Blognomics - Written by David Lee (Nuffnang Australia)

Welcome Me Back & Nuffnang APAC Blog Awards Update

digitalee — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:11:25 +0000

It has been a whirlwind past few months… no, year! It has been so long since my last post while juggling the needs of Nuffnang Australia and our blogger community.

Latest update, since our Challenge 1000 campaign, we now have 1200+ Australian bloggers in our community with a 4 week network audience of over 1.6million visits. We have garnered the full support of leading bloggers ranging from the influential Darren Rowse of Problogger, thought leaders like Laurel Papworth (who is just in another
stratosphere in social media thinking), and top bloggers such as the delightful Karen Cheng.

I’ve recently returned from our Nuffnang APAC blog awards where 60 category finalist (judged from 13,000 nominated bloggers) were featured and winners announced at the grand Pan Pacific ballroom. I’m proud to say Australia had 12 bloggers who made it to the finalist and of that, we manage to win 3 categories! Congratulations to Mr Gadget,
childhood101 and Lady Melbourne. To even make it to the finalist was already an achievement in itself.

In addition to the blog awards, Pringles also ran a competition which Australian blogger Jimmy America came runners up.

The awards was followed by a full day tour of the city thanks to it’s tourism board Uniquely Singapore. Imagine 3 bus loads of visiting bloggers being driven to different tourist attractions. The result. Google search brings 15,800 sites with the keyword “nuffnang uniquely Singapore”. We are still working on final blog post count and reach as the posts are still coming in.

If you are interested in coverage of the awards, please have a read of the post from our bloggers:

http://www.superkawaiimama.com.au/2009/11/02/kawaii-squared/
http://grabyourfork.blogspot.com/2009/10/nuffnang-asia-pacific-blog-awards-2009.html
http://planningwithkids.com/2009/10/24/nuffnang-regional-blog-awards-2009/
http://ladymelbourne.blogspot.com/2009/10/hi-mum-i-kinda-won.html
http://www.chocolatesuze.com/2009/10/30/singapore-part-2-nuffnang-awards

(Apologise if I haven’t list them all from all the post… there are so many!)

Me & Kruppy - Nuffnang Blog Awards Night

Work In Progress

digitalee — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 05:19:11 +0000

Just updating the direction and content of my blog to make it more manageable!

Thank you for your patience.

Cheers,
Dave

Best Practices for Blog Marketing

kruppy — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:39:07 +0000

With blog marketing becoming such a hot topic in marketing circles we thought we’d put together a list of lessons we’ve learned along the way…
Brands need to be part of the conversation. In other words, their campaign needs to engage the blogging community, not talk at them. “Try our new Nokia phone” will not work. “Create a new tagline for our new Nokia phone” will. Your objective is to create buzz so you need to give bloggers and their audiences a reason to talk about you.

Brands can’t be afraid to let their hair down and have fun with bloggers and their readers. Blogging for the most part is light-hearted so a brand needs to get down on the same level as its audience and join the party! You wouldn’t drink Pepsi at a pub would you? So don’t be too straight and rigid when marketing to a blogging community or you will be ostracized.

Brands must be prepared to give back to the blogging community. In all blog advertising endeavors, a brand should look to give blog communities the opportunity to trial their products. You create chatter about your brand this way and therefore more buzz throughout the blogosphere.

There you have it! Blog 101…

Nuffnang founders launch Churp Churp Twitter service

David Lee — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 06:45:42 +0000

Our founding fathers of Nuffnang, Tim & Ming, have launched Churp Churp in response to the exponential growth of Twitter in the last 24 months. Given most bloggers have a twitter account, it was a natural extension to their Nuffnang business.

Churp Churp - Twitter service by Nuffnang founders

It’s a relatively simple model where an advertiser can use Churp Churp to brief their network of Twitter users. It’s then up to the twitter users to choose whether they would be interested in Re-Tweeting the message. Twitter users who participate in this networked are reward based on the number of followers they have.

Here is a PR piece by Marketing Interactive.

So far, it is available in Singapore and Malaysia markets. Good luck guys!

Forrester’s thoughts on Sponsored Conversations

David Lee — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:03:28 +0000

Groundswell Forrester Sponsored Conversation - Nuffnang Australia

In this post, Forrest explores the use of Sponsored Conversations by marketers. The table above explores the benefits and challenges of various approaches to blog marketing.

It addresses the challenges we often see PR approaching bloggers but can gain litle reach/scale. Advertising is the easiest form but lacks engagement. Forrester puts it clearly:

“The challenge, of course, is can bloggers do this and retain any credibility?

We believe they can, if — and only if — they obey two rules.

They must disclose that they are being paid.
They must be able to write whatever they want, positive or negative.

