USE A WEBLOG

The internet has certainly fired people’s imaginations, but the possibilities are far from being fully explored. At first, the internet was seen mainly as a kind of extension of traditional advertising most websites were just presence sites, directing people to telephone or call into an office. The interactive possibilities were 
largely ignored.

However, it is the possibility of online interactions that makes the internet different from anything that has gone before. Consumers have been quick to flock to online forums and weblogs to express their opinions of companies and brands, yet companies have done relatively little to encourage or influence this.


When Toyota launched the new Auris in Greece, they identified a number of regular bloggers (weblog contributors) and gave them each a car to test drive for a week. Needless to say, they posted the results of the test drives on their blogs.

This fitted well with Toyota’s desire to approach a young, affluent market: internet use in Greece is still less than in most European countries, and therefore the Greek internet system is dominated by better-off, educated, usually young people. Getting several reviews of the car onto blogs was a major coup for Toyota: there were 52,000 visits to the websites by 41,000 visitors, leading to over 2,000 requests for test drives.


practice
•This is a risky strategy: if the bloggers don’t like the product, you will have a lot of negative publicity to contend with.
•Make sure you identify the influential bloggers correctly. 
•Give yourself the best chance of a successful outcome by making  sure that the product samples they are given are absolutely perfect.