Viral Marketing in Action! “ReviewMe” Review
by Randall McCarley
November 10th, 2006
Do you ever wonder how to get dozens hundreds of bloggers to talk about your product or service? Enter ReviewMe, a new site developed by Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall aka ReviewmeRoy(?) that matches marketers with bloggers.
If these problems sound like yours ReviewMe can help you develop a custom buzz in the blogosphere:
- Finding it hard to get the word out about your products.
- Creating, prototyping, testing and bringing products to market are time consuming and expensive.
- People ignore ads.
- Many ad systems show exceptionally generic ads that are irrelevant and annoying.
- Connecting with many bloggers who would be interested in talking about or reviewing your products and services will take a long time.
- Requesting a review from the wrong bloggers might inspire them to call you a spammer.
Buzz marketing is alive and well and here’s a great way you can make it happen. The ReviewMe site is spectacularly simple in presentation making matches easy to find and accept.
The way it works is you sign up and then search by keyword for phrases relevant to your business. There are two search options a regular old search box and a nifty Web 2.0 cloud.
By choosing the keyword for your project a list of relevant blogs appears. The blogs are ranked from 1-5 stars based on backlink (Technorati) and traffic (Alexa) counts. Links to the blog are there so you can check it out yourself. If you like the blog, just add it to your cart! On checkout you specify what type of review you want and can add comments.
Warning: The search feature is pretty basic so [cars] and [autos] are two different things with two sets of results. You want to be sure and tackle all the angles on your keyword selection.
If you aren’t sure what keywords to target or if you want a more comprehensive solution the ReviewMe Pros will help you out with a custom proposal.
I see some pretty impressive names included already (this site has been live for about a day now!) so exposure isn’t a problem.
For bloggers, ReviewMe is giving away $25,000 for promotion to get the program started! And some of that cash is going my way for writing this post (part of the agreement is that I must disclose that the post is a paid post in some way, which I think is a good thing).
I think the ReviewMe service has a lot of potential and the ease of making a match is something online dating sites should take notice of. With the talent involved getting it going and the buzz already moving on this I see great things ahead. In fact I am already figuring out how to use it for one of my own client projects and a couple pending site launches.
Definitely a tool worth noting!
PS. I’m very happy they waited until after the election to launch this program… ;-)
Next Article: 7 tips for a killer website review Previous Article: Want to know about backlinks?
November 12th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Hey Rand,
Have to say, I’m puzzled by Review Me.
Their website says the point of it is to review products and services.
So, I wrote to the fellows and asked them about the process. Does the reviewer receive a sample of the product or service?
They responded as follows:
“The reviews are for sites, usability and design, not physical products”
So, this is totally confusing. If the reviews are based on usability and design, then this would
indicate the bloggers who are going to blog about the websites are web developers. But, I took
a look at the categorical listings of potential blogs, and saw things like cooking blogs, fashion blogs, etc, where a business owner can have a review done. What does a chef know about web design? I have to say, I think they are being totally unclear as to the basic function of Review Me’s service. The website appears to say it’s about reviewing products and services, and their email to me says it’s about getting web design reviews. What???
Can you clear this up for me, Rand, as you’re in with these guys’ program?
Thanks,
Miriam
November 13th, 2006 at 3:43 am
ReviewMe is about building buzz. Imagine 10 or 100 or 1,000 blogs talking about your website! This is easily achiveable with the ReviewMe service. They connect marketing pros with bloggers.
A site about cars may add a new tool that asks you off-beat questions (like what pets do you own? If you could be anyone in history who would it be?) to discover your perfect vehicle. Then to build buzz about it they would use the ReviewMe service.
This also builds backlinks and for some of the sites it is quite a deal as purchasing links is not cheap. Not only do you get a link (or more) you get a full post about your business, product or service.
Some things would be more difficult to utilize this service for (it isn’t for everyone) like the products you mentioned. If it’s a physical object obviously we can’t comment on that but we can on the site that describes it! A great example of this approach in action is Adrants where new advertisements are criticised.
Something important to note is the company requesting the service cannot ask for a positive review. They get what they get which should be honest feedback and criticism along with some good points. Also, these are technicaly ads and they must labeled as a “paid for” post in some way.
November 14th, 2006 at 9:15 pm
Hi Rand,
I appreciate your reply. I’m still left feeling that they need to reword this:
“Advertisers - get your Web site’s products or services reviewed by related Web sites, and benefit from valuable exposure, feedback, and viral buzz.”
If they can’t offer physical product reviews, this should be explained. If I find it confusing, I betcha other folks will, too.
Miriam
November 15th, 2006 at 3:01 am
Maybe they should emphasize web site’s as that is what they are talking about?
Dunno…