Interview: Blog Partnerships From Brands Perspective

Having looked at my network model again, I realized that I haven't approached all of the weak-ties in it- brands that I collaborate with, to be exact. I do know them through my blog and email business conversations, but we are not familiar enough with each other and they are from all over the world and of all ages. I felt that I needed to correct that mistake, so I wrote to few of brand represents with following questions:

There are a lot of brand partnerships in today's market, when companies send out free things to bloggers. What do you think of this practice? (e.g. Is it mutually beneficial? Does one side benefit more than another? Please explain)

How much more/less effective are blog collaborations rather than magazines/printed editions?

Since I've managed to cover readers/bloggers attitudes and opinions on the matter, I felt it was essential to get brands side as well. In fact, writing this post made me realise that the link between these three parties could be easily represented by a circle model "brands-bloggers-readers-brands" if that makes any sense (the brands send free clothes to the bloggers- the bloggers demonstrate the clothes to their readers- the readers purchase clothes from that brand- the brand sends more clothes to the bloggers). Don't know if anyone has come up with this thought before, but I find it quite interesting!

Surveys: Survs.com

A while ago I was contacted by a Finnish student inviting me as a blogger to take her survey:

Apparently, she found me by my blog and connected with me same way she might connect with many other bloggers that I might not know. So her being a node or connector in that case made me think of it as a network, perhaps the network I could diverse?

I have completed her survey, in return asking her to provide me the final results once they are ready to add them to my own surveys and she was kind enough to agree to do so. I shall wait and see what information I'm gonna get!

Surveys: Blogs vs Print Media

I have created a survey to reveal today's importance of both online and print media, and see whether one is being preferred to another and how the possible preferences might have changed compared to the past.

It can be accessed on the following link: http://kwiksurveys.com?u=onlinevsprint

And here is the screenshot of the data collected:

Top image source:

http://theory.isthereason.com/?p=391

Blogging Profit Pyramid Model

Image source:
http://www.shoemoney.com/2012/02/08/why-most-affiliate-bloggers-dont-last/

Question: What Makes a Great Blog? Part ll

Being put off by poor response at first and after long considerations and few days gap, I ended up asking the same question on my main personal blog. The reason I didn't do it right away was the fear that it would annoy the readers, but then I got such a great response on my other social networks, that I thought it was only fair to let my biggest network speak and express their opinion on this matter too.

Here is what I got so far:

UPDATE:

The Arrogance of Bloggers

Recently I've come across of an article which suggested that bloggers were arrogant in their behaviour of keeping a blog. It was illustrated by the following drawing:

Reminds you of anything? Yes! "They Way Things Are" scenario with its commenters (nodes) all leading up towards the authour and the blog post (super node) reminds me of a hierarchical network where all the information is shared with main hub. I quite like "the way things could be" scenario with people being anble to interact with each other and make connections.

Oh, by the way, one of the points that "display an arrogant behaviour" on the author's opinion was the lack of sharing widgets at the bottom of the posts. Check ;-)

Full article and diagram courtesy of Sarah Mitchell:
http://www.business2community.com/blogging/the-arrogance-of-bloggers-057352