PQ Media Archives - Social Email Marketing

Paid brand conversations on the rise: transparency is a myth, money makes the social media world go round

A study from PQ Media has found that more brands are likely to compensate bloggers and social media users in an attempt to generate chatter about their products. The press release about the report doesn’t really say if in these practices clear and obvious links between the posts/tweets/whatever and the advertisers exist for the people who take the effort to tweet, buzz, share, bookmark, retweet, like or simply ‘read’ them.

Maybe the report tells more about it, but I don’t really feel like paying $1,295 to find out and I guess the relationships between the ‘social influencers’ and the brands that reward them are not always clear since PQ Media uses the word ‘controversial’. And, let’s face it, we all know business is business.

Word of mouth marketing in 2009 and beyond

2009 was a tough year for marketing in general. However, some marketing techniques were doing just fine. One of them was, despite all the challenges, email marketing.

Another one was word of mouth marketing. Now, you probably know that word of mouth marketing is still predominantly an offline matter. However, with the increasing adoption of social media, word-of-mouth moves online more and more.

Despite the recession, word of mouth marketing (WOM) remained a strong grower in the media and communication industry in 2009.