The concept of sponsored conversations – paying bloggers to write about products or services, and publicly disclosing it – was diagnosed and given the green light by Forrester Research this past week, courtesy of analyst Sean Corcoran’s Add Sponsored Conversations To Your Toolbox report. Sean’s colleague and Groundswell co-author Josh Bernoff co-authored the report and offers additional color on his Groundswell Blog. I agree that sponsored conversations can be considered as a marketing tactic, given the current maturity level of social networking. Marketers just need to make sure these truly support their objectives.

Advertorials, which most of us are familiar with in print publications, pop into my mind when I look for something to compare with sponsored conversations. And while the advertorial is not a perfect comparison, it’s one I think many communicators will also call to mind when evaluating the potential of paying bloggers to post.

Do I think sponsored conversations are literally the new advertorial? No, the differences outweigh the similarities, although I find that running through the comparison helps surface and specify the value of each.

Similarities

• An advertorial allows an organization to place its message in (mostly) print or online publication via an editorial-style format for a fee. It’s strikingly similar to purchasing ad space, or media buying.  Sponsored conversations follow a similar model and are specific to blogs as well as each blogger’s posting format.

• An advertorial is disclosed as a paid placement, usually with the words “advertorial” or “special supplement” in fine print at the beginning and/or end of the content. Sponsored conversations disclose that a blogger was paid to write a post either using similar designations or right in the body of the post.

• Content in advertorials and sponsored conversations are lengthier than ads, as they endeavor to share opinion, more depth, and avoid sales jargon while attempting to influence readers in a more natural and subtle fashion.

Differences

• Advertorials – with the exception of content guidelines specific to each publication – allow organizations to place their exact message word for word. Businesses pay to control the message. Sponsored conversations, when authentic and transparent, allow bloggers the freedom to write about their experiences and opinions regarding the product or service in question, whether positive or negative, and regardless of what the sponsoring company thinks.  And let’s go ahead and state the obvious here. Smart businesses are going to develop relationships with bloggers and enlist those who share some common views for sponsored conversations. It’s a good practice even when money doesn’t exchange hands, and that’s called blogger relations.

• Advertorials pretty much are what they are. They are ideal from a corporate branding perspective (“Bank of America innovates online banking,” “Procter & Gamble cares about the environment,” and these types of things) and less effective in other scenarios, but mainly there’s no revolt against them. Sponsored conversations are still relatively controversial, mainly due to the previous practices of some organizations and major brands that have not disclosed blogger payments. This is changing for the better, although many people still perceive this as a shady practice. For example, a Mediabistro post on this topic references a FishbowlNY poll where 64% of respondents think pay-for-play blog coverage is not appropriate.

• Sponsored conversations have the culture and power of social networking, online communities, and the blogosphere built into them. Sure, an advertorial on a publication’s online entity may have the benefit of rating or comment functions, but a sponsored blog conversation has these and more. Blogger personalities and writing styles are leveraged to influence readers. Bloggers can make more subtle “what do you think?” or “check it out” kinds of calls to action, whereas most advertorials are confined to a proper editorial style. Advertorials still have a place, they are viable tools for helping generate general awareness and demonstrating expertise. I’ve written some and expect to write some more. The blogosphere simply has an edge, it’s the place to be, there’s more traffic, people actively seek to be here rather than passively come across an advertorial.

One potential flaw with the advertorial comparison is its print heritage, and we can all see what’s happening out there with major newspapers and favorite publications closing down. It’s sad, people’s livelihoods are connected to this. That said, it’s really about conversations and experiences now days and, truth be told, the Internet ‘is’ the infrastructure to enable and satisfy this craving.

People need to make a living, bloggers too, and the sponsored format may be suitable for some. I think it’s reasonable for marketers to ethically mix in some sponsored conversations while identifying some cautions and learning best practices along the way.

(I also ran across Jeremiah Owyang’s A Running List of Sponsored Conversations while browsing this afternoon. Good stuff for more context and specific examples.)

Disclosure: the Sunday afternoon serenity of my children napping sponsored this blog post  ;-)

What a year of numbers for social media and the Web. Take Twitter for example. Approximately 70% of its nearly five million users registered for the service in 2008 according to HubSpot’s Q4 2008 State of the Twittersphere report. This is but one of many quantitative gems that cap an impressive year of social media growth. The following stats represent a slice of the past year’s activity that I found most impressive.

Google Search - As if there were any doubt, Google continued to hold the top search engine spot with 63.5% of traffic. More impressive to me – although also expected at some point – was Google’s YouTube individually surpassing Yahoo and Microsoft according to the comScore Expanded Search Query Report as referenced on ZDNet’s Between The Lines blog (also thanks to Brent Leary for Tweeting it.)

Google Chrome - Another boon for Google was its Chrome Web browser tallying 10 million users just 100 days after its release. Google also lifted the Beta tag from Chrome, noting that its “goals for stability and performance have been met.” This was a significant move considering many Google apps its senior are still labeled Beta, and an aggressive move in browser/search war terms versus Microsoft and others too.

Facebook - With a 140 million active users and 600 thousand joining daily (according to Inside Facebook and as reported by ReadWriteWeb), Facebook is the juggernaut of social media and online communities. And while Twitter posted impressive numbers of its own this year, ReadWriteWeb calculated that if Facebook were to hold steady at 140 million users while Twitter’s current growth continued, it would take Twitter 36 years to catch up. Two popular and powerful tools, yet a world of difference between them at least as far as uptake is concerned.

Blogosphere - In September Technorati released its annual State of the Blogosphere report. I blogged a bit on it referencing the Universal McCann data that measured 184 million people worldwide having blogs, and 346 million reading them – a ton of content generation for sure. I also found the report’s Day Five data (Brands Enter The Blogosphere) about blogger participation in Web 2.0 activities interesting. The fact that bloggers use other online tools isn’t at all surprising, yet their percentage of activity for things like commenting on other blogs (84%), watching online videos (68%), sharing photos (48%) and using Twitter (41%) confirm that integrated communications are prevalent and expanding. The connected world is now, and its proving out and documenting itself daily.

There’s much more I’m sure. These are just a few social media and Web tools that proved why they’re elite this past year. Lots of social media predictions for 2009 are popping up too. I’ll leave you to surf those out, and will continue my observations of and additions to “the conversation” in the New Year.