Wow!  You’ve got to check out what Graco is doing online.  Graco’s robust Social Networking presence is a great example of how businesses, especially businesses in highly regulated industries, can effectively surround their audience with a consistent online message.  What I really like is the consistency of their message.  They are amplifying their “Ready for the Road Ahead” campaign throughout.

Check out this post from Ignite Social Media (link).  And the following slide show from the Blog Council (Link).

Graco Blog:  http://blog.gracobaby.com/

Graco on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ReadyForTheRoadAhead

Graco on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gracogettogethers/

Graco on Twitter: http://twitter.com/GracoBaby

It’s interesting that Graco has no Facebook presence yet.  I would have thought this was a natural for them.

There are a lot of great insights here on how major brands can embrace Social Networking in a meaningful way that engages their target consumers.  We’ll keep an eye on Graco and see how they develop these strategies moving forward.

We all know there is a lot of discussion around brands getting involved with online social marketing.  The opportunity that has been leveraged the most to date is “blogs”.  In an earlier post I discussed the specific oportunuties that blogs offer marketers (link). Now let’s talk a bit about how to get started with blog marketing.

The first thing you need to do is figure out your brands current level of buzz in the blogosphere.  There are some paid services out there that can help you — I prefer digging into the free services first.  The free services I

BlogScope.net Sxample

use are:

www.blogscope.net -Just type in your brand name and see the blog posts the mention your brand as well as a graph that measures your mentions over time.

www.blogpulse.com -Same as Blogscope with some additional features.

With these two free services you can get a feel for how the blogosphere is talking about your brand, where they are talking, and what the conversation is.

A good practice is to dump the blog post results into excel then apply a “tone” rating to the posts.  This way you can rank the tone of the posts on a scale like “positive for the brand” to “negative to the brand”.  Once you start taking part of the online conversation you can trend over time how your influence improves the tone of the conversation.

As I’ve stated in previous posts, Blog marketing is not easy.  If you really want to get some bang for you buck you need to develop solid goals and a plan to achieve those goals.  It takes time, resources, and analysis.  But your first step is to figure out what the current conversation about your brand is.

Over 50% of bloggers attempt to monetize their blog one way or another.   Mostly through Google Adsense ads or similar advertising network.  Blogs provide an interesting avenue to leverage the good will of the blogger with their audience.  Opportunities include:

• Display / Banner ads: You can work with a blogger ad network such as Federated Media to get your display ads on specific blogs or blogs that focus on specific topics.
• Pay per Post:  This is where you pay the Blogger to post your marketing message.  Izea is one firm that facilitates this approach.  Be careful here — think about the quality of the blogger before getting involved with pay-per-post.
• Blogger Outreach:  This is where you or your agency has a relationship with top blogs in a specific category.  For some categories, such as Mommy Bloggers, there are firms that manage this kind of outreach.  The bloggers get products to review, content for their site, coupons, contests and other things that add value to their blog in return for them blogging about your product and service.

Some thoughts on marketing through Bloggers:

• If you’re a direct marketer converting eyes into dollars then take a look at pay-per-post.  Other wise think twice about this approach.
• Know what blogs your messaging will be displayed on.  There are very few top tier blogs in any catagory and a lot of bottom feeders.
• Difficult to scale.  There will be a limited number of blogs generating traffic that targets your consumer.
• If you’re buying key words through Google you are advertising on blogs.  The ads on this site are Google adsense ads (click on one!)

Measuring ROI

Depends on the tactic.  If you are buying display ads all of the display ad ROI measurements apply. If you are paying per post and converting those clicks to sales you have a direct ROI.  If you are doing Blogger Outreach it is a bit more difficult.  I suggest doing the following:

• Use Blogscope.net to measure the buzz around your product or service.  Trend over time to see how your campaign increases the buzz.
• Onlien coupons.  If you are selling a product or service try providing the bloggers with coupons that you can track.  You should be able to track the coupon redemption back to the blogger that provided the coupon.
• Follow up surveys.  See if you can offer a survey to the bloggers readers to measure their product awareness and purchase intent.

The nost interesting thing about blog marketing is that there is a discussion happening right now that most products and services should be involved in.  Bloggers mostly talk about products and services that mean something to them personally or professionally.  For example, I just search Blogscope.net for “High Yield Seeds” — there are 3006 blog posts on the subject.  See if the blogosphere is talking about your industry or brand.  You may be surprised that there is a robust conversation going on.  You should figure out how to be a part of it.  A consistant blogger outreach strategy will allow you to take part in the conversation — and sell more product.