We think brands should become publishers. In fact, that is what we do—we put brands in touch with influential bloggers to create content.
But instead of creating original content, why not just buy some content properties that already have audiences?
That is Rand Fishkin’s recent modest proposal: brands should buy content sites directly. We have always admired Rand’s foresight and expertise—and when Disney recently purchased hundreds of thousands of Moms on Babble.com we considered that acquisition to be precisely what Fishkin is advising. To our eyes, it was not a media play, it was an audience play. And why rent the audience when you can own the audience?
And we certainly agree with Fishkin’s thesis, elegantly expressed here, that bloggers need income, and brands need audiences—so someone should figure out how to put these two groups together.
Where Rand’s idea breaks down, to our mind, is a year down the road — when the blogger has been paid for his content site, and he and his team no longer have the passion to keep the flame alive. In the old days, that was fine — Ziff and Davis may have no longer been involved with the company, but the brand and the distribution channels they created certainly lived on.
But in 2012, in the age of author-driven content, that value proposition quickly breaks down. The blogger eventually introduces a new site, where they can express their passions in their own words. The audience on the original site begins to dwindle and through social channels (twitter/facebook) that audience begins to follow the author to his or her new content site.
Take TechCrunch, for example, which was bought by AOL not so long ago. It took Mike Arrington roughly a year to flame out at AOL, but no time at all to launch his new blog. Some of his audience stayed at Techcrunch, but those who already followed him on facebook or twitter quickly became aware that his insights, such as they are, can now be found on Uncrunched.
Ditto Rafat Ali at PaidContent. The editors at Engadget. I could go on and on.
At Movable Media, we are not a big fan of “owning” people, or creating a giant agglomeration of bloggers or blogs. Owning an author’s blog, whether small or large, with all of its traffic and thought and passion is kind of like trying to own someone’s persona.
I don’t think the model ultimately works for brands, because personas evolve, the most obvious examples of which are failed celebrity endorsements like Tiger Woods. But Tiger Woods doesn’t have to express himself *every day*, in a provocative and interesting way. Words like “provocative” mean risky to brands. So they are going to try to control for these risks, which will eventually put them at odds with the blogger.
Let people be themselves. We like the approach they are taking with Guy Kawasaki at Amex Open Forum. Amex doesn’t need to own Guy. Guy doesn’t want to be owned. Amex just wants to own his content and insights, and see if they can convince his audience to start following their other content creators on their branded site.
Instead of trying to “roll-up” the bloggers, or the bloggers’ sites, brands will do far better by enabling bloggers to nurture their audiences and keep their sites independent, while developing methods other than advertising (which is SO broken for bloggers) to bring those audiences and content to their own properties. This way the brand gets to put their own unique spin and viewpoint on the bloggers content, without necessarily being married to the author’s public persona.
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