Marketing on the Smart Web

to monetize your blog in this post on TechCrunch on the State Of The Blogosphere: Get To 100K Uniques, Make $75K/year
I have my doubts about the possibility to turn a travel related business blog into a money maker but for most in our industry that’s probably not the point anyway. How these travel blogs will develop down the road and whether revenue can be derived from them, of course, remains to be seen.

can be found in this Marketing to Bloggers piece on eMarketer. Especially useful is this part from Peter Rojas

* Most important, there must be a fit between the product and the subject of the blog.
* Avoid shooting e-mails and press releases to bloggers. It is more effective to become familiar with a blog and get to know the writer behind it.
* Give a product to a blogger as an exclusive and allow the blogger time to work with it.
* Provide bloggers with links to more information, such as product images and updated information.

the old PR agency approach won’t work, although many haven’t realized this yet, judging from the number of emails I get telling me about some travel related news that might be interesting for the traveling public but not industry professionals who are the audience I’m trying to reach.

Interesting statistic included in the story: 49% of “market leaders” are using social networking and blogs vs. 31% and 21% respectively for “non-leaders”. Just shows that some get it and some don’t!

the latest edition of Bulldog Solutions Marketing Watchdog Journal has a great section titled “SXSW 2008 What we learned” with impressions by their staff of this recent edition of the annual idea fest. Of particular interest is a session on “10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger” with these 10 tips that I’m sure will get wide coverage in the PR community, or so we hope!