Blogertize Method

In 1997, we pioneered a solution to the age-old dilemma of advertising versus PR. This evolved into an multiple media solution, which we called Blogertize. We publish an arms-length news site or magazine (zine) online on behalf of your brand or venture, but built as a reliable, credible news source.

“Blogertize is very knowledgeable and understand the power of digital media and communications to promote and inform. A very responsive team of professionals that execute quickly and with precision.”
–Gino Malucci, Tridel Corp.

Blogertize content is published to a webzine, an ezine (emailed zine), wire services for syndication, RSS feeds and on various social networks including Facebook, Google+ and Twitter—each with their own subscribers.

You become the publisher, but have limited editorial control over the actual content. As publisher, you have total control over theme and mission — and sponsored advertorial or advertising content. For example, many mainstream media publishers — particularly trade or niched media — are owned by private companies with vested interest in various corporations, verticals and niches, or, sometimes, political parties. Their mission is defined in how they cover the news, but they do not interfere with the actual reporting beyond that. Blogertize publications follow the same principle.

Blogertizing draws qualified traffic through carefully constructed content strategies.

How to Blogertize
To achieve this, the zine or social zine site must be branded independently of the client/publisher, staffed with real reporters and editors, and it must be genuine in its mission to report on niched news, trade news, or features of interest to its suppliers. To be useful to your brand, it must be tuned to your core message, simpatico with your goals and supportive of your business. The two keys to a successful Blogertize site are “arms length” and “credible.” This means, real news, without significant spin, are critical to success.

Best Practice Best practices for Blogertizing relies on two streams of content, neither of which are directly from the client/publisher. An arms-length team of journalists and editors is critical to building subscriber base and credibility, and an ever growing team of “Citizen Journalists” is important to increasing activity and participation from subscribers. The contributors should never, in best practice, include any content contributed by any employee of the client/publisher team, unless labeled as an advertisement or an advertorial.

As a credible publisher, you completely control the message, own access to the subscribers, lower your reach costs, create a long-term asset and potentially can speak to more targeted audiences.

Earn Your Audience, Don’t Buy Them
When you become the media, you earn your audiences, you don’t buy them. You keep them and compel them with ongoing, interesting content. And you engage them in a way your competitors cannot—unless they’re also Blogertizing.

The Principle is Simple, The Method is Complex
In principle, this idea seems simple. Just fire up WordPress and blog away. But what about audience? Random buzz is not sufficient to generate significant results. And why should they believe you, even if they can find you on the world wide web? And even if they do, how do you generate enough qualified leads to reach your goals? There are no shortcuts, but there are proven methods.

A Repeatable Method That Earns Results
Blogertize’s team has worked out a complex but repeatable formula to solving these problems. In 1997, we created a print version of “be the media” with LINK magazine for D-Link Canada. We grew this to 165,000 subscribers, sold advertising, and helped D-Link significantly grow by millions of dollars in revenue. LINK later became our first digital zine effort as well. Each print issue was expensive, since we printed nearly 200,000, but the results were astounding.
We took lessons learned in print to the world wide web. By branding carefully – independent of the client – assigning specialized journalists, and publicizing the content, we draw the subscribers to you. They willingly share information. They come back week after week. They buy your product.