Marketers and bloggers dish their 'best kept secrets'

Anita Campbell and Ivana Taylor have compiled a wonderful list of 'marketing secrets' from some of the world's best-known marketers and bloggers. People like Seth Godin, Jackie Huba, Drew McClellan, John Jantsch, Liz Strauss, Yvonne DiVita and twenty other experts, and they also let me speak my peace. The post has a ton of great marketing and blogging advice, and already has over 70 comments.

But I must protest at having my thunder completely stolen. Here's my 'secret':

Success in blogging is dependent upon having a built-in direct benefit to others. For example, many companies want to approach blogging as a way to sell products to customers. But blogs don’t work well as a direct-selling channel. The key is to first provide a benefit to readers by creating content and community that offers them value. By giving readers a direct benefit, the company then benefits indirectly by seeing sales increase as a result of their blogging efforts. But if the company instead tries to directly promote themselves, readers will see no value in this, and the blog will die.

And IMMEDIATELY under this is Guy Kawasaki's secret, which is "Do the opposite of what bloggers think you should do." Ugh, I can't win!

Seriously, I really appreciate Anita and Ivana letting me participate in this project and you really should stop by and check out the post, as well as the comments!


Tags:The Viral Garden, Marketing

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