Thought an interesting concept, still not too sure if this is the only way to solicit visitors and entice social interaction.

What is that they would offer different from other social networking sites? I agree, NBC video is something they can leverage on, but then why do the run of the mill stuff of providing buddies, personalized profiles, blogs etc.

Though not mentioned in explicit terms, hope they do not just provide blog infrastructure and invite people to create blogs within NBC domain. This can stickiness, but early adopters would, all probability be, those who have profiles on multiple sites. Through this, they can definitely increase pageviews and traffic, but no guarantee of “relevant” and “serious” traffic.

A better approach would be to collaborate with existing social networking sites, allowing people to share and upload videos and photos from NBC and generate discussion.

Labels: Blogs, Social networking

posted by Pallavi Bhardwaj  # 4:55 PM 0 Comments

Toyota has carried out an interesting blog marketing campaign in Greece.

For the launch of their new hatchback model, the Auris, Toyota Hellas carried out a digital campaign to actively engage consumers with the brand and to generate leads for "test-drive" requests.

To create a buzz Blogger community was involved and was invited to test-drive the car for a week. Their finding from respective blogs were collected into a central blog, at http://www.aurisblog.gr.

A banner campaign was also run inviting general public to request a test-drive, which could also win them a 4-star hotel weekend in Greece with of course the Auris at their disposal.

The Auris Blog campaign lasted for 10 weeks. There were 85 requests from Greek Bloggers and the car was given to 15 of them. The campaign highlights were:

· 55 different posts, most of them with photos and videos. (A digital camera was given as a gift to the bloggers).

· 175 comments to the posts.

· More than 52,000 visits by 41,000 unique visitors to the Auris Blog.

· Overall response rate of the banner campaign was at 4.75%.

· 2,000 test-drive requests were submitted from this campaign, accounting for 50% of the total test-drive requests received through all channels (phone, in-store, events or promotions).

In January 2006, IAMAI had taken views of few online experts on high usage of Internet as a marketing tool by carmakers - http://www.iamai.in/section.php3?secid=21&press_id=794&mon=1

Labels: Bloggers, Blogs, online marketing

posted by Pallavi Bhardwaj  # 10:48 AM 0 Comments

The most important question that comes to mind while planning on such UGC sites (Social networking and user generated content sites) is how ethical it is to put “sponsored” content on sites which are meant to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.

I faced the same challenges while planning the campaign on blogs and other social networking sites for the first time.

Campaign performance (gauge by visits of companies on my website by clicking on the banner/link.) on publisher content sites was higher than on UGC. Though in money terms, lower cost of UGC media scored over publisher content site resulting in lower cost per visit.

To my mind, both the channels are imp - content sites for generating more visits from relevant target audience (depending on who they are; for me this works! J) and Blogs and networking sites for not just visits, but “word of mouth” and “buzz” about newer concepts.

Labels: advertising on blogs, Blogs, online advertising, online marketing, ROI, social media, Social network

posted by Pallavi Bhardwaj  # 8:32 PM 0 Comments