I had some great conversations during the holidays with potential advertisers for One Degree. We talked about doing something different than the typical display ad – by bringing value to the community as well as legitimately promoting their products/services.
So after noodling on it for a while and being inspired by AdRants … the PromoPost was born. What is a PromoPost? Taken directly from our advertising page …
New for 2008, PromoPosts offer you an opportunity to reach your
audience with value-added content that is tied directly to your product
or service. PromoPosts are One Degree posts that are authored by an
advertiser and edited by us to ensure that they bring value to our
audience. PromoPosts are labeled as "paid" posts. Advertisers are
limited to one PromoPost a week. No more than a total of three
PromoPosts from different advertisers will be posted in a single week.
We encourage advertisers who use PromoPosts to a) develop a unique
offer for One Degree readers and b) create a unique landing page for
the call to action in your PromoPost.
It’s a fine line to walk – this advertising one. We don’t want to piss off you, our readers, yet we’d like to pay the bills. So we’ve tried to balance those two imperatives.
I’m pleased to announce that our very first PromoPosts will be from Commune Media, headed by one of our contributors, Simon Smith.
We hope you like the PromoPosts as much as we do. We look forward to hearing your feedback!
I understand the bills need to be paid but I find putting up 3 times a week – basically ‘infomercials’ – a bit too much. If it means going back to the old one degree where there was less intrusive advertising versus the new look and feel with promo post, I’d say back to the old.
I’m so disappointed in this comment – not because of the content, it’s great feedback, but because the poster wouldn’t put his/her name.
I do know they are in Toronto and on Bell’s DSL 🙂 And I also know I said I’d delete anon comments but I really only want to do that if something is in appropriate. Which makes me all the more disappointed b/c this is reasonable feedback.
Sigh.
An interesting idea. In my experience, providing value while touting something is delicate stuff.
(I would know, I wrote such ‘advertorials’ once upon a time)
My thoughts:
– The quality of the writing and value delivered is going to need to exceed a normal post
– You may have to exercise some editorial discretion to improve weak ads or you will hurt your brand
– Preventing conversation/rebuttal regarding the ‘promo’ seems like a mistake to me, especially on a site that discusses social media — isn’t community feedback essential to the idea of social media?
Also, I suggest removing any Sponsored Google links following a promo. It feels like you’re throwing too many ads at the reader.
Best of luck in 2008.
Well, seeing as my name’s mentioned in this post…
Kate, Rose and I discussed this idea for some time before deciding to proceed. We wanted to provide REAL value to readers in a quick hit. We didn’t want to just run a banner ad or a Google ad that didn’t allow us to both display expertise and provide useful information.
I think it’s great to get feedback and to discuss this amongst the One Degree community. As you can imagine, as first-movers, we’re taking a bit of a risk. I’m all for open dialogue. If you love or hate our copywriting tips, or have suggestions for making them better, or for topics we should address, PLEASE discuss it openly. We’ll obviously ignore snipers and trolls. But all constructive criticism (and thanks for yours, Trevor) is welcome!
Hey Kate – kudos for trying a new format. It is a fine line to walk but I think with some firm editorial guidance it could work really well. Back when I was at AIMS, we had people from the ‘advertising’ side contribute to the blog (a community effort) and they provided some really good insight and value. Obviously need to avoid blatant sales pitches but I found that in many cases advertisers had really good research and perspective to offer the community. After all, they are the often the experts in their particular area.
Trevor .. thanks for your comments! Great point about not having the comments enabled on the post. We usually turned off comments on Paid Job and Event listings .. this was simply a continuation of that practice (I just want to be clear that this was not something we were asked to do by an advertiser). I don’t have any real problem with them being on if people feel there is something valuable to discuss.
Simon .. thanks for your comments! I think it’s a neat experiment what you’re doing with us. I’m really interested in what marketers have to think about advertising 🙂
Kathryn .. thanks so much for your perspective! You would have very much had some of the same issues at AIMS and I really appreciate you sharing those thoughts! Great points all around!