Internet Icons Technorati, Shankman and Problogger Confirm Emerging Role of Blogs & Brands

Three icons in the online world have recently made eye-opening remarks about blogging and its relevance to business, brand and survival in economic turmoil. Technorati, HARO founder Peter Shankman and Problogger Darren Rowse have each recently made powerful statements regarding how valuable blogs can be to brands and businesses.

Yesterday, Technorati released its 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report and in it they described the relationship between bloggers and branding. The conclusions of the report are completely consistent with the trends upon which we based “The Coming Economic Boom For Bloggers.” Of course, Technorati does not discuss the forward looking “how” questions the help bloggers understand how they can take advantage of these trends, that’s not the purpose of their report. But they do a great job of quantifying and clarifying that blogs and brands are increasingly coming together for specific and profitable purposes.

Peter Shankman, PR expert and founder of HARO (Help-A-Reporter-Out) sends out media opportunities to more than 30,000 people, three times a day, five days a week. I featured Shankman and his innovation in the inaugural edition of this blog through a post entitled, “PR Consultant Takes Own Advice, Builds Valuable Brand.” He was but a wee lad at the time, with about 13,000 daily subscribers when I wrote that post - oh wait, that was just mid-July - ok, not such a wee lad as much as an explosive force! On September 26, in one of those posts to his loyal followers, Shankman wrote,

"So here's a thought - Someone unsubscribed from the list because we
had "too many blogs." OK then. How amazingly short-sighted. I'd go
on record to say that if you're a niche business, and you're
featured in a blog that's written exactly for that niche, that's as
good as being featured in a major publication. Agree? Disagree? So,
see-ya, Mr. Short-Sighted Guy. I welcome bloggers' queries here on
HARO."

Shankman’s candor reveals the growing connection between blogs and niche business promotion. Blogs are going mainstream as business tools vital to the process of connecting a product and its message to a target audience. Shankman states what any reasonable intellectual property person would conclude too: being featured in a niche blog with a great audience can be just as powerful as being featured in a more known major publication. The power of the niche audience, the power of that purity in focus, is an economic energy source for anyone who can tap in to it.

Earlier today Australian time, Problogger Darren Rowse posted “13 Tips To Recession Proof Your Blog,” and point number 4 on his list is to build your own products. In point 9 he discusses why this is a great time to expand your blog and start new ones, and how he intends to expand his own blogs during this economic crunch. I find it interesting and encouraging that Rowse prescribes moving a product through your blog as a potential cure for declining advertising revenue. Did he review our eCourse before writing this? Was he spying on us? I wish. No, this blog is yet to hit his radar. But it is great to be aligned in thought with such a thought leader.

Rowse makes additional points in numbers 2, 7, 8 and 13 that relate back to strategies greatly empowered by the use of intellectual property rights (IPR), which we cover in “The Coming Economic Boom for Bloggers.” He wasn’t using our material, but had I wanted to plant a subtle post by a thought leader on what principles bloggers should be thinking about in this tumultuous time, I don’t think I could have written it any better than Darren Rowse did in his post.

Collectively, these authorities in their respective fields provide further validation that blogs can be a powerful tool to move products to users, even in a downward-moving economy. But now that we have that message comes the magic question, “So what?” Exactly what does one DO with the insight?

At least one answer is to use IPR. Some familiar with Internet marketing may think of IPR as being resell rights or private label rights, but those rights are just mere small planets in an overall IPR universe. I’m not going to attempt to cover all of the IPR possibilities. We created an entire eCourse just to help people get familiar with the basics of defining it, identifying it around them and organizing it for profit. That eCourse is free, so just hop over to the eCourse page and provide your name and email address and you can get much more info than I can post here - and you can get it in bite-sized chunks.

It seems we picked a great week to launch, “The Coming Economic Boom For Bloggers” and the free eCourse on IPR too. Both were built upon the ideas these authorities are expressing, but I never imagined they would help put wind in our sails through their own independent analysis.

Who else is talking about the benefits blogs bring to brands and businesses, even in a down economy? Let’s make a list of the bloggers dealing with this issue so we can learn from the collective blogger-brain!

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