Wading In Word-of-Mouth Marketing Creek

Written by Luyi Chen on March 21, 2007
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Wading in creekLast week, Feedsky announced their blog ads network. After exchanging emails with Lv Xinxin, CEO of Feedsky, and listening carefully to their talk at 5G, I have the same feeling with Laobai that this topic is too complicated to talk about. Today when I came across the picture on the right side, I realized that my real impression is that Feedsky is like the little girl, who hasn’t got enough resource and experience to wade through the creek. (photo thanks to altamontstreet)

Although it’s still not clear what this service really would be, most of the feedbacks from blogosphere think this is just another Reviewme. Thus it inherits all the doubts to Reviewme like services:

Feedsky is trying to be a PR agent itself, but till this point, they are not doing well with their own service announcement.

In an email from Lv Xinxin, he said, “We are not totally doing review, …, our acceptance involves evaluation of the blogger, …. Advertisers will have requirements in the content, which is not only about positive or negative, … We are thinking about this. It will be different from similar services in other countries.”

During their 5G talk, Feedsky is challenged with their qualification of being a PR agent. Of course Feedsky has their distinct user based. But their users are bloggers/publishers, not readers, which is the real interest point of advertisers. Companies meeting readers directly can provide more help to advertisers. For example, Douban knows more about readers and their subscriptions, so they can give the advice on which blogs you should select based on your targeting users.

The other important thing is statistics. Before advertisers approve a marketing champion, they would like to know the potential reaches of their ads. Lv Xinxin said, “subscription of their Feedsky feeds will be an important parameter, …, but we will refer to other parameters as well.” The question is what they are. And are they difficult to get by advertisers themselves?

Although I haven’t dug deep into this problem, but I would like to refer you to some useful opinions. John Battelle pointed out why advertisers should pursue endemic relationship with readers. Engagement with users is an effect cannot be reflected from data like click through. Tim O’Reilly said advertisement should be more interactive. Chas Edwards of Federated Media gave some good examples of conversational advertising.

We have good example in China too. Bolaa has just finished a word-of-mouth marketing for wine. Herock of Feedsky, the designer of their ads network, also participated in this champion. And he made a good point, “Advertisers not only provide some free products, but also start a conversation.”

Let’s close the post by returning back to the cute picture. We are not at all using this to question Feedsky’s ability. Rather we would like express our respect of their braveness. The word-of-mouth market of China is still waiting for explorers. We wish Feedsky successfully wade though the creek.

10 Responses to “Wading In Word-of-Mouth Marketing Creek”

  1. John on March 22nd, 2007 10:50 am

    Lets hope that Feedsky does reach at least a moderate level of success. That way others will be able to improve the process since word-of-mouth advertising still holds a lot of promise, in theory at least.

  2. China Web2.0 Review » » Bolaa’s Product Review Platform on March 27th, 2007 11:08 pm

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  3. China Web2.0 Review » » Casee Launches Mobile CPC Ads Network on March 29th, 2007 7:31 pm

    [...] Ads network is hot in China. Recently we have covered Feedsky and Bolaa’s move in this market. Although the market is rather blank now, we can expect well connected, professional and branded player to enter this market in the next six months. Existing ads networks are providing platform to connect advertisers and websites. But advertisers need more professional service to help them planning campaign and establish long term engagement with communities. Traditional PR companies and search engines have strong competitive advantage in this field. [...]

  4. » 昨日搜刮iLenceel » Blog Archive on April 27th, 2007 11:17 pm

    [...] Wading In Word-of-Mouth Marketing Creek # I do agree with u… [...]

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  8. chamila on March 12th, 2008 8:36 pm

    Has anyone out there heard about WideCircles.com. It seems like a way better service then wasting money on PPC. Apparently they are using refering websites ( forums, blogs, wiki, etc. ) and have a viral word of mouth distributed approach to it. My friend told me he got around 100 visits from single post which cost him $0.40c. I am going to give them a try today . In case you are intrested here is it. http://widecircles.com?s=imt1

  9. shanthi on March 17th, 2008 2:12 pm

    I was reviewing a few viral marketing service and came accross something pretty intresting called WideCircles. They seem to work by sending viral messages to various websites like forums, blogs, wiki’s and so on. My friend signed up for the account the other day after running a small but successful campaign ( targeting very specific niche ) and told me about it. It seems like a nice idea to gather highly relevant traffic and help with the SEO process at the same time while paying very small amount of money compared to pay per click. In any case, I am going to give them a try today. In case you are intrested here is the site. http://widecircles.com?imt=3

  10. Dulee2005mm@gmail.com on March 17th, 2008 9:54 pm

    Has anyone out there heard about WideCircles.com. It seems like a way better service then regular pay per click. Apparently they are using refering websites ( forums, blogs, wiki, etc. ) and have a viral word of mouth distributed approach to it which is engaging rather ther then interrupting customers. My friend told me he got over 500 visits from single post which cost him around $0.40c, within a few days. I am going to give them a try today . In case you are intrested here is it. http://widecircles.com?imt=3

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