Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everyone and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want. - Clive Barnes (New York Times)
With all the mass media concentrated in a few hands, the ancient faith in the competition of ideas in the free market seems like a hollow echo of a much simpler day. - Kingman Brewster, Jr.
Recently one of our clients mentioned a recommendation by an online marketing agency on how they can hire 4-5 people who will start blogs and comment among one another to strike up a positive conversation in the blogosphere (different than having a ghost writer to write for you).
The idea is tempting and you might just even get sold on it, if you are a newbie on social media marketing. You control the message. The bloggers are yours. Yet to the outside world, the effort is going to be seen as passionate fans of your brands/ organisation writing positive about your brand or organisation.
Clandestinely hiring people like this is also often perceived as one of the many shortcuts that companies can implement when they are faced with negative reviews, complaints, etc. on an online forum, where the hired bloggers can challenge the complaints and write positive comments to counter the negatives.
The option to neutralise negative criticism for an organisation without getting involved directly sounds good. There is no risk of flaring up criticism after a direct involvement.
The bloggers might already have established profiles and therefore the chances of their initiated discussions taking as normal customer reactions are high.
However, having said all this, we should not forget that one day people will find out what your organisation has been doing. For instance, one of the bloggers/ writers is not happy working with you anymore due to payments, working style, etc., and he decided to tip off some other blogger or newspaper.
Paying bloggers/ writers to write positive about you might not be an ethical way of dealing with your customers and other stakeholders, and in a way is cheating. One also needs to see the impact that it will have on the brand/ organisation when people actually finds out what has been happening. The damage such short cut methods can cause is too much to ignore.
Hiring bloggers, if at all, should be done transparently and people should be told what their roles are. However again, this could have its pros and cons, which we will discuss next time. (by Palin Ningthoujam )
Courtesy : India PR Blog
