A Handy Idea for Paid Blog Reviews
On the ThoughtGadgets Blog about Chris Brogan and Kmart, Brigit of http://hotmiddlescence.com/made a comment that got me thinking.
Companies DO take a risk when asking a blogger to do a review. Brigit had a good idea – pay the blogger to do whatever kind of review they want, but agree to publish the post only if its positive.
If its negative, the company could take a review that’s negative and use it to analyze what’s wrong with the way they’re currently doing things and lay out some better models that will ultimately be more profitable.
They could then post the negative review along with the steps they took to fix any negative aspects. This could generate massive goodwill because the blogger isn’t likely the only one who found negative things to say.
The company would have taken the feedback and fixed its problems (or started on a course to do so), showing it was responsible, listening to its customers and promoting good business practices.
Just a thought for a way everyone could get something out of the process and allow the bloggers who do the reviews to be as unbiased as possible.
Granted, some companies don’t want to pay just to get a bad review, but the smart ones will see the value in letting the bloggers say what they really think. Even if they don’t publish the review, it could still be really handy.
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That seems like a pretty fair deal. I would almost be happy to get the bad review too if it is solely a review of my content and structure. It still counts as a link and bad press is better than no press.