plaxoed!

now that i’ve gotten a jump start into the blogosphere, i’ve started collecting various feeds that i find particularly interesting (see my bloglines blogroll). perusing these feeds, there’s a theme that’s making its way out of the woodwork: effective marketing through blogging is a delicate art - if not handled properly, it may very well backfire on you in the worst ways possible.

along the way, i was linked to the following blog via scoble’s link blog. i thought the post scoble linked was quite interesting and started reading the rest of the blog. it took me a while to realize that this was actually a blog put together by a group of authors heading up a new o’reilly group called head first books. as i clicked through and definitely wanted to buy their books - despite the fact that none of their currently available books cover new subject areas for me.

breaking this down, i’d say the crucial play here was that the authors created a real blog about their thoughts and experiences, thereby making a connection to me, a potential customer. then they made sure there were easily accessible links to pull me through to amazon for a purchase. brilliant work!

the real kicker of course is that their blog actually contains real content; it isn’t just another corporate blog that pretty much serves as a thinly veiled attempt at getting the blogosphere to give a new product free PR. i wonder if other companies will take note and adjust their blogging strategies accordingly…