We want you - and your audience

I casually opened my mail box today, waiting for “no comments” to this blog, as usual. Instead, I found a nice message from Kim:
“Hello Daiane,
My name is Kim Montgomery. I recently came across your blog and I love how witty and intelligent your entries are! Your blog totally targets the lifestyles of young Torontonian women... great research and authorship!
The reason I'm writing is, I work for Matchstick Marketing, a hip market-research/ promotions company that spreads "word-of-mouth" marketing for our various clients. The campaign I'm currently working on is looking for women who write popular blogs that discuss topics like lifestyle, fashion, health & beauty and savvy current events, with the hopes that they'd be willing to participate in a short study about feminine beauty & hygiene products.
The survey wouldn't take too much of your time. I'd love to get the chance to connect with you and get your valuable feedback!
Please feel free to email me at kim@matchstick.ca and you can let me know if you're interested in participating in the study and how best to get in contact with you!
Thanks in advance,
Kim”
Oh, oh... Where should I start?
First, I’m quite sure the entries they inserted in the search that pointed to my blog were: Toronto, women, and “sex and the city”. Of course, someone who mentions this movie in a blog can only be discussing “topics like lifestyle, fashion, health & beauty and savvy current events”.
Well, this blog doesn’t “totally target(s) the lifestyles of young Torontonian women”. And if popularity was the spamming criteria, I may not have more than two readers – this is definitely not a “popular” blog.
Anyway, what if I decide to contact Kim and participate in Matchstick’s study? I would probably be more qualified to criticize their survey instrument than to willingly provide my opinion on feminine beauty and hygiene products.
We still don’t know much about online word-of-mouth, but there are great studies going on that will help us understand better how bloggers deal with their audiences and how companies can use them as mediators or initiators of marketing messages. In the meantime, I would say it’s worthy to employ some time doing quality research (i.e. actually reading blogs) before sending recruiting messages all over the blogosphere.
But maybe I’m wrong... Maybe this fishing tactic optimizes results? Or, oh... maybe Kim actually read my blog and sincerely thinks my posts are witty and intelligent?

Comments

dasilvaorg said…
Well, one of your readers says:
contact Kim, see how it is really like.

Definitely, social media is the new toy to business world.

See ya.