Blogging

Brands are consistently looking for new approaches to raise awareness in the social media realm. With hits and impressions as a priority for achieving these goals, blogger outreach has become a greater component to the overall marketing strategy of a brand. To achieve online coverage in the past, brands would look to traditional PR methods when releasing information, blasting cold and unwanted press releases to a large network hoping their information would stick. In the world of blogger outreach, this approach simply does not work.

In late 2010, rumors started to emerge that popular ESPN.com sports columnist Bill Simmons was planning a “top secret editorial project.” The initiative, shrouded in secrecy, was limited to rumors for several months, until talented writers suddenly started disappearing from popular blogs and websites.  Star writers at Vulture, Deadspin, and This Recording wrote goodbyes to their established readerships, claiming they were leaving to work for The Sports Guy. The sports and pop culture-focused site, to be named Grantland (after legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice), would be backed by ESPN, and attracted top sponsors in Subway, Lexus and Klondike. The site’s central concept would be to produce intelligent, entertaining takes on sports and pop-culture. It would do so by publishing almost exclusively long-form content, come to be known as “longreads.”

This past week The AdAge Digital Conference, Radian6 Social 2011 User Conference, Forrester’s Marketing Forum, and Hispanicize 2011 all took place. Each conference provided some great thoughts and insights from leaders in field, some interesting statistics and a few announcements of things to look forward to in the future.

Just over a week ago (August 13 - 16), nearly 2,000 progressive bloggers, activists, and organizers gathered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for 4 days.  And I was there.