Congrats are in order this week for a couple visionaries, Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research and Ted Murphy of IZEA. Sean published a break-through research report on the value of sponsored conversations, continuing Forrester’s track record in leading-edge Interactive Marketing Research. The report, entitled “Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox: Why You Should Pay Bloggers to Talk About Your Brand” discussed pros and cons of sponsoring bloggers, and shared some key components of successful campaigns: 1) Disclosure, 2) Authenticity, 3) Relevance, & 4) Relationship.
Congrats are also in order for Ted and the whole IZEA crew, because IZEA was a core piece of Sean’s report. In fact, IZEA’s Kmart campaign success appears to have been the driver for the research effort (Kmart casestudy below) — following up on some twitter-driven research by social media guru Jeremiah Owyang. Ted predicted this time would come, the very first day I met him back in 2006. At that time, the idea of sponsored bloggers was blasphemy and Ted was one of those proverbial “pioneers” taking some arrows in the back. Since that time, his pioneering ways have created an industry and unlocked a marketing approach that could save the social media graveyard that’s being filled daily by banner/CPM-starvation and display advertising that just doesn’t work.
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