The Celebrity babies blog, which is stuffed full of product endorsements and useful baby-type links, carries contextual ads provided by Vibrant Media, where a link is double-underlined and the ad pops up in a reasonably friendly way. It doesn’t interrupt the user experience and seems a good compromise aimed at making blogging into a sustainable business.

A very good pull-together on how to respond to negative blogs from the folks at Multi-Channel Merchant. It suggests that a good initial response is to monitor what is being said, and recommends a thoughtful approach to response. Here are some excellent, clear rules on how to blog, courtesy of Stephan Spencer of NetConcepts: Create a “safe haven” for employees to experiment with blogging. Set up a private blog on Continue reading →

The Overture search inventory tool is one of the great little secrets of the internet. For those who have not discovered it, you can find out who is searching for what around your topic and use the information to drive your paid search choices. We have been reviewing a particularly sulphurous quantity of consumer-generated feedback on behalf of a company which has incurred the wrath of consumers, and trying (on Continue reading →

Julian Smith of Jupiter Research highlights the increasing influence of blogs in a piece for the BBC website in the context of the WeMedia forum. He mentions Market Sentinel’s Dell case study as an example of evidence showing that bloggers can be influential. “For marketers,” Smith writes, “this has the potential to significantly impact brand communications if consumer content refers to experiences with products or services that are incongruous and Continue reading →

A few weeks back there was a big fanfare about Honda blogging – so we were intrigued to see where they had got to. The answer is that they are hard to find in the Google search Honda blog. Not in the top 100, although there are plenty of references to them from other bloggers including luminaries like Pete Blackshaw. An Alexa graph for the blog shows a certain amount Continue reading →