About once every two months, Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb writes an article about the evils of sponsored posting, whether it be about Twitter ad networks like Be A Magpie or be they blogosphere based practices like ones espoused by IZEA. I bring him up mostly because he’s become my favorite foil on the topic: his fervor is generally over the top for this subject, particularly given his employer’s regular usage of paid posting:

So there’s the Twitter-sphere for you! Bring on “real time search,” bring on a globally connected community, bring on vapid, vile, stupid shilling. It all seems pretty sad to me. And to the advertisers out there – is this cynical scheme the best you can do to engage with all the new ways people are communicating online? That’s pretty bad.

But as I said, I’m generally for these types of paid posting campaigns, if they’re executed properly and conversationally:

Obviously, it’s best to let your product, service or content speak for itself and rise in attention organically, but whether you’re promoting it through personal networking, or letting your dollars do the work for you, Lesson one is that you’re always going to have better success with well composed content than raw pitching of a product.

Just as important, Lesson two is that it’s a good idea to intimately understand the culture and protocol of a media type before you try to buy your way into it.Sometimes, particularly when you’re representing a mainstream brand and you’re new to a service, that isn’t possible.  That’s why it’s important to find a trusted ambassador to guide you into that world either in education or promotion.

Lastly, buying your way into the campaign doesn’t mean you sit back and do nothing. Be prepared to meet and greet and interact with all the new folks. The goal of ‘buying your way into the conversation’ shouldn’t be instant sales, it should be long term followers.

Philips and Magpie are Doing It Right.
Today, though, I stumbled on a Twitter campaign put out through the Magpie network by Philips, and given the level of success they achieved and positive response they got (somehow escaping the watchful and vengeful eye of Marshall), I figured it deserved calling attention to and a bit of dissection.

The campaign was a challenge to the public to come up with a better ad than this:

The challenge was issued through Magpie sponsored-tweets, and replies were asked for (disclosure – I received about eight Euros for my tweet).

The campaign seemed to be fairly limited in it’s scope – there weren’t that many sponsored tweets that came out through Magpie, and the contest didn’t seem to be promoted through many other traditional internet advertising outlets, yet it resulted in thousands of YouTube videos, tens of thousands of tweets using the hashtag, and plenty of discussion on the topic.

Clearly, it was an effective campaign, and generated generally positive feedback, and all the responses I was able to pull from Twitter were either expressions of intrigue or submissions to the contest.

It shows what happens when you use paid posting techniques engage the community rather than encourage them to simply click on an affiliate link.