5 Rules of Reverse Blog Marketing (RBM)
The advent of Web 2.0 has brought with it a host of unique and innovative marketing possibilities. In fact various companies have sprouted up catering to this niche of Buzz Marketing, Social Media Optimization, Blog Marketing etc. We’ve talked about SMO in the past, so let’s have a look at Buzz and Blog Marketing.
What is Blog Marketing?
Internet marketing via blogs.
In Internet Developing Nations (Countries like India, where the net penetration is still to hit astronomical heights), Blog Marketing is done by the following methods:
- Begging influential and famous bloggers to write about you.
- Paying the bloggers to write about you.
- Spamming in the Comments Section of all possible blogs.
And other methods include:
Regular Mass Mailing, Spamming on Scrapbooks of users on Social Networking Sites (Orkut, Facebook etc) and spamming on Message boards / Forums.
In more cases than one, you are going to face a backlash from the Bloggers and readers. Only 1 in 100 companies might actually succeed in successful Spam Social Media Marketing.
So what should you do?
Try Reverse Blog Marketing.
What on earth is Reverse Blog Marketing?
Well, what’s the opposite of reaching out to bloggers?
Let the bloggers reach out to you. Correct?
How?
Use your own blog for blog marketing. Reverse Blog Marketing is all about impressing and influencing the bloggers with your content and getting them to talk about you.
It’s not just about having a corporate blog – but a blog which excites and engages. A blog which is not just about your company and pitching your company to prospective investors and customers, but a blog which adds value to the reader.
What sort of ‘value’?
Well let me take you through the 5 Rules of Reverse Blog Marketing and perhaps things would be clearer at the end of it.
- Content is king: Content is the most important element of any blog.
What sort of content? Well, keep most of the corporate jargon aside.Content definitely has to be viral in a blog which is being used for Reverse Blog Marketing. Why? Because ‘Content’ is the major hook. It has to be cool enough for other bloggers to blog about.
So what is viral content?
Viral content can be funny, controversial , cool or informative in a very sexy sort of way. It can also be disgusting and irrelevant – but then you run the risk of negative virulence.The importance here is getting the right mix of relevant content (pertaining to your brand and your industry) and additional cool content (which might not be directly linked to your product).
Users and blog readers love statistics and numbers to crunch. Make sure you reveal figures about the entire industry and where your particular industry is headed.
Eg: Imagine that the country’s most popular Online Gaming site reveals some promising figures about the future of Online Gaming, the likelihood of most of the online gaming geeks writing about this is pretty high. The online industry enthusiasts would follow suit.
Be informal and casual when talking about your company. Try to blend into the blogosphere. Talk about weird behaviours, habits, hobbies of your employees if you are running a corporate blog. Also get your CEO to write.
Content should be regular and dynamic. Success is not achieved over-night.
- Linking: Show some link love. Link to blogs you follow, link to blogs who write about your industry and definitely link to blogs where you want to be covered.
Be sure you do your home work before linking. Don’t link out of the blue. Link to a particular article in blog which is related to what you are talking about.
Bloggers love to see their articles being used for reference. They love to know that others appreciate their content.
- Incentivising Reading: Apart from imparting knowledge and sharing cool content – there’s no harm in throwing in some added incentives.
Hold contests, reward the most regular commenter, give the reader a platform to share his/her views about a particular topic (Keep in mind that all readers are not necessarily bloggers themselves).
Display blogs linking back to you.
- Strategic Marketing of the Content: Do not SPAM the entire blogosphere and ask everyone to visit your blog.
Market your content. Interact with the bloggers instead.
Eg: If you are a travel website and have written about Search Trends being seen on your website, find blogs which have written about Online Travel and share your views and link your article.
Remember: Leave GENUINE comments. Shouldn’t look like all you want is traffic to your blog. Craft it in a way that it ensures the reader lands on your blog to get to know more…
- Analysing your Audience: Web 2.0 is all about being in Beta. Constant Innovation. Learn from your mistakes, learn from your consumers and better your product.
Very powerful analytical tools are available these days. Use this to analyse your readers. Find out:
Whose linking to you?
Which articles are being read the most?
What content is being appreciated?
What kind of comments are you receiving?
On which posts are users spending the most time?
Are users clicking-through to your site from your blog?
Influenced by: Social Media Optimization
Rohit Bhargava’s 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization
Rules 6 and 7 – Jeremiah Owyang
Rules 8, 9, 10 and 11 – Cameron Olthuis
Rules 12 and 13 – Loren Baker
Rules 14, 15 and 16 – Lee Odden
Rule 17 – Rohit Bhargava
WATConsult – Web 2.0 Marketing Strategy (Contact)
Related Posts:
Viral Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
Online Advertising – 5 Reasons why Behavioral Targeting might not work
Online Advertising to increase by 970% in India in 3 years time! How?!
P.S: We know we can improve the ‘linkability’ and ‘rewarding users’ factors of our own Blog. We’ll soon have a lot more to offer. We are very much in beta 
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Eklavya,
You are right . The 2 most important things for success of blog are
1) Content and backlinking (not in a spammy way), even if couple of good bloggers see your content, they are bound to link if you write in the same spehere are they do. The Floodgates open then..it becomes kind of fierce multilevel marketing. You never know from where the traffic will land.
Take my blog for example – http://trak.in -(again I am not advertising my blog here), it is just couple of months old, but today it got featured on one of the top UK News portal sending some good amount of traffic. This is because probably journalist saw my blog linked by some authority source.
So – if you write good and unique content, you have won half the battle already !
Hi Trakin,
I'm subscribed to your feed too. Keep up the good work.
Cheers!
I completely agree with you – Content is King. If you do not have unique content and you are picking up your own content from different sources and rewording it and making it your own is completely wrong and uncalled for and you may lose your audience.