About a year ago I started working with Jeff Mims, the owner of Mossy Creek Custom. Jeff is a gunsmith who was launching his business in the Nashville area. I encouraged him to start blogging as the primary means of promoting his business because, like many people starting their own businesses, he had very little money to put into marketing and promotion. I spent some time with Jeff so he would have the best perspective to make blogging work for him. He then went and set up a free Wordpress blog and got busy blogging.

A year later Mossy Creek Custom is getting business from across the country and Jeff’s blog posts are found much higher in Google search results than gunsmiths who have been around for decades.

I interviewed Jeff last week in his shop because his business seems like one of the least likely candidates for blogging as a marketing strategy, but you’ll hear in the interview below that it’s certainly paying off. The point here is that if good blogging can work for a gunsmith, why wouldn’t it work for you?

There are three words you should never utter consecutively if you hope to have bloggers promote your company, products, or services. Those three words are: pay per post. If you’re not familiar with the pay-per-post model that’s great. In fact, stop reading this post. It’s better that you don’t know about it so you don’t get any ideas that might tempt you down this road.

A pay-per-post promotion model is simply hiring bloggers to write about your company. For example, if my company came out with a new line of fruit scented highlighters and I was a pay-per-post kind of guy, I would want the top highlighter enthusiast blogs to talk about these sweet smelling markers. I would contact these bloggers and pay them to blog a glowing report about the highlighters. It’s a simple transaction. I pay, they post. Just like advertising…but therein lies the problem.

Why It’s Bad
Pay-per-post is a really bad idea at many levels, but my biggest issue with it is that it completely undermines the trust economy of blogs. Good blogs, and the bloggers themselves, are trusted by their readers. They provide content that has value. That content carries with it a sense of authenticity and credibility because it wasn’t paid for.

Pay-per-post, then, is the “sweep the leg Johnny” tactic to getting blog readers to find out about your company. It’s a seemingly quick and easy way to drive traffic to your website and it just so happens to violate about everything good about blogs.

Blogs were (and still are) built on knowing that people are sharing their own personal and biased opinions about things. When bloggers start accepting money to blog about products, and then don’t disclose this information, they are selling out their own credibility. When bloggers sell out their own credibility, it brings down anyone associated with them. The readers lose trust in the blogger, the blogger loses readers and influence, the advertiser loses the blogger, and the advertiser is viewed negatively for trying to sneak their way into some positive blog coverage.

More specifically, here are three things pay-per-post does:

1. It promotes laziness within organizations that want bloggers to talk about them. To these lazy companies, it’s the perfect promotional model because they get the exposure they want without actually creating content worthy of a genuine conversation. I understand the seduction here but it just cuts against the grain of all that makes blogs work legitimately for you when you do it right.
2. It discredits legitimate bloggers who know how to talk about products without hiding their biases. If more bloggers participate in pay-per-post schemes and continue to be found out, it will raise the suspicion of readers of all blogs. I personally don’t think we’re anywhere close to this yet but it gives us a glimpse of the slippery slope we find if this gains traction.
3. It discredits legitimate social media marketers who know how to engage bloggers the right way. Social media marketers and PR professionals who do their homework should have the chance to talk to bloggers and try to raise awareness for the company or cause. The good ones do their homework by being familiar and active with the blogs that influence the same people they hope to reach. They know how to pitch bloggers correctly and when to back off. They know the rules.

The bottom line is that you really can’t afford to participate in a pay-per-post business model. You have too much to lose in the form of trust and credibility if you’re found out. Instead, work on creating content that bloggers can’t help but talk about. Create the best product, service, or event in your field so you couldn’t stop the discussion about it if you tried. That’s the way blogs and other social media tools will work for you. It takes longer, but it will hold up. It’s kind of like building a brick house verses the straw house or stick house. Just ask the pigs. They’ll help you out.

I contend that content is the new promotional strategy because it cuts through the clutter of the 4,000 (on average) promotions that are targeted at us every single day. Content takes the focus off the advertiser/promoter and provides something of value to the consumer/audience. New media tools like blogs, podcasts, and online video are phenomenal ways to create content (on the cheap even) with the added bonus of being easy to go viral if the content is good enough.

What I’ve realized, however, is that even if you agree with me on this you may not be sure how to begin. Case in point: I was talking to a friend the other day about his blog, one where he’s been blogging regularly for about nine months now but only provides updates about what he’s doing and where his travels take him. He wants to really use his blog to build a platform and brand for himself so I challenged him to be creating content that’s not about him as much but rather has something of value to his blog readers. Inevitably his personality comes through and in the end it is about him, but just not as directly. I broke it down into five categories for him to consider as he thinks about creating valuable content.

The best way to remember the five categories is to think about Old McDonald…you know…Old McDonald had a farm E-I-E-I-O…yeah, that one. Here are five categories of valuable content with Old McDonald in mind:

• E - Entertain: Entertainment is one of the easiest ways to create valuable content. We all know what it is to be entertained and hopefully we have an idea of what will entertain the people we’re trying to reach. This is one of the primary reasons I do a video of the week here. Humor is a great place to start when it comes to entertaining. Humor is valuable. Don’t underestimate the value you earn by making people laugh.
• I - Inspire: Inspiration seems to be in short supply these days so if you can do this successfully you’ll stand out. Thinking more generally here, consider this category the emotive or “touchy-feely” approach. The Free Hugs Campaign and Kleenex’s Let It Out campaign come to mind here.
• E - Educate: When you educate people you tell them how to do something or share some information that the will find useful or helpful in some way. LifeHacker falls into this category as does someone like Seth Godin who provides helpful ideas for marketers. Educational content can tell you how-to, when-to, why-to, where-to, and what-to do.
• I - Inform: When you inform you provide news or updates about something. TechCrunch is a blog that has done extremely well in this regard. They make news, break news, and report the news in the world of technology. The difference here from the educational approach is that when you inform you’re not telling, for instance, when-to do something but instead tell when-is something. Further, information says where-is, who-is, and what-is happening.
• O - Outrage: Controversy is actually a great form of content. Now, you have to be a little careful here because with controversy there are undoubtedly people who are for you and people who are against you (thus the controversy). Outraging your industry to help the consumers you want is a great way to use controversial content to your advantage. The Huffington Post and HotAir fall into this category in many cases.

It’s important to note that there’s really no clear line between these categories nor should you feel compelled to stay in only one. I suggest you look at all five categories as options for you to consider as you create content. In fact, some of the best ideas would really mix several of these basic elements like a entertaining and informative or educational and inspirational. So, next time you think about creating valuable content, hum a little Old McDonald in your head and see if you don’t get a few ideas going.

By the way, this is part of a presentation I gave at Podcamp Nashville over the weekend. You can download the entire presentation here.