These are requirements, since any blogger or marketer who violates them will not be credible. But for marketers to succeed, we have two other suggestions:

Pick blogs that match your products. This is why it makes sense for Ford to work with Jessica Smith, a mommy blogger, to talk about its new minivan.
Build a relationship with these bloggers, so you can extend this connection.”

What is a blog sponsored conversation in a nutshell

David Lee — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:05:18 +0000

Great little animation that explains Sponsored Conversation and how it works. Thanks to the team at IZEA.

Universal McCann’s Global Social Media Wave 4 report

David Lee — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:28:37 +0000

Universal McCann has been running an annual global social media tracker report for the last four years. The Wave reports started in 2006 (Wave 1) and now in it’s fourth year, the Wave 4 report has shown some key insights on Bloggers and Social Networkers.

Internet global audience has grown with over 625million active internet users.
Blogging has nearly reached saturation in terms of total numbers, with 71% reading blogs (read blogs), a small increase from 70% last time out.
However, number of people that have started a blog has increased to approx. 40%… up from approx. 32% in 2008.
Blog participation has increased strongly with number of people leaving a comment on a blog site increasing to over 50% in 2009.

Social Media Wave 4 - Reach Over Time

Social media platforms are becoming more multi-media. The number of bloggers and social network users who have uploaded photos, videos, music and widgets has continued to rise.
Thirty-two per cent of bloggers have uploaded video, an increase of 8%.

On the question for Blog writers only: ‘‘When writing your blog what topics do you normally post?’’ There was an interesting observation between Wave 3 (2008) and Wave 4 (2009) on the shift of blog posting behaviour in the type of content.

Social Media Wave 4 - Blog Post Content

“It had to happen. The days of posting written commentary on a blog, going to a separate site to upload images or video and then managing your network of friends via a third location were always limited.

The days when a consumer would either restrict him or herself to just one of these activities or go to three different sites to upload content are disappearing. The decline or stasis in the use of separate blogging or photo-sharing sites suggests that social media is being rationalised. The addition of new functionality to platforms originally designed to serve each of these areas also highlights their convergence.

Bloggers, for example, are no longer restricting themselves to text: they are adding images and video as well as music and widgets to their prose in ever greater numbers.”

If you’re interested in more, you can find the PDF report here.

How Marketers get it wrong with Mummy Bloggers – AdAge Video

David Lee — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 11:32:10 +0000

AdAge ran a great interview with Elisa Camahort Page, the founder of BlogHer, with tips for Marketers to interact with Mummy Bloggers.

Check out the video here:
http://adage.com/aboutdigital/article?article_id=138043

Or if you don’t have time…. here’s a quick summary:

Set Clear Goals – Most marketers enter social media without clear goals. Whether it is to drive awareness or shifting perceptions, marketers must be able to evaluate it’s success after 6 months.

Allocate Resources – Often marketers treat social media like a campaign and push this responsibility to an individual that may not necessarily have the time or the experience to manage or broker relationships with bloggers. Like all marketing programs, there are either human or financial resources required to reach that set goal.

Know the Blogger – Spend some time to get to know the blogger. There are plenty of bad targeted pitches used to engage bloggers. Like any traditional campaign, we should get to know the journalist and know their preferences. Bloggers are slightly different, they don’t get paid or their job to write. It is totally their own opinion and assuming your press release interest them, they may be bothered to get back to you.

Develop a Relationship – Bloggers are not obligated to write anything you tell them too. Which is why PR may not necessarily work. You should treat them with the same respect as a journalist because of their audience, but also treat them with care as they may also be your customer.

READ their blog - The most common approach marketers use to reach bloggers is through an email blast of bloggers. Even if the marketers may gain traction from some bloggers, they are quickly found out when marketers have not read the blog.

Set up Brand Ego Alerts – Set up an RSS feed of all the blogs you are engaging (Nuffnang has compiled a list of hundreds which we have a Community Manager that follows their content). So that when they do mention your brand, you will know and follow it up with a thank you.

No Spam Campaigns - Don’t ask bloggers to spam your campaign. Their readers and followers don’t like it.

Learn to Engage – Marketers have to understand bloggers are a highly engaged audience such as sharing opinions and giving feedback. We can engage the community by creating the opportunity to talk. Brands can start the conversation by asking a question and brands sponsoring the conversation. The brand receives credit as bloggers mention the brand through their blog post.

Eg. Nuffnang ran a campaign with Village Roadshow for the movie “He’s Just Not That Into You.” We asked female bloggers to tell us “Your 5 tips in understanding the opposite sex” or “Tell us a time when you misunderstood the opposite sex” to win a double pass for the movie launch. In a week, we generated 20+ bloggers posting about the movie with multiple comments.