Blog Marketing

Marketing to bloggers is apparently popular -- but a bit dangerous as well. If you're going to market something to bloggers, it might be a good idea to have a clue as to what the blogger's interests are. For instance, the publishing marketer who asked me if I wanted a copy of Freakonomics a while back: genius.

The marketer who just sent me this email: Not so genius:

Hi,

I'm contacting you on behalf of Sears and M80 regarding Luke and Laura's 25th anniversary commemorative ring. I found your Steve Burton blog entry http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com/2006/08/healthcare-costs.html and think you might be of some help to me. Since you blogged about Steve Burton, I was hoping you might find the Luke and Laura 25th anniversary commemorative ring, or something related to it, blogworthy. I would be happy to send you some Luke & Laura merchandise as a thank you for your help or for you to blog about. I have a lot of different types of merch available, so we can discuss what works best for you.

If you’d like to help out, or would like more information, please let me know and I’ll be in touch soon!

Thanks!

I had no idea what this guy was talking about. So I did a search for "Luke and Laura 25th anniversary commemorative ring," and it turns out that it has something to do with the soap opera General Hospital.

Good plan there, fellas, sending spam to a blogger who cancelled his cable TV subscription urging him to use his blog to hawk kitschy items related to a soap opera.

Maybe they have some sort of automated harvesting program that scours blogs, and this program assumed that because I used the term "healthcare" I'd be interested in "General Hospital." Not true.