored and noncommercial, we do use the same commercial networking techniques we've described, so that our work can be seen by a broad audience. See our site meter for a glimpse at how out traffic has grown in this blog's brief existence.)

{UPDATE: The 34,200 results we got for "Marketing Blog" had increased to 263,000 three hours later, when we made editing changes to this post. It increased to 282,000 five minutes later. But 12 hours on, it was 133,000, and a few hours later we were back up to around 280,000. A phenomenon may be exploding out there, or it may be a Google glitch (as pointed out to us by Seth Godin). Or, more likely, it's both.}

{UPDATE 2: The Manolo, cornered by The Philadelphia Inquirer, mentions us.}

{UPDATE 3: We get many hits for "Manolo Blank", and this is one spelling the search engines aren't providing a "Did you mean..." option for. So we will: Did you mean Manolo Blahnik?}

{UPDATE 4: ProBlogger mentions us. Since this keeps happening, we'll mention that anyone who wishes to discuss this subject further should email us at mistersnitch@hotmail.com. We do consult on this subject and can offer some free advice to help orient those who are new to this concept.}

{UPDATE 5: This blog did a significant survey of PR professionals regarding their impressions of the effectiveness of blogs as a business tool. (from September, 2005)}

Categories: Blog marketing, The Manolo, Blogging, Internet culture