Product Placement Emerges in Blogging

Even though I know the web is full of charlatans and rogues there have been a few (small number) of bloggers who’ve caught my attention over the last months. They come across as genuine sharers – helping people to understand the way this new world should work.

Unfortunately some of these have really disappointed me recently. Not because what they write isn’t valuable, but because they’ve adopted product placement. And product placement is scary in terms of the credibility of blogging.The stuff I write is intended to help people understand how their day to day problems can be solved with our software – no disclosure required because the product is written all over the site.

When these guys push their own books (and their are lots of them now) that’s fair game, in the same dimension. But when they start pushing other peoples stuff, disguising it as good, solid advice, the whole business takes a turn for the worse.

There’s one particular blogger who makes no secret (properly) about promoting his own program – no problem. But in a recent article he claimed to be using three different CRM products. Either he’s a fool, or he thinks his readers are!

And now we’re seeing others follow his lead. They’ll screw the whole thing up.