Bloggers are nothing more than writers without editors, publishers, and media distribution channels in their way. In other words, combine the beauty of the human mind with the power of the Internet and you have the ultimate launch pad for the written word. No one has questioned this aspect; what has come into question is whether the blogosphere should allow commercial influence.

What is Commercial Blogging?

When an individual or company provides a content topic to a blogger with facts and direction (including hyperlinks to pages they select) and a blogger writes a post about this for commercial compensation, you have Commercial Blogging.

Is Commercialism In The Blogosphere Bad?

I am a firm believer in responsible and ethical writing. Combine facts with experienced based opinion and you get good writing. Thus, paying someone to publish facts or publish their experience based opinion is not a bad thing. In the end, the readers will let their opinion be known. If a blogger writes reviews and makes unsubstantiated statements, their reader base will figure it out which in the long term will impact their effectiveness.

With this said, I think paying a blogger to use their writing talents to convey facts or express an opinion is a great thing. It allows more facts and opinions to be surfaced than if we relied on the traditional media world (newspapers, magazines, radio, and television) as there tends to be too many gates in the world of traditional media these days.

You Have To Have Power to Be Heard

When the Internet first came on the consumer scene in the late 80′s, my first thought was that this was not something the framers of The Constitution ever saw coming. Free speech is granted to us via the 1st Amendment; however, to be heard you have to have distribution which generally meant money, power, or both. With Internet, all of that went out the door! Since search engines and social media have taken off; however, things have changed. In today’s Internet world you either have to have subscribers, page rank, or both. So the world has come full swing in that if you don’t have the power and you want to get the word out, you’re likely going to have to pay someone to get you there. Instead of hiring a publicist to talk to their journalist contacts, however, these days you can go direct–to the bloggers that is!

What’s a Bad Scenario?

It’s the same in the blogging world as it is in traditional media. If a company pays an athlete to say they love their product and use it on a regular bases, this, in my opinion, is wrong. The same applies to the blogging world. If a company pays a blogger to say they have used something when they haven’t, it is simply a bad strategy (both on behalf of the advertiser as well as the blogger). In the end, both of their reputations are at stake. However, to express experience based opinion or state facts, then you have a different story. For example, if a blogger states the fact that a pair of hockey skates only weighs X number of onces and this is the lightest skate available for purchase, there is a lot of good to come out of that post as a manufacturer has another avenue for getting facts to the Internet. Readers of the blog where this was posted (e.g. a Hockey Blog), will learn something new or become aware of a new product. Or if the blogger states that “light is generally a good thing in sports and there is no reason to believe that the same doesn’t apply to a new line of hockey skates”, once again, logic and opinion aren’t a bad thing. It’s a lot better than the Pay Per Click advertising that could be considered to be polluting the Internet with vanity URLs and misleading landing pages!

The Advertiser Has The Burden

In the end, I think advertisers carry the burden. Today, if you see a bad commercial (not believable, to pushy, or just distasteful) views change the channel and think poorly of the advertiser. The same applies to the blogosphere. I think the good advertisers will use commercial bloggers as a platform for communicating facts and getting different twists on their story via the experience based opinions of commercial authors.

Derick

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-Derick Schaefer

Let’s face it, costs are going up all around us. Whether it be the price of our corn based ingredients or goods that require shipping which are in turn dependent on rising fuel costs, overall COGS are going up. As a small business owner, the question is not whether you need to do something about it. The real issue at hand is your overall strategy and how you position it.

This topic has been on my mind for sometime. It takes the right situation for me to really get fired up and sit down and right this. What was the catalyst? I was at my barber shop this week and their prices went up for the first time in over a decade. They’ve been in business over 40 years and when I use the word “barber shop” I truly mean it. This place is old school. So when they have to raise their prices, I knew this this was reality.

The barber shop decided to simply position it as “costs are going up and we had to raise our prices”. They had good points to surround the message. For example, when they opened the shop, a bottle of mens shampoo was under a couple of dollars. The good stuff is $52 a bottle now. One of the barbers said he had a hard rule of not paying more than $35 for a pair of sheers early on in his career. The good ones now are $480. Air Conditioning, rent, taxes, etc. . .it’s all rising.

In the end, the barber shop can pass on these costs and still be competitive. My business on the other had is constantly being challenged by customers to “sharpen the pencil on that quote”. So, in this post I thought I’d simply cover a few options and positioning business owners should consider:

Cost Are Rising and So Are My Prices

This is the barber shop’s approach. I think it is the least desirable as it sends a negative message to customers. Still, even the most savvy of marketing professionals use it. Starbucks makes a huge press event out of it! My only advice here is get your points in order to completely communicate the need to your customers and consider raising the prices of some services and not an accoss the board price hike.

Get Lean Before You Start Passing On

Every business has some inefficiency in it. Whether it be power consumption, leases, hosting costs, over night mail usage, travel expenses, or simple waist associated with last minute decisions (travel change charges, etc), you should use an economy like the one we have to get the excess out of your model and create as much of a profit margin as possible before raising prices. Then if you do have to raise prices in the end, you can communicate the fact that you worked all of these costs out of the business and still have to.

Cash Price vs. Credit Card Price

We all know that we have to pay a percentage to the credit card companies. If you raise your credit card price but leave a cash price that is untouched, you give your consumer the option. Ones who are price sensitive with have an option. You can also position this as a cash discount.

Make More Money in More Creative Ways

I am a firm believer that before you take the “easy out” of just raising prices you need to consider how to get more money out of your customer base. This could be anything from a marketing push to sell an under consumed but high profit good or service to bundling in order to get customers to buy more. I’d challenge my barber shop to sell more shampoo or bundle a shoe shine in with every hair cut at a raised price since the shoe shine guy is a sunk cost anyway and the customer would see perceived value in the price hike. This is the single best approach to dealing with rising costs. . . be serious about making more money! Upsell, cross sell, just plain sell.

We are all faced with rising costs but in the end your pricing has to rhyme with customer needs and ability to digest price hikes. If not, in the end, your plan will look fine on paper but you’ll loose money in the long haul!

-Derick