The Lazy Marketer's Guide to Generating WOM: Search Engines - Jory Des Jardins - MediaBizBlogger

Originally published July 24, 2008.

A few months back I sat on a panel about social media's effect on search engine strategy. We were asked if there was any easy way to locate bloggers that would advocate for brands. One of my co-panelists, far more versed in search engine strategy than I, insisted that yes, with the schmancy refinements of SEO tools, finding a blogger is as easy as running a Google search.

This answer scared me. It indicated that the high-falutin' technologies that are enabling us to find information can also help us navigate the complicated ecosystems that exist online. I suppose they can to some degree, but they cannot replace relationship building with influencers.

In another panel I moderated with Mommybloggers, one participant bemoaned the use of lame searches as blogger outreach, "I'm tired of getting messages like, 'How was your trip to Hawaii?' I'm glad they read my latest post, but I don't believe they've really read me, or KNOW me," she said. Rather than read blogs consistently, the marketer ran a search and then pitched this blogger when she showed prominently.

I get it: It's very expensive paying a social media marketing specialist to read blogs all day. Search engines are a necessary tool for kicking off the outreach. But while I do think search engines are getting smarter by the second, I can't advocate for them yet as being able to help brands find the *right* advocates. I must insist, at the risk of seeming incredibly old media, that finding these customers is still a time-consuming, work-intensive process; it doesn't occur at the click of a mouse.

Counter intuitively, new, new media rules make this process even more involved than it ever was. We may be able to find people quicker via search, but those people expect more out of your outreach. They expect you to read their blogs, know the playing field, and know their finer points. One large food blogger I know receives pitches for everything you could imagine; most of these communications professionals don't know that she won't endorse prepared or fast food. She doesn't indicate this in her title or tagline, or optimize her site in any way that would indicate these preferences, but she sure gets irritated when unsuitable pitches pile up in her email box. Some bloggers even write about these pitches.

Relationships still have to form and grow; the search engines only help to disseminate information from the *right* sources--customers who actually write about and appreciates your product, not someone who happened to mention it in one post and was found via search engine. Sure, a mention from a bigger blogger will give your brand a higher search engine ranking, but if she merely mentions your product and not a contextual association with it, have you really found The One?

I'm hardly an SEO expert. All I know about search engines and blogging I learned from pure self-interest. When I started blogging, four years ago, I noticed that my blog posts, even my comments on popular blogs, showed up first in searches I did under my name ("ego searches" they're called). Later I learned that by virtue of being continuously updated, blogs are algorithmically friendly vehicles in the search engines. The more blogging--and calling out of key search terms and phrases, a process called "tagging"--that you do, the higher your content's ranking on search pages.

Later, after co-founding BlogHer, I noticed an uptick in the search engines for campaigns we ran for brands on the BlogHer Network, especially if bloggers provided reviews or mentioned the brand on their blogs. We thought this was a nice-to-have for our clients, but not a result we could force or guarantee. Some networks that run on a "pay-per-post" model can guarantee mentions because the network pays for placement. But in essence this model places no importance on context and quality of the content; so long as the blogger *discloses* her association with a pay-per-post operation, it's considered a good link, even if she decides to hate the brand. Today, search engines are getting hip to pay-per models and blacklisting some services that game the system through artificial tagging. In the end, real, authentic word-of-mouth still wins the day, and it's not easy to achieve.

What does all this mean for marketers? It means you've got to use search engines as a tool, but not as a substitute for more time-honored methods of outreach. Read the blogs to find the best advocates, and read blogrolls--the lists of preferred reading many bloggers post in their side navigation--to see where they comment and what conversations they are taking part in. The good news is that deeper information CAN be found via search engines and services such as SezWho, which shows publishers where else their community members are having conversations); De.lici.ous, which allows you to find bloggers who have bookmarked your content; and Lejit, which bloggers run in their sidebars to allow a view of other places they digitally frequent (more doorways into the best conversations online).

These programs don't make it as easy as entering "best customers" into Google and getting a listing of bloggers who sing your praises, but at least in these places you can do more than idly watch your brand's reputation go up or down. From here, you can start real conversations with some of the most influential people online.