1. The email was unsolicited
2. The email was soliciting links to a site
3. The direct link provided did not take me anywhere specific. In other words I must surf around and increase page impressions, looking for the page I’m supposed to be on.
4. The same email arrived in a colleague’s mailbox at roughly the same time (dead giveaway)
5. Eric then emailed my colleague explaining that part of this “experiment” is to up his own Google Pagerank.
6. Eric then called me last night to prove that he is a real person

So if you call this brilliant marketing then er…

I mean seriously, it’s like a tupperware pyramid scheme, even if its clever it smells like a rat and is that honestly a marketing strategy that yields quality returns?

This danger of rewarding bloggers was proven when payperpost.com launched their service, allowing companies to pay bloggers for reviews of their products. The fallout in the blogosphere was huge with the “A-list” hammering the service. It led to payperpost revising the service so that reviews that were paid for including notification to the reader that it was a paid review.

Of course, this does not stop any site or service from contacting bloggers and asking for their opinion – good or bad – there’s little wrong with that and its a great way to leverage the blogosphere to get valuable feedback on your product.

The key to this approach is to make the bloggers feel heard, irrespective of what they say. Jonga.co.za did this with me and it felt great to know my input was being considered. Listening to what the bloggers say and using their feedback will go a long way towards improving your reputation as a company in a more consumer-transparent way.