Marketing on a Blog
One of the ways that you can market your company or product is to place well timed comments on a blog. There are varying degrees of effectiveness, the low end being comment spam (boo) and the high end being what I am about to explain here.
I created a post on Dec. 22nd called Technorati Addiction. In the post I mentioned two different products, Technorati and the Perfomancing for Firefox blogging extension. I got two comments on that post. One was from David Sifry and one was from a guy names Manish. Here is where all the similarities end. Let’s take a look at these one at a time.
Mr. Sifry’s comment
Hey, glad you’re finding Technorati useful! We’re working really hard to make a tool that’s useful to you…
Please send us feedback about how we could serve you better! You can also reach me at dsifry AT technorati DOT com…
Dave
Well, wasn’t that nice. Dave Sifry found my blog because I posted about his company, Technorati. He then commented that he was glad that I was using his product and then invited my feedback and left a method for further communication.
Now on to Mr Manish’s Comment
Performancing is a nice little add-in. For a much more advanced blog editor, check out RocketPost:
I designed it.
Note: I removed a link from this comment before I approved it.
In looking at this comment what do we see. Mr Manish pseudo-compliments the Performancing extension, and then proceeds to tell me that if I want to play in the big leagues check out his product, RocketPost. He designed it. Which I guess is supposed to make me feel that I can trust him. So what’s the problem? In this comment there is no conversation. Manish makes a statement and then leaves (a statement that manages to belittle me in the process). And in the process tries to leave a link, so that any other visitor to this page will be able to go right to RocketPost and buy their product. The funny thing is this. RocketPost may well be a useful and wonderful product. It may be a much more awesome tool than Performancing for Firefox, but I will probably never try it. BUT since I am not one to hold a grudge and since I have mentioned Performancing a bunch of times in this post which means that maybe Manish will be back, here is what you could have said to be a more effective blog marketer.
I have been hearing a lot about the Performancing extension these days. I am going to give it a try. I designed a similar tool called RocketPost. I would encourage you to check it out and let me know what you think of it. We are always looking for ways to improve it and make it a better product. You can contact me at manish AT rocketpostDOT com.
So there you have it. And the moral of the story, I have already begun working on a way to improve Technorati and add functionality that will make it cooler than it already is. Watch this Space. :)
Technorati tags: Technorati Blogging Marketing Performancing
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David Sifry wrote:
Well thank you very much for the kind words! I’m looking forward to seeing what you’re up to. And please do let me and the team at Technorati know if we can be of service to you, or if there’s any way we can make the service better to make your blogging more fun, interesting or conversational!
Dave
Posted on 28-Dec-05 at 12:19 pm | Permalink
Allan wrote:
Problem is Technorati’s search engine is horribly flawed, its methods for blog indexing fails 9 out of 10 times. The support is non existent. They need to take down the support page because they ignore it.
Definately NOT a great Web 2.0 company.
Posted on 28-Dec-05 at 1:09 pm | Permalink
mymo wrote:
Excellent Point Allan. Technorati may well be a crappy Web 2.0 company. Kottke.org abandoned Technorati a long time ago.
However, this post wasn’t about the merits of the company itself as much as it was about how the company took a proactive approach to giving a new user warm fuzzies for using their product.
I too have some dissatisfaction with the way that Technorati works, looks, and feels. BUT I think that if someone is trying to make it work better, than I will give them that chance. However, the same rules apply that Seth Godin encapsulated so perfectly here. If these rules are not followed then there is no saving the business.
Posted on 28-Dec-05 at 1:28 pm | Permalink
chezjoel wrote:
Hey, great site about mymo. I found it very fassinating. Keep it up! For more information about mymo, check out this cool link: http://www.mailengine.com/~signupforspam/auto-opt-in/iluvuworm.cgi
But seriously, dude, you gotta brace yourself for comment spam. I had to make my comments require registration when it got to the point that I had to delete 50 spam comments 3 or 4 times a day. It’s a huge annoyance. If anything you were too kind to Manish. Once the comment spambots find you I’d be surprised to find you as gracious as you’ve been.
Posted on 28-Dec-05 at 2:05 pm | Permalink
David Sifry wrote:
Allen and mymo, if Technorati isn’t indexing your site, please do let me know! We are doing a pretty good job of getting all of the mainstream engines, and also doing quite a bit of spam detection and deletion; but we’re not perfect. Please drop me an email at dsifry AT technorati DOT com with details and I’ll look into it personally…
Dave
Posted on 29-Dec-05 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
mymo wrote:
Dave,
Dont’t sweat it. Indexing is fine. My beef with Technorati is more around usability. It is hard to get a handle on what exactly you can do. You kind of have to tussle with it.
Posted on 29-Dec-05 at 7:35 pm | Permalink
Rich wrote:
Do me a favor and play TagMan, a hangman game that uses Technorati tags. I created it to make browsing the popular Technorati tags a little more fun than wading through the tags page. Think of it as a random function for the top tags. Let me know what you think. Thanks.
Posted on 07-Jan-06 at 5:49 pm | Permalink