Why corporations should not pay bloggers to write nice thing about them

In a break at the SIME conference here in Copenhagen today I talked to a journalist from Comon about whether or not corporations should pay bloggers to write about them.

And when I got home I suddenly felt the urge to quote myself on the subject 😀

This is a comment I wrote on Adrianas Media Influencer blog when we discussed the matter a couple of weeks ago:

Unfortunately I think we will not be able to win this end of the war. There will always be people out there looking solely for profit. They will learn to smother their blogposts with words like ‘conversation’ and ‘relation’ and ‘care’ – and in the end it will mean nothing!

But what we can do is enlighten the organizations that are target-groups for the “services” these people provide.

The way I see it smart, nice, clever organizations looking to improve their relations with customers wouldn’t buy or use these services! And I tell my customers – and everybody else who cares to listen – that this is my take on this.

What organizations need to understand is that paying bloggers to write nice things about your products, and buying information about customers that they haven’t agreed to share with you, is not part of a healthy relationship.

Think about it – It is like spying on your spouse and then using the information to start a conversation to solve some problems you have had in the past? Sorry – but we all know it is not going to work – if you want to improve the relationship you have to go all the way – you have to be there, you have to listen and care, and maybe you even have to change – there are no quick solutions and the sooner organizations understand this the better!

And in the next couple of weeks I will try to blog more in English – as mentioned earlier I am going to the Picnic conference in Amsterdam next week – and I would like to keep some of the conversations going afterwards